Elections Alberta has approved the proposed referendum question, 'Do you agree that the province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?'
I know someone who wanted to legally change his name to “Wayne Gretzky” and then run for Premier. He thought most Albertans wouldn’t do the work and figure out he wasn’t actually Wayne Gretzky, and i think he was right.
I think that guy you know might also be one of the folks who doesn’t do the work to figure stuff out, unfortunately - we don’t “vote for Premier”, we vote for a local representative and the party that gets the most representatives installs their party leader as Premier. Just like how it’s done with the Prime Minister.
Even if we did, his plan has taken a bit of a hit in the past year. A lot of Albertans have soured greatly on Gretzky given his chumminess with Trump, his statues have been repeatedly vandalized recently. “Maple MAGA” is actually not as popular here as seems to be commonly believed.
The number goes down below 10 when asked if they’d want to separate if the Conservatives had won the federal election. They’re just angy at the libs. When push comes to shove they will vote it down.
I’ve posted about this before, but I’ve been out with coworkers for a beer before and had the exact conversation on the “rest of Canada not caring” point about O&G jobs in Alberta. I’m originally from Ontario so I could chime in on that perspective for them.
The conversation was mostly geared towards them thinking the Albertan economy is “floating” the rest of Canada. When I brought up the size of Toronto and Montreal and the industries just in those two cities they brushed it off. So I took a different tactic, I started asking them if they cared about manufacturing jobs in Quebec, or fishery jobs in the maritimes or automotive jobs in Ontario. Unsurprisingly they said they didn’t know / care and that those jobs weren’t as numerous / important as O&G.
I ended it with saying, people care about Alberta as much as you care about Ontario, Quebec, BC, the Maritimes which is essentially zilch. I’m not sure if I got through to them but one guy actually said “somehow this seems worse”. I just said “really Alberta doesn’t register in most Canadians radars unless negatively”.
They also genuinely couldn’t understand why folks out east or in BC don’t want pipelines or further O&G investment in their provinces.
That’s why this whole movement is fucked. The people who back this just think they’re keeping Canada afloat.
So what if they are? That’s called “sharing” and Canada is a vast country. The benefits of being Canadian far outweigh the costs to the Province of Alberta.
If Alberta was a country, it would be like Nigeria. I’m pretty sure even the most die hard maple MAGAt would ratjer be in present day Alberta than Nigeria.
Their bigotry is blinding them to the fact that they would actually become a minority group they despise.
Referendums and the specific topic is a bit different. But I think looking at Trump and America should make people very wary of what having 30% of the population as fanatics can do.
That is a terrifyingly high number if you ask me.
You can get a quarter of the population to vote for basically anything.
I know someone who wanted to legally change his name to “Wayne Gretzky” and then run for Premier. He thought most Albertans wouldn’t do the work and figure out he wasn’t actually Wayne Gretzky, and i think he was right.
I think that guy you know might also be one of the folks who doesn’t do the work to figure stuff out, unfortunately - we don’t “vote for Premier”, we vote for a local representative and the party that gets the most representatives installs their party leader as Premier. Just like how it’s done with the Prime Minister.
Even if we did, his plan has taken a bit of a hit in the past year. A lot of Albertans have soured greatly on Gretzky given his chumminess with Trump, his statues have been repeatedly vandalized recently. “Maple MAGA” is actually not as popular here as seems to be commonly believed.
Thank god that first-past-the-post could give 39% or less full control of the provincial government.
The number goes down below 10 when asked if they’d want to separate if the Conservatives had won the federal election. They’re just angy at the libs. When push comes to shove they will vote it down.
It gets more worrying
I would like to hear a firsthand experience on the last point however.
What is an “Albertan”? Cars have existed longer than Alberta has. We’re all immigrants.
Most of us anyway.
I’ve posted about this before, but I’ve been out with coworkers for a beer before and had the exact conversation on the “rest of Canada not caring” point about O&G jobs in Alberta. I’m originally from Ontario so I could chime in on that perspective for them.
The conversation was mostly geared towards them thinking the Albertan economy is “floating” the rest of Canada. When I brought up the size of Toronto and Montreal and the industries just in those two cities they brushed it off. So I took a different tactic, I started asking them if they cared about manufacturing jobs in Quebec, or fishery jobs in the maritimes or automotive jobs in Ontario. Unsurprisingly they said they didn’t know / care and that those jobs weren’t as numerous / important as O&G.
I ended it with saying, people care about Alberta as much as you care about Ontario, Quebec, BC, the Maritimes which is essentially zilch. I’m not sure if I got through to them but one guy actually said “somehow this seems worse”. I just said “really Alberta doesn’t register in most Canadians radars unless negatively”.
They also genuinely couldn’t understand why folks out east or in BC don’t want pipelines or further O&G investment in their provinces.
That’s why this whole movement is fucked. The people who back this just think they’re keeping Canada afloat.
So what if they are? That’s called “sharing” and Canada is a vast country. The benefits of being Canadian far outweigh the costs to the Province of Alberta.
If Alberta was a country, it would be like Nigeria. I’m pretty sure even the most die hard maple MAGAt would ratjer be in present day Alberta than Nigeria.
Their bigotry is blinding them to the fact that they would actually become a minority group they despise.
Referendums and the specific topic is a bit different. But I think looking at Trump and America should make people very wary of what having 30% of the population as fanatics can do.