Alberta Seperatism- It's Time

First of all let me point out that I am an Alberta citizen, and am very pro separation. I look foward to some debate on this issue.

Now Alberta as many of you know is the richest economy of canada. Our oil/ gas wealth is rivaled only by the middle east. This has caused major tensions between us and the rest of canada. Citizens of the east feel that we should be sharing the wealth even more (we already give nearly 20 billion every year in transfer payments). We resent this and feel that yes we can share it but having this money forcefully taken away from us is wrong. We need this money jsut as meuch as they do. We need to diverisfy our economy. I have nothing against sharing this money, but having it taken away from us angers me and many others. we are gettingt he raw end of the stick confederation.

This only adds to the long standing veiw that the east in canada has all the power in the country, political power that is. (remember we supply your oil, coal, gas, food, and much of the money for the social programs over there). The west has not had any power in the nation due to our population distrabution. We have basiccly no political say in the affairs of this nation and thus we have no say in how our wealth is going to be taken from us. (granted in the last federal election ontario was devided and the conservatives managed to win, which was great). Western isolationism is still a major problem in this country and we resent it greatly. This has only encouraged us to rely more on the things that make us a truly distict and great society.

To most who visit alberta we are a friendly people who still have a very strong "fronetir spirit". Albertains have always been independent, self reliant, and supportive of one another. We resent governemnt intrusion into our lives and changing the basic morals, ethics, values, traditions, and laws our soceity was founded on. We are a very independent people who prefer to rely on ourselves rather the govenrment. We are a distict people in this nation, just as the french canadians, acadians, and metis. We deserve to hav eour voice heard, however no one is listening. It is time for alberta to step on to the world stage.

The idea of sepertation is a popular idea, however it is not acted upon. people are too scared to change the system because they are blinded by nationalism, patiotism, love of queen and so many years of having no political voice. It is time for this to change. Alberta has the ability to become an nation founded on our ideals. We would be very capitalist, indepndent, and reliant on traditional values of family and self reliance. We gain independence, a voice in our affairs, control over our monetary resources, and recogniction for our unique culture. We can become so much more as a nation, with controll over our money, laws, and politics

There are many groups fighting for our independence politically. The seperation party of alberta is starting to gain attention politicaly however they have been unable to gain any significant part of the vote. popel are jsut too scared to vote for something that could change our our lives for the better.

Many people of my gneneration (i'm a high school student) are fed up with the system in this nation. We seee our economy booming, we see our importance in this nation, but we don't see that we have any political say or any oppertunity to grow further as a provience in thsi nation. Our generation is a genenation of seperatists and we will act on this. We will achive alberta's freedom in our lifetime.

Alberta Republic Forever!!!

-DSO

If you wnat to learn more or join in this cause please visit these sites.
www.separationalberta.com...
www.republicofalberta.com...
www.westerncanadaparty.com...

Im an Alberta resident as well. Seperation...Im not on board. I like "team Canada"

The ideals are great, no question but you have failed to realize one thing. If we seperate we would become a slave state to the US and partially to China. THe reason being, Its their political and corporate interests who have bought the oil before it even comes out of the ground, NOT Ottawa or Edmonton. The oil is geographically located in the province of Alberta but its NOT ours. Dont be misguided. 2 million residents working for 35 bucks an hour digging it up hardly supports the Grand Kingdom of Alberta. The oil would truely have to be ours before a solid discussion on seperation in the high ranks could ever take place.

You are not going to see this in your lifetime. What you will see though is a dissolve of the US, Canadian border forming a superstate.

As far as the East goes, they buy their oil from the US just like you and myself here in Edmonton. Over 95% of whats produced here is sent to the US for refinement into gasoline and then sold back to Canada so the east isnt reliant on Alberta for oil and never has been. As far as the power is concerned, sence this is a democracy where majority rules, the region with the most people will have the most say. Thats simple. Did you know that the porvince of Ontario does 1 billion in trade every single day with just the state of New York. Alberta does not come close to that figure with its trade with the entire US. As far as Alberta supplying the east with its food, well all I can say to that is you are ttremendously uninformed. Ontario and Quebec farm everything you can think of. More then wheat, millet and oats. And about the coal bit, Ontario and Quebec havent used coal in years. Everything there is nuclear (CANDU) and when coal was in usage, years and years ago, it came from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and the scoial programs in the east are paid for by 15 million people paying 15% tax on everyting. I have to say, I admire your spirit but you are very misinformed in terms of how the gears of our country work but your just a pup yet.

Seperation also requires one to mint its own money and with nothing to back it, you cannot mint anything. If the oil belonged to the province then yes, this could happen over night but again, its NOT ours whatsoever.

I agree with you on the difficulty of the issue. I feel that yes we would become alot closer to the US, due to our oil resources. however we would not become a total part of them or even a slave to them. We would have close economic ties to toher nations aswell, such as china. As a memebr of the world stage we would be able to work our agreements that work for us, not for canada. I find that many canadaians have a mis infomed veiw of the united states, that they are power and resource hungry world p dominators. They aren't. They are a nation and part of the global community. An independent alberta would not be taken over by the us, if anything we would be protected by them.

Secondly, i'm not as missinfored as you think. I do realize that ontario and PQ have alot of their own resources and are strong centers of economic and political importance. However they do rely on our oil, and they do refine a fair amount it for themselves. I agree that the US is an important market for us and that the East is not as reliant on us as we believe. However they still rely on our natural gast to heat their homes, power their lights, and cook their food.

Coal is still used in their power stations, and only a small portion is nuclear. The vast amjority of power produced over there is in the form of hydroelectic, natural gas, and coal. they need us for the fossel fuels.

I am a big fan of capitalism, and alberta would not stray from this ideology if it did seperate. the oil resources lie in our geographical area and they are ours to control. It is global demand and investment that extract them. The oil is ours (since the provence owns the mineral rights and sells them to companies), and thus we could achieve indepence based on an oil economy. However we must not rely on it as it is a limited resource. We have to diversify our economy in order for us to survive.

I agree with you that a North Americal Super State is by far more liekly then alberta seprating. however the sentiment for seperation si still quite strong in our provence, and we have more then enough resources to carry through with it. It is up to the people to decide if they are redy for it. I know that I am.

Census, thank you for your comments, i appreciate your views and respect your opinion. You raise some very good points. However i still feel that seperation is the way. Canada is a great place to vist, but as a country its disfunctional, too centralized, and too big.

In Ontario in '97 about 48% of the electricity supply was nuclear (along with 27% hydro, 24% fossil, 1% "other"). Another thing of interest is the Nominal Gross Domestic Product in 2003 for Ontario was an estimated 495.229 billion CD$ Thats neary half a trillion dollars and 40.6% of the Canadian total. Thats larger than the GDP of Austria, Belgium or Sweden among many other nations. Broken down by sector, the primary sector is 1.8% of total GDP, secondary sector 28.5%, and service sector 69.7%. As far as agriculture is concerned Ontario has well over half of the "Class 1" (highest quality) agricultural land in Canada and even more Class 2 and Class 3 land, both of which are considered very suitable for agriculture. Over 56,000 farms in Ontario, with cash receipts of more than $8.3 billion annually, account for half of all farm revenue in Canada. The grow their own food and sell their surplus of hydro to the US. Impressive numbers for a crybaby province who relys on evereyone else don't you think?

Relativly speaking, they import virtually nothing from here espically food heat and light.



I spent 24 years of my life living in Ontario so I speak from experience. By the way sence '97, 3 more reactors have come online. 2 in Bruce and 1 at Darlington so that figure is well over 50%, like closer to 60%. There are currently 102 natural gas electricity generation stations spread across the province of Ontario, and they are of varying sizes and outputs however they do import some natural gas from Sask. BC and Alberta respectively. Ontario would continue to turn on its lights and cook its food wihtout Alberta. As a matter of fact, Ontario sells hydro to NY and without that trade, it's Americans who would be in the dark. Ontario has a tremendous amount of hydro for sale along with everything else. Ontario is now, as of '04, the worlds larget auto producing "state" surpassing Michigan. Now how about that one.

Moving foward, we in Alberta has been pumping oil circa 1914 and we don't live in the opulence of the Gulf of Arabia nations. The reason is that those people own that oil and we don't. Its that simple.

Albertans do not have the demonstrable wealth of individual Texans even though Alberta has far more oil than Texas. Alberta has shipped enough oil to America since WWII to build a million dollar mansion for every Albertan family. Albertans live in comfortable spacious frame houses and for the most part are living from paycheque to paycheque and some barely paying the mortgage. The billions of dollars in oil revenues does go to the provincial government but it is but a fraction of the wealth which has already been pumped out of the ground. The reason for this is that WE DONT OWN IT. If we did "THEY" would get the fraction and WE would get the lion share but if you look out your window right now, you can see thats not the case. Where are our oil Billionaires? There are none. The Alberta government has only recently paid off its debts even though it has been pumping oil and gas to the USA(because the US own it before it even comes out of the ground)at Saudi Arabia levels.

The Province of Alberta does not get the same share of revenue the royal families of Saudi Arabia derive from their petroleum exports, again, because we dont own it. Libya under Muammar Gaddafi is getting 50% of its export value on petroleum. The states in the Gulf of Arabia are getting more the 50%. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was getting about 50%. Alberta is getting between 10 and 15%. Again, because we don't own it. Capital and primary heavy industry, meaning the money and the refinement rights don't stay in Alberta...Why???????You know why...We don't own it. This IS the way it is.

We have to remember with our 10%-15% we get by but we have nothing else here other then mountians and cow crap. In a perfect world Alberta is a LONG way from seperation.

LOL, can you imagine team Canada vs. team Alberta in hockey!..That's not what you want, is it?

[edit on 4-6-2006 by Census]

To me, it's like breaking up a team. Sure, Alberta has oil and wealth, they also have a lot of wheat and cattle.

What about other items? Nova Scotia is the top exporter of seafood in Canada and the whole east coast handles major fishing export. Lumber from British Columbia is prime and they are also the top trading province with all of Asia. Ontario has lumber and electricity. Saskachewan and Manatoba have a lot of grain production and more.

In fact, if Alberta was separate...they become land-locked. That would hurt the pocketbook paying higher tariffs for transporting goods out.

No...a separate Alberta just wouldn't be a positive change. And besides, as a Canadian AND MORE IMPORTANTLY one born in the heart of Alberta, I wouldn't want to see that. Alberta has a lot to share with the world and being part of Canada lets them do that.

My two Loonies.

Your darn right its like breaking up a team. Canada needs Alberta to call itself Canada and Alberta needs Canada just the same.

I fell very strongly about Canada and my Canada includes Alberta. IF we seperated I would leave here tommorw for NS or Ontario(family). I would be disgusted and heartbroken. Alberta would be tits up in no time.

Nobody wants that.

First of all i wish to appoligize for my being missinformed. You are correct about the power generation in ontario, as hard as it may be to believe. I heard that they relied on oil/natural gas for a majority of the electrical power consumption.

My purpose for writing this thread is to make the issue of western alienation more pronounce. The conservative government in ottawa will do a lot of good in rectifying the situation, but that isn't good enough. The balance of power in this country while fair, alienates the west. Stronger regional governments need to be established in order to rectify that situation."Team Canada" is disfunctional and needs reform.

I still feel that a free ablerta would be a lot better then staying part of canada. For one we would be able to make laws and support the values of our citizens, who tend to be alot more conservative then the rest of this confederation. Another is taht we would no longer need to pay taxes to support the rest of this nation, teaching them self dependence, whcih would make canada stronger in the longer term. As for being landlocked, we wouldn't be. Our close ties with the US and the free trade agreement would mean that we would be able to ship south rather then east/west. Also there is a good change the NWT would join us in our Republic thus we could eventually build arctic ports.

Of all possible areas that could declair independence alberta is the most promising for supporting herself. We have an economy that's booming and will contiue to boom. The economics of our provience could support seperation. If it was peaceful, democratic, and legitimate, we would have no problem with comapies leaving, losing trade relations or ruffling to many feathers internationally.

I think that Canada has adopted a disfunctional form of governemnt and economy due to its size and population distrabution. I don't want to be a part of this repressive system anymore and i'm sure there are those who agree with me. rather then leaving for another country i would like to see reform happen, and if that means breaking up canada into smaller countries, then so be it.

If I may add a foreign perspective here, just to touch on an aspect of separation for Alberta (or BC or Saskatchewan) that hasn't been covered yet:

Don't be complacent about your southern neighbor.

I've spoken in years gone by with Canadians who worried about a U.S. military invasion if Canada adopted a leftist government. Under present circumstances, that worry is cockeyed, paranoid nonsense. The U.S. and Canada have the world's longest peaceful border. The amount of trade that crosses that border every day is staggering. Canada is a reliable U.S. ally in almost all circumstances, 'cept when we totally have our heads up our bums. (And even sometimes when we do.) There is no way, no WAY that the U.S. would sacrifice all that just to bust up a freely-elected government in Canada that we didn't like. This is 2006, not 1812.

But that's Canada. It's not Alberta. An independent Alberta would be a small, sparsely-populated, militarily very weak, oil-rich country on our doorstep. I'm not saying that if you separated from Canada the U.S. would invade straight off, because I don't think that's true. But the diplomatic and economic pressure to sell out Albertan interests to serve U.S. corporate interest would be overwhelming, and it would be backed up by a possible invasion, most likely never threatened flat out, but always there.

Nor would that do the American people any good, as it would only benefit the rich and powerful in this country, bloating them even more and threatening the rights and well-being of U.S. citizens even more than now. Which is the selfish and nationalistic reason that I, as an American, don't want to see it.

There is no way that Alberta can be genuinely independent. You can remain a province of Canada, or you can separate and petition to become the 51st State of the U.S. (and almost certainly get that), or you can become and remain legally independent but have U.S. interests calling the shots even more than they do now. Your best bet IMO is to remain part of Canada. But even U.S. statehood would be better than going for real independence. At least U.S. States have certain legal and constitutional rights and guarantees. Weak, independent nations have none.

I see us not becoming a part of the US, but definitly an ally and mabey even a protectorate. We would definitly have very close ties with the US (since a large percentage of our population is american). Also our values are much closer to that of the US then the rest of Canada.

Just thought i'd point out that alberta has some of the most densly populated regions in western canada (excluding vancover) and the Calgary-Edomonton- Fort Mac corridor is the fastest growing region in canada. I dissagree that Alberta would be weak as an independent state. If we were to seperate we would have near the highest GDP per person on the planet. Our economy is more then capable of supporting us to become a strong moderate sized nation.

I also dissagree with the threat of a US invasion of Alberta. The US does have the capability to attack, but if they did, it would be the worst disaster in their military history. not beacuse of resistance from us, but from their own people. We are so similar to you that the american people could not stand seeing us get slaughtered. No i think if ALberta did seperate, Relations between our two nations would become so much more friendly and co-operative, and thats good for all our people. A strong and independent alberta can be achived, and we would be a strong part of the international economic and political community. It would be a long and diffficult process, but i think it would be best for all involved.

I thank you for your foreign perspective, it has aded some new opinions to this topic, and i look forward to more opinions, both canadian and otherwise.

-DSO

Originally posted by DSO
I also dissagree with the threat of a US invasion of Alberta. The US does have the capability to attack, but if they did, it would be the worst disaster in their military history. not beacuse of resistance from us, but from their own people. We are so similar to you that the american people could not stand seeing us get slaughtered.

I also don't think that an invasion would ever actually happen, but for a different reason: it would be so easy to reduce an independent Alberta to a wholly-owned subsidiary puppet state that overt violence would be unnecessary.

All I'm saying is this: don't trust the U.S. government. It behaves well, only when it is dealing with forces powerful enough to make that the best option in terms of its own interests. That doesn't mean a nation has to be able to defeat us militarily. But they need to be strong enough that pushing them around is more trouble than it's worth. And that's not unique to the U.S., nor does it mean we're bad evil people. It just means we're a nation-state. Every nation-state is like that.

I understand the dissatisfaction of west with east; you see that south of the border, too. But the price of disunion is weakness, and in the face of weakness, every nation becomes a predator.

I think the US gets too much of a bad reputation. Sure they have made some questionable choices, such as invading iraq, vietnam, etc. But what country hasn't. I feel we have nothing to fear from the US, other then economic domination. They have been our closest freind and ally, and will continue to be (as long as we have the resources required to keep their economy moving). No a Free alberta would be a stronger Alberta, both in terms of economy and foreing relation, not to mention internal values.

If we had the 20 billion dollars that we already give to the rest of this country for our own economy, we would be that much more ahead. Political, economic, and social changes that would be imposed could include:
- two teir healthcare, education, and other governemnt programs
- lower taxes (relative to what the average person pays today)
- stronger national security program then canada has
- reversal of contraversial laws to conform with the values of the people
- stronger economic diversification programs (increasing the Alberta Advantage)
- banning deficit spending and governemnt debt
and many other programs

A free alberta would become a Canadian-American hybrid nation, combining the best of both systems, an example for a United North America that will eventually come.