Alberta Separatists Will Continue to Cry Out in the Wilderness

The first thing that was obvious in the coverage, is that Alberta does not know how to create drama or excitement, even as it tries to break up a country that is already being besieged by its only neighbour.

I am old enough to remember the battles between Rene Lévesque and Pierre Trudeau in the 1970’s. I remember the wry smile of Lévesque after losing the referendum in 1980, as he said “a la prochaine”, and how a one-legged Lucien Bouchard, still recovering from flesh eating disease, ignited a sleepy referendum campaign in 1995, to almost bring the vote home for independence.

Now, 32 years later, I watched as CBC reporters worked tirelessly to fill the time as the vote dragged on through the evening.

This was followed by a profile of Hinton, a town of 10,000 people, with drone shots of a few factories and some farmers fields interspersed with a reporter’s anecdote about how, after a heated debate between pro Canada and Alberta separatist residents, both sides ended up going to Tim Horton's together to share some donuts.

Everything about this Alberta referendum was muddled.

The referendum was not a referendum, but only a vote on whether to hold a referendum, and that was only one of the questions on the ballot. There are many groups on the yes side, each of them with different leaders and different goals. Ultimately, we don’t know exactly what the yes side stands for, except disrupting the status quo relationship with the rest of the country,

The No side was led by Premier Danielle Smith, whose own party is mostly made up of people on the yes side, making her an unreliable advocate for anything but her own political survival.

Out of all this, however, there was a vote, and in spite of some screaming headlines to the contrary, the result is only a mixed win for federalist forces.

It is a win because the Alberta independence forces failed to get 25% support in the vote, which was their minimum target. They came close, however, at 24%.

This was hardly an ideal scenario for those forces however.

It was a vote taken in the shadow of the Trump menace, at a unique time in Alberta politics, when the most popular politician in the province is the Prime Minister of Canada, and the yes forces do not even have a political party to call their own.

It is not hard to imagine that, if there were a ‘Parti Alberta’ leading the Yes forces, and a Trudeau leading the federalist forces (any Trudeau would do) that the 24% would have been over 40% at least.

If the yes vote had come in under 20%, it would have been a true setback for the Alberta independence movement, but that is not what happened

For 50 years, we have known that 30% of Quebeckers are dyed in the wool Independentistes, and now we know that 25% of Albertans are true Independencers.

That is what changed last night, we have a base line in Alberta. It does not matter what the question was, what the circumstances were, a quarter of Albertans want to leave Canada.

That is our new reality.

Canada is not unique. Lots of countries have unity issues, and carry on nonetheless, which is what the Canadian government and all the rest of us will certainly do.

Out of this bumbling process, Alberta has now officially become the second thorn in the side of the Canadian confederation.

Today, somewhere, out in the Alberta political wilderness, there is a humourless, defiant voice, calling out, “Until the Next Time!”