Canada’s Secession Crisis Now Has Two Fronts Quebec has elected a party promising an independence referendum. Alberta votes October 19 on its own separation process. Ottawa needs both provinces more than it cares to admit. Lots of people on both sides of the border laughed at the idea of Alberta independence. They’re not laughing now. Last week, on the other side of the country, French-speaking Quebec elected a separatist government. The Parti Québécois won 59 of the province’s 127 seats, making Paul St-Pierre Plamondon premier-designate: he’s publicly committed to an independence referendum as soon as possible in his first term. Two weeks from now, Alberta votes on whether to begin the legal process to leave Canada as well. Alberta is Canada’s cash-cow: without it, the numbers don’t add up. There are rumblings in next-door Saskatchewan as well. One of these might be dismissed. Certainly Quebec’s efforts have failed before. But when both ends of the country are trying to leave, Ottawa has a serious problem. It won’t end soon. Ottawa has spent decades buying peace with Quebec while demanding Alberta pays for that peace. Now Quebec has elected a party that wants out, and Alberta is approaching a vote on whether to open the same door. The federal government must make its case to both at once. It can’t answer either by pretending the other is happy; nor can it pretend that when two of ten provinces — and perhaps more than that — are flirting with leaving, their concerns just don’t matter. Mark Carney would rather talk about Trump. That’s only going to get him so far. Quebec: The Secessionists Win The PQ’s platform commits the new government to an independence vote during its first term. Winning on that promise is a bigger deal in some respects than the Alberta vote later this month. From the premier’s office, St-Pierre Plamondon will use the full powers of government to persuade Quebecers who are not yet ready to leave, making independence a practical proposition rather than an opposition demand. To be clear, the PQ is still short of a majority. But Québec solidaire’s nine seats give the two sovereigntist parties 68 between them, more than the 64 needed. They have yet to conclude a referendum agreement. The two parties have differences, and St-Pierre Plamondon will have to secure their support. But these are comparatively small matters. This is not Quebec’s first rodeo. The province has voted twice before — in 1980 and again in 1995 — on independence, the last time defeating it by an extraordinarily narrow 50.58 to 49.42 percent, just 54,288 votes shy of success. The core issues have always been linguistic and cultural incompatibility dating back to Quebec’s conquest during the French and Indian War. Leading PQ pols frame this as a matter of “survival" in arguing for full Québécois self-determination. These arguments only apply to Alberta in a much more limited way. Yet others hit home hard. Ottawa’s globalist open borders policy has flooded Canada with foreigners: 45 percent of all Canadian residents were born overseas of are the children of people who were. If you’re trying to maintain your culture and language, as Quebec certainly is, that’s a growing and incurable catastrophe, far beyond anything that happened in 1759. This replacement of Canada’s pre-existing population alters the body politic in ways that can’t be undone, and Quebec is all too well aware that it is but 9 million souls in a nation of 41 million. Its fate lies elsewhere, out of its hands. Then there’s the money. The PQ says an independent Quebec could save $13–16 billion annually — nearly $2,000 per person per year — just by eliminating duplication with roughly 230 federal agencies and overlapping bureaucracies in areas like health, environment, and immigration. The PQ says this would be “the biggest exercise in reducing bureaucracy ever seen.” The party plans to repatriate taxes currently sent to Ottawa, adopt its own currency and central bank after a transition period, and operate as a prosperous mid-sized country comparable to Denmark, Finland, or Austria. The plan also includes NATO and NORAD membership), free trade with Canada, and protections for the English-speaking minority’s institutions. This has to be understood in the context of Canada’s history. Ottawa has been bending over backward to placate Quebec for decades. Aside from the obvious official bilingualism, Quebec is guaranteed three of nine Supreme Court justices: again, Canada has ten provinces, so not everyone gets even one. It even gets a veto over certain kinds of constitutional amendments. The province also has significant fiscal autonomy over pensions and taxes separate from the central government. It’s by far the largest recipient of so-called “equalization payments” (for which Alberta mostly pays), and even receives a special Quebec Abatement that reduces federal taxes on individuals in the province. They have that many special deals and still want out? Tells you something about how bad Canada has become. Now imagine you’re Alberta, paying for all this without any of the “special rights.” Yeah, that could be a problem. Not a Nation But an Empire — And Alberta is Its Colony If America is annoyed by Canadian freeloading on the American defense budget and inequities in tariff treatment, Alberta has reason to be livid. Ottawa extracts wealth from the province as though it were a colony, like some North American Belgian Congo. If Mark Carney gets his wish and Canada joins his beloved EU, it will become exactly that. Alberta is not merely another province with ordinary political grievances. It is the productive, energy-rich, conservative West, ruled by an eastern establishment that despises its industries, taxes its wealth, blocks its pipelines, mocks its values, and then demands gratitude for the privilege. For decades, Ottawa has treated Alberta not as a partner in Confederation, but as a cash cow, a colony, and a cultural punching bag. That was bad enough under Trudeau. Under Carney, it has become doctrine. Carney isn’t just another Liberal socialist. He is the embodiment of the worldview Alberta opposes: globalist, post-national, hostile to energy, not just comfortable with supranational bureaucracy but (kind of obviously) angling to get “promoted” to President of the EU. He is instinctively more at home in Davos, Brussels, and London than in Montreal, Calgary, or Grande Prairie. Nor is Europe the end of it. Carney has sought a new strategic partnership with Communist China, announcing expanded cooperation in energy, trade, public safety, multilateralism, and culture. In Beijing, he announced that Canada and China are “forging a new strategic partnership,” and suggested that China has become a better partner than Washington. For Alberta, that’s not a future. It’s a prison sentence. Then he picked a needless trade war with the United States — the customer for 70 percent of Canada’s exports and virtually all of Alberta’s — after admitting that the Trump Administration had offered him the best trade deal ever offered to any country in U.S. history. From the moment in 1905 that Alberta joined the Confederation, it was treated as an afterthought and a cash cow — an imperial possession ruled by its “betters.” Their definition of the “national interest” always meant Laurentian Canada’s interest. And while Alberta built the pipelines, powered the economy, and filled the federal coffers, Ottawa acted like a colonial overlord, “redistributing” wealth and writing laws without the slightest regard for the West’s values or prosperity. Albertans noticed. They noticed when Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program effectively nationalized Western oil and triggered the greatest economic crisis in Alberta’s history. They noticed when Stephen Harper — a rare Western prime minister — was replaced by Justin Trudeau, who made it a moral crusade to shut down Alberta’s oil sands while buying foreign oil from overseas despots. They noticed the carbon taxes, the canceled pipelines, the equalization payments flowing east even as Alberta struggled through recession. They noticed that every federal program and regulation seemed custom-built to crush the very industries on which Alberta depends, all while extracting an ever-higher tax burden to support the welfare state back east. The separation petition didn’t appear out of nowhere. Alberta is a colony, not an equal. They’re being exploited, full stop. And they know it. The Center Cannot Hold For Alberta, last week’s Quebec result brings the question into sharp relief. Why should Quebec’s demands be permanently — for my entire lifetime — negotiable, while Alberta’s are held in contempt? If those previous deals are any indication, how Carney’s government addresses the crisis across just Ontario’s border is likely to harden opinion out west. But even beyond that, who wants to stay on a sinking ship? Leaving an otherwise-united Canada is one thing. Leaving a disintegrating Canada is just self-defense, especially if it wants to pick fights with its biggest customer and cozy up to Communist China. Right now, odds are against Alberta voting to leave. The best result in any poll so far is Angus Reid’s at 35 percent Leave to 60 percent Remain; most other polls are lower. But there are no polls since the Quebec result so far. And there’s the thing. Regardless of this month’s outcome in Alberta, Quebec will go forward. Ottawa will negotiate concessions to try to keep it. Alberta will get the bill. It always does. Imagine the sales pitch after an Alberta defeat: you voted to preserve Canada even though Ottawa gave you nothing, so now you have to accept whatever Ottawa promises Quebec. That will wear less and less well as Carney’s disastrous reign continues aging like fine milk. Getting the separation referendum on the ballot surprised many. The underfunded Leave campaign has struggled to capitalize. But Quebec, plus time, provides all the advertising Alberta’s separatists could ask for. This will all play out over several years. Even a Leave victory this month only begins the process. Not even defeat prevents it from beginning later. Albertans will watch Ottawa find money for Quebec that it couldn’t find for them, grant powers to Quebec that it insists they can’t share, and call this sick joke “national unity.” And even after all that, Quebec is still likely to leave. And that’s the bottom line. Canada is cracking up. Mark Carney is certainly not the man to save it. And everything he does to solve one of these problems makes the other far, far worse. Alberta needs to ditch the sinking ship. Independent, it’s one of the world’s richest countries. It’s also out from under China’s thumb. Dragging things out will buy nothing but more exploitation. All good things must come to an end. Canada was good once. Its people voted for the same sorts of socialists who’ve ruined Europe and want to ruin us. It’s time to Leave.