In general, I am a bleeding heart, not a liberal by any means, however I am a bleeding heart so that tempers my attitude. I am also a recipient of disability income assistance through the AISH program, so that as well tempers my attitude.
Speaking from pure, selfish interest, I don’t believe that AISH in an Independent Alberta tethered to the U.S. would be all that good and, very likely, worse than what we have now. If we get something like AISH at all in an Independent Alberta. However, this doesn’t just pertain to me and how worse AISH would be, it is indicative of the wider things that would happen to Albertans.
In my opinion, most of our profits would go to the oil companies and most of the money would go to the U.S. and not the people of Alberta. That is not the future I want for the people of Alberta. Nor do I want to be tendered to America. We cannot be an independent nation in this area, I am sorry. So either we pitch our tent with Canada, which isn’t great I would agree, or we bow down to America. The America that put a pedophile rapist into presidential office twice, the second time after he had killed many of his American citizens in the covid pandemic.
For another point, being a part of Canada is not just about getting along with Ottawa. Being a part of Canada also means getting along with helping and being helped by the people in Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, Northwest Territories, and the rest of the people in this beautiful land that Canada stole from the First Nations through conquest and genocide. It is not just Alberta Vs. Ottawa, it is the other people in the other provinces as well.
In these bizarre and I would say bad times, it is extremely important to work together–be friends with our fellows. Individualism has its benefits as a philosophy, however, there is a difference between being an individual, and destroying all your relationships with everyone and heading to be utterly alone without support and help, in all honesty.
A great metaphor for separatism is that video of the penguin walking away from its crowd in the opposite direction towards the mountains. Some people see this as a metaphor for an independent-minded, powerful individual, breaking from the stupid herd and heading off for the distant call of the mountains. But that is looking at the events from their human eyes, from their own particular symbologies and cultural behaviour understandings. If you look at it from the point of view of penguins, it is an uncanny, sickening scene. The penguin is cutting itself off from the other penguins, from the warmth that it needs to survive. Walking towards the mountains is not a group-defying march towards a perceived greatness. To a penguin, mountains are a desolate, unwalkable wastelands, and the penguin is detaching itself from a group of others presumably looking for food and fish. That lone penguin is not a great powerful individual, something is profoundly wrong with the said penguin.
Shall Alberta be that? Shall Alberta be the lone penguin going off into the unlivingable wasteland to a dream that is not even its own dreams to starve and die of cold? What is wrong about being with the other penguins, not always in agreement, yet warm together and actually searching for real prosperity rather than another person’s, another species’, symbol of greatness?
I was born in Canada, and I have no loyalty to Alberta, specifically. Alberta is a richer place, by that I mean culturally, geographically, of virtues, not just financially, by being a part of Canada. It is not some fantasy narrative of carving itself away to be the diesel tyrant of a Mad Max movie. Separating is unfair to the First Nations people as well who still live here, to break apart away from Canada without their say. I do not know their responses to Alberta separating, all that I heard of it was going on a Wexit website. Back when Alberta separatism was called Wexit (that actually should tell you a lot, that it originally once tried Wexit for a name), it had a webpage where it had a sentence saying that Wexit wants to talk to the First Nations about Truth and Reconciliation. That is all that I have heard and, to me, that is piss-poor even for lip-service.
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