[Thanos]

Oh, yeah, BTW thanks to the SJW morons on the Toronto city council defanging their own police department, with a massive increase in violent crime almost immediately resulting afterwards, the federal Liberals are now making more and more loud noises about cracking down on handguns and "assault" rifles all across the country. So expect a repeat of the gun banning horseshit that happened under Chretien. And don't think for a second that the innocent verdict for Gerald Stanley in Saskatchewan won't be used as an excuse for the feds to go even more draconian than before with their anti-gun bullshit.

Gee, how well will that be received out West again?

[JaredMilne]

I suppose I could mention how Alberta could be carved up under the Clarity Act the way people said Quebec should be in the 1990s, the fact that our economy would fall into the shitter because we'd have to print our own currency and spend years wrangling with the feds over our share of the national debt, the transfer of federal assets in Alberta and more, the fact that we would have even less chance of getting any pipelines built in dealing with a foreign country and the ROC could slap tariffs on us, and in short that our hand would be far weaker than this Solomon guy claims...

...but I want to ask everybody reading this if they recall Quebec and the calls for it to use a 'knife at the throat' strategy in the 1990s.

Remember how everybody wanted to play hardball with Quebec over that? Remember how it led to the claims that if Canada is divisible, so is Quebec?

Because that's what Solomon is advocating. I can't fathom how he thinks this would lead to us building a more productive relationship with the ROC. Everything he talks about in terms of power and threats could easily be reversed and turned against us. And with an attitude like this, so reminiscent of Quebec separatism, what makes you think the ROC wouldn't take the same hard line against us that Albertans were cheerleading against Quebec 20 years ago?

Yeah, I'm pissed. I'm pissed at leftists who treat us like Captain Planet villains while they cheer for places like Iran and Venezuela, the latter of which paid for its big social revolution with oil. I'm pissed when I hear people on the left call for increased social spending on all sorts of things-many of which I agree with-but seem intent on killing so many of the high-income jobs that come with resource development that actually help pay for all these fancy things they want. I'm pissed at people like Mike Hudema and Hanoi Jane demonizing fossil fuels when they use them all the time and when those same fossil fuels are necessary for heating and transportation to outlying areas of the country.

But I'm also pissed at the fact that we as Albertans have pissed away so many oil booms, thinking that the good times would last forever. I'm pissed that we let ourselves become so reliant on such a volatile resource. And I'm pissed at the likes of Trump and the OPEC cartel artificially keeping the price down.

And I know, in my heart of hearts, that a lot of the Alberta separatists are just as naive as some of their Quebec counterparts when they claim that separation will be like the 'magic wand' that somehow makes everything better. It'll be far more likely to leave a lot of bitter feelings and anger on both sides, ones that will poison the relationship for the foreseeable future...and won't necessarily improve our own self-images and pride either. And if the fossil fuel-hating leftists think separation would benefit them that way, they're just as naive as the separatists themselves.

#micdrop

[GreenTiger]

How many times have a heard folks in that part of Canada say that the border should run from north to south not east to west.

[FieryVulpine]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

Because that's what Solomon is advocating. I can't fathom how he thinks this would lead to us building a more productive relationship with the ROC.

I get the feeling that there is simply no productive relationship to be had.

[Thanos]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

But I'm also pissed at the fact that we as Albertans have pissed away so many oil booms, thinking that the good times would last forever. I'm pissed that we let ourselves become so reliant on such a volatile resource. And I'm pissed at the likes of Trump and the OPEC cartel artificially keeping the price down.

Less "pissed away" than stolen by Ottawa. That $220 billion Albertans put into transfer payments would have built one hell of a gold-plated society at home, and immediately put us in the ranks of the richest countries on Earth, if it had remained here over the last decade instead of being used for the old Liberal/Tory two-step at the federal level. For all the flak they get in hindsight it's kind of amazing that the Alberta government was actually able to build and maintain a fully modern society in this province at all considering how much of our money has been blatantly stolen from us by central Canada. If you take it all the way back to the Lougheed years, and the catastrophe of "transfer payments" being included in Trudeau Sr's reprehensible constitution, how much money has been taken from us from then thru to today? Three-quarters of a trillion dollars by now maybe, from a province with maybe only one-tenth of the national population living here? And all we still get from the "consensus" is a backhand across the face whenever we ask that some of our issues be taken seriously by them? Classy, Canada, just classy.

When seriously considered Alberta gains zero economic advantage from being a member province of Canada. If Ottawa keeps up with the contempt and disconcern, and then adds on even more aggravating factors like a new round of wildly over-the-top gun control aimed directly at people who are not responsible at all for violent gun crime in this country, then all that will happen is the emotional ties that keep Alberta (and probably Saskatchewan too) as part of Canada will wither away even quicker than they have over the last couple of years. From all appearances Trudeau looks like he's more than willing to push the string than holds this country together to the fraying point as much as his father and Jean Chretien both did too.

All in all, it's really just a warning for the central Canadian elite to take this problem seriously. If they don't and the worst thing happens then they've got no one to blame but themselves for a possibility maybe becoming an inevitability.

FieryVulpine FieryVulpine:

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

Because that's what Solomon is advocating. I can't fathom how he thinks this would lead to us building a more productive relationship with the ROC.

I get the feeling that there is simply no productive relationship to be had.

There isn't. That ship sailed about thirty-plus years ago with the first rape from the National Energy Program. No Albertan should logically expect to see the streets of downtown Edmonton or Calgary flooded with other Canadians waving giant maple leaf flags at us and begging us to stay the same way happened during the last Quebec referendum in 1995. If anything all Alberta would get would be a "meh, whatever, good riddance to you".

[BRAH]

Robair Robair:

Need to get BC on board.

SK would probably come along too.

AB, BC, SK would be a Western alliance and the end of Eastern Canada especially Quebec.

[JaredMilne]

Thanos Thanos:

Less "pissed away" than stolen by Ottawa. That $220 billion Albertans put into transfer payments would have built one hell of a gold-plated society at home, and immediately put us in the ranks of the richest countries on Earth, if it had remained here over the last decade instead of being used for the old Liberal/Tory two-step at the federal level. For all the flak they get in hindsight it's kind of amazing that the Alberta government was actually able to build and maintain a fully modern society in this province at all considering how much of our money has been blatantly stolen from us by central Canada. If you take it all the way back to the Lougheed years, and the catastrophe of "transfer payments" being included in Trudeau Sr's reprehensible constitution, how much money has been taken from us from then thru to today? Three-quarters of a trillion dollars by now maybe, from a province with maybe only one-tenth of the national population living here? And all we still get from the "consensus" is a backhand across the face whenever we ask that some of our issues be taken seriously by them? Classy, Canada, just classy.

I hate the assholes who think we all have golden cowboy hats too (and I've actually seen that expression used) but in terms of equalization IIRC we were one of the early beneficiaries, even getting support from Quebec of all places, before our oil industry really took off. Not to mention that modern society came from a combination of our own provincial resource dollars and taxes and money the feds also spent here-which I'm not sure is counted in the equalization formula.

And it's not entirely clear how the money is stolen when it's in federal taxes that never went into our provincial coffers in the first place. It's because we've generated a lot of high-income jobs...which can offer a nice rebuttal to the likes of Mike Hudema when they call for government support of green tech jobs and environmental protections, since they don't seem to take into account how we'll pay for it, much less all the money that the oil companies spend in other sectors like transportation and trucking.

Does equalization need an overhaul? You're damn right...but I'm less inclined to kill it when we could have made smarter choices with saving more of our oil money instead of paying for short-term things while keeping taxes low (and Ralph Klein all but admitted he didn't have any idea what do to do with the royalties once he paid off the debt) and we've benefited from equalization in the past too. And if pipelines like Energy East are getting scuttled because the economics went south on it and Trump and his buddies in the Middle East are keeping prices low, it's not like Ottawa is our only source of grief.

Hell, Roger Gibbins, the guy who used to run the Canada West Foundation think tank, noted 15 years ago when Ralph was still running the show that we were the highest-spending province in the whole country!

Thanos Thanos:

When seriously considered Alberta gains zero economic advantage from being a member province of Canada. If Ottawa keeps up with the contempt and disconcern, and then adds on even more aggravating factors like a new round of wildly over-the-top gun control aimed directly at people who are not responsible at all for violent gun crime in this country, then all that will happen is the emotional ties that keep Alberta (and probably Saskatchewan too) as part of Canada will wither away even quicker than they have over the last couple of years. From all appearances Trudeau looks like he's more than willing to push the string than holds this country together to the fraying point as much as his father and Jean Chretien both did too.

All in all, it's really just a warning for the central Canadian elite to take this problem seriously. If they don't and the worst thing happens then they've got no one to blame but themselves for a possibility maybe becoming an inevitability.

Zero economic advantage aside from a stable currency, heavy investments in infrastructure, federal and other-provincial support for the oilsands both historical and current, legal access to land via the Indigenous Treaties, agricultural subsidies, a military to defend our borders, cross-Canada infrastructure, and so forth.

Pretty penny-ante stuff, I admit, but they are benefits.

[JaredMilne]

BRAH BRAH:

Robair Robair:

Need to get BC on board.

SK would probably come along too.

AB, BC, SK would be a Western alliance and the end of Eastern Canada especially Quebec.

That's assuming B.C. would actually be willing to join, which is unlikely given the anger here against pipeline activists in B.C. and B.C. leftists themselves demonizing us as bigoted rednecks to build political capital for themselves.

[Thanos]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

Zero economic advantage aside from a stable currency, heavy investments in infrastructure, federal and other-provincial support for the oilsands both historical and current, legal access to land via the Indigenous Treaties, agricultural subsidies, a military to defend our borders, cross-Canada infrastructure, and so forth.

Pretty penny-ante stuff, I admit, but they are benefits.

All of which we could have more than paid for ourselves, to a level that would rival the aesthetic infrastructure beauty of what you can see in European, Japanese, or east Asian city-building, if we were an independent state that kept all that money from the last forty years for ourselves. And, as far as the currency goes, just hook on to the US dollar and not be subject to the crests and falls from being attached to an inferior currency like the Canadian dollar that is far too dependent on factors outside of our control for a long-term stability of it's own. And that in turn would create it's own mental and emotional benefit from not being accused of destroying the rest of the country's economy with that anti-Alberta "Dutch disease" horseshit that asshole Tom Mulcair was blatantly blaming us for.

Also think of one thing too - being able to directly negotiate with the United States over a much smaller border without any interference or direct sabotage being conducted by an Ottawa that clearly doesn't give a damn about us in the slightest. If that isn't the tastiest bit of icing on the cake then I don't know what is.

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

That's assuming B.C. would actually be willing to join, which is unlikely given the anger here against pipeline activists in B.C. and B.C. leftists themselves demonizing us as bigoted rednecks to build political capital for themselves.

No. No BC involvement, period. That cluster of hippies and other assorted assholes in Vancouver and Victoria are too far gone into la-la-land mental disorder to ever be trusted on anything. I apologize to the people in the interior and the north of BC who are trapped with no political influence thanks to the overwhelming power of the Vancouver region. Most of them are on side with the pipelines and other national projects that the malicious NDP/Green alliance is openly hostile towards. If the outside-Vancouver BC'ers wanted to join a separate Western Canadian independent state they'd have to o their own internal separation first leave the lower mainland and Vancouver Island out of it. I'd far rather have Manitoba join up because those people there, from Churchill down to their own farm & oil belt in the southern part of the province, are more than sick and tired of the shaft they get too from the central Canadian consensus that also makes them second-class citizens in terms of political power and control of their own decisions.

[Strutz]

Good to know.

[Thanos]

Hey, I'm on your side but there's no peace to be had with the likes of the BC NDP or Greens. When I was doing field jobs usually about a third of the workers were BC'ers and they were all awesome. That government you have now though, that's only interested in representing the bizarre-world holistic fantasies of their hipster coastal elite voters? They were the ones to throw the first punch too, not Alberta. I'll be pissed of at Notley if she even said a single polite word to Horgan at the first minister's meeting this weekend. Seriously, if that anti-Alberta putz Kennedy Stewart came to Calgary for any reason I'd try to chuck a rock at his fucking head.

[JaredMilne]

Thanos Thanos:

All of which we could have more than paid for ourselves, to a level that would rival the aesthetic infrastructure beauty of what you can see in European, Japanese, or east Asian city-building, if we were an independent state that kept all that money from the last forty years for ourselves. And, as far as the currency goes, just hook on to the US dollar and not be subject to the crests and falls from being attached to an inferior currency like the Canadian dollar that is far too dependent on factors outside of our control for a long-term stability of it's own. And that in turn would create it's own mental and emotional benefit from not being accused of destroying the rest of the country's economy with that anti-Alberta "Dutch disease" horseshit that asshole Tom Mulcair was blatantly blaming us for.

Also think of one thing too - being able to directly negotiate with the United States over a much smaller border without any interference or direct sabotage being conducted by an Ottawa that clearly doesn't give a damn about us in the slightest. If that isn't the tastiest bit of icing on the cake then I don't know what is.

While I suppose it's possible, we'd be in a far stronger position to create those things if Ralph Klein and his successors hadn't pissed away Peter Lougheed's legacy by spending our oil money on short-term expenses, drawing down the Heritage Fund to keep from running a deficit and not actually building the Heritage Fund up again, and if we actually had a more diverse economy that wasn't so vulnerable to the staples trap. Hell, even my conservative buddy Brent Rathgeber criticized that-and he was a true blue Tory until he got fed up with Harper's micromanagement.

And if more of our customers are implementing carbon pricing or moving away from oil and gas, what does that mean for our long-term prospects? Of course there's probably always going to be a demand for oil and gas (and if Venezuela can cash in on it, why can't we?) but how will it be the feds' fault if fewer and fewer people actually want our products? Won't that just be the market giving us a good stiff reaming?

And I really can't see the U.S. being any nicer to us than the ROC would be. If anything, that would be a short run towards becoming the 51st state-and from what I've seen the likes of everyone from Ernest Manning to Jason Kenney say and do, our conservatives won't necessarily be as chummy with their American counterparts as they might expect.

[BRAH]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

BRAH BRAH:

Robair Robair:

Need to get BC on board.

SK would probably come along too.

AB, BC, SK would be a Western alliance and the end of Eastern Canada especially Quebec.

That's assuming B.C. would actually be willing to join, which is unlikely given the anger here against pipeline activists in B.C. and B.C. leftists themselves demonizing us as bigoted rednecks to build political capital for themselves.

The pipeline activists don't speak for B.C. no matter how much the Bias Canadian Fake News Media likes to spin they do so the chances of B.C. joining Alberta could be good.

[Thanos]

That doesn't matter though because the insane anti-Alberta BC leftists have a death-grip on the BC provincial government right now. And if Vancouver wasn't ground-zero for this stupidity then how the hell did a piece of trash like Kennedy Stewart just get elected as mayor? And five out of ten on the Vancouver city council can charitably be described as hard-core left too.

[Coach85]

Thanos Thanos:

When seriously considered Alberta gains zero economic advantage from being a member province of Canada.

You literally have no idea what you're talking about. I literally laughed out loud reading that sentence.

Perhaps just stick to the 'woe is me' mantra...that's definitely your strong suit.