Alberta Votes Not To Proceed With Independence

The headline at Conservative Treehouse is The USA Dodges a Bullet – Alberta Independence Referendum Fails by 3:1 Ratio. I certainly agree that we dodged a bullet, but maybe not for the reasons Sundance thinks. He says,

While we have sincere respect for those who sought to get free of the Canadian madness, it is ultimately a good outcome for the USA. A successful exit would have likely begun a process to merge with the USA as a 51st state. Obviously adding another million+ progressive voices to the USA landscape would have been detrimental.

Actually, a successful vote for secession in the referendum would have been only a vote to put an actual referendum for secession on another ballot. There would have been no direct move toward secession as any outcome of yesterday's election. According to Radio CJME:

EVAN BRAY: If majority vote is to begin the legal process to hold a binding referendum on separation, what needs to happen?

DWIGHT NEWMAN: That would lead towards holding a referendum question on whether to separate. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has spoken of her intent to organize that quickly.

Part of what led to having to have this referendum about a referendum was a court decision from the trial court level saying that there would need to be consultation with Indigenous peoples in Alberta before they held the vote, and that is under appeal.

I don’t know whether Alberta would try to get to an appeal result on that first, or would try to engage in that consultation first. But that would be one element that is part of what they’re calling the legal process.

They’d also be trying to develop questions or a question that fit with the requirements of the federal Clarity Act. If they’re really looking to hold a secession vote, they want to have it recognized by Ottawa.

As I've discussed here, the Clarity Act makes Ottawa the authority on whether any secession referendum is valid and the outcome sufficiently large, so no matter how a province votes, Ottawa can overrule the vote, and even if the vote is ruled valid, that only begins a process of negotiation with the other provinces and the indigenous people. Good luck. This whole thing has been kabuki theatre. If the referendum had passed, it would still be just more kabuki theatre.

But also, although Sundance is concerned at the possibility of a million progressive voters coming into the US, Alberta is actually thought to be the most conservative Canadian province. But I don't think liberal vs conservative maps the same way in Canada vs the US. Recent events have reminded me that in my much younger days, I got to know some Canadians, including a lady friend, her family, and my graduate school dissertation director, very well.

The funny part was that they all lived in the US, clearly enjoyed the higher living standard here, but had no intention of becoming citizens. They were Canadians through and through, utterly convinced of the superiority of Canada. If you ever had the temerity to ask them why they'd been living happy as bugs south of the border lo these many years, you risked a nuclear confrontation. So, even for Albertans, the solution Sundance proposes of simply emigrating is the thing which is not.

Last weekend's explosion, or explosions, or no explosions, and fire (anything could have caused it) at an Alberta military base reminded m again of what I may have forgotten about the Canadians I knew when I was young and foolish: they believe everything the government tells them. Mutatis mutandis, the events at the Alberta base correspond as a national tragedy for Canada to the January 29, 2025 collision of a helicopter with a regional jet at Reagan Airport in Washington for the US.

Let's recall that after the Washington crash, according to Chrome AI mode, "As investigations by the NTSB and the U.S. Army unfolded, public and government outrage shifted from shock to anger over preventable, systemic failures". There was a major, unspoken DEI subtext when it was revealed that the helicopter pilot was a lesbian with connections to the Biden White House who happened to be flying outside the designated route.

In contrast the Canadian reaction to the military base event has quickly settled into the government-approved CBC paradigm:

A dangerous combination of weather conditions was at play Saturday afternoon when a deadly fire engulfed a training exercise at CFB Wainwright in east-central Alberta, killing four soldiers and severely injuring dozens more, weather and wildfire experts say.

. . . "Conditions were extreme," said Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fires at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., who runs the Canada fire weather outlook. "Things were dry. Any fires that started would have spread rapidly and would be intense and that's pretty well what happened."

. . . Flannigan said NASA satellite data indicate a fire was burning near the base by around 2 p.m. The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index shows that fire conditions across the Canadian prairies, including southern and central Alberta, ranged from very high to extreme.

. . . Canadian Armed Forces Maj.-Gen. Wade Rutland, inaugural commander of the revitalized 1st Canadian Division, told reporters Sunday that the fire began as a grassfire and spread rapidly around 4 p.m. as the wind direction changed.

Rutland said range control at the base were aware about a fire for several hours but decided training could carry on "for a certain amount of time."

. . . However, meteorological and wildfire experts say the combination of dry fuels, low humidity and strong winds created conditions favourable to rapid fire spread. Heavy wind gusts of over 80 km/h had also been forecast for the area later that day.

In other words, there's plenty of room for questioning, at minimum, why range control allowed the training to continue in light of the forecast, but this also ignores the problem that nobody knows just what caused the fire. Was it the fires that were already burning and the wind suddenly shifted, or was it something else? What's odd is that there are plenty of conservative Canadian YouTubers, but so far, none of them has seen anything hinky here, when US commentators would be indignant that so many obvious quesions are going unanswered.

The CBC put a couple of retired Canadian generals on as talking heads, and they spoke reassuringly. We don't know what happened, but surely it will be investigated. This will take months. We need to be patient. This is a completely different set of national attitudes, and these people are astonishingly complacent. Do we want, not just a million or so, but all 41 million of them, coming in? We need to think this through.

The problem is that the current trade war is exposing a basic Canadian problem: without the previous favorable tariff treatment Canada had, its economy isn't viable. Justin Trudeau is said to have acknowledged this, and Mark Carney must certainly be aware of it, too -- as, of course, is Trump. Trump has recently reiterated what he's said all along, that Canada basically has no choice but to become the 51st state, although it would likely have to transition as a territory for some period first. But this is not bombast and bravado, it's reality.

That's an economic reality, as well as a geopolitical one. We've got to hope Washingon is seriously gaming this out -- on the other hand, we certainly don't want the 41 million Canadians that are currently there coming in to vote, I guarantee it. Sundance is right, we dodged a bullet with Alberta, but there's a much bigger one still in the works. It's worth remembering that the last two major territorial expansions for the US came from wars, with Mexico and Spain. It might well take a war with Canada to re-form the attitudes north of the border enough to make Canada part of the US, but there would probably be little choice.