Katheryn Speck said she used to be a Canadian nationalist, travelled the world with a maple leaf on her backpack and once lived in Quebec so she could become fluently bilingual.
But on Saturday she was among hundreds of people who rallied at the Alberta Legislature to support separation from Canada, with many in the crowd waving Alberta flags and a few even displaying the U.S. Stars and Stripes.
“I thought it was a beautiful, fantastic country. But now I’m so disappointed. I’m literally crushed that we’ll never be represented in this country and there’s never a chance of changing the government,” Speck said.
Earlier this week, Premier Danielle Smith’s government proposed legislation that would lower the bar for holding a referendum.
Being so cruelly deprived of oil pipelines, maybe they can claim refugee status in the USA.
That’s a trip to El Salvadore with more steps
Fascists get very, very upset when the rest of us, the reasonable people, don’t want fascism. They are disappointed in us when we don’t want to be ruled by their rulers.
They are truly stupid and harmful human beings and they should be loudly ostracized in every community in which they dare to advocate for fascism.
What a bunch of snowflakes.
She can yap about it all she wants, there is no support for separatism outside the rabid Wildrose twats. Albertans may vote heavily PC, but this is a complete non-starter.
Extreme fringes make insane demands that are not popular within Alberta, and the headlines say “Albertans demand X!”
It’s worth worrying about and opposing, sure, but I assure everyone that plenty of that worrying and opposition is going to come from within Alberta from its actually-sane people.
This is heartening to hear.
The one thing I don’t get - the article doesn’t really go into why former Canadian nationalist Katheryn Speck had such a dramatic change of heart. Like, c’mon.
They’re so overdramatic
C’ya!
Literally crushed
Please give me a moment to warm up my steamroller.
The dipshits in the crowd waving the American flags are the very reason why the rest of Canada dumped the Conservatives in favour of Carney. They are their own enemy.
Canadian oil with its higher margins and only 10% tariff would easily survive these tariffs, as the currency FX falls they’d be made even cheaper and gain even more investment, while the areas that manufacture cars and who voted Liberal would be hurt the most. You’d think it would be the other way around.
Though I guess the attempt at nationalizing oil revenue in the 80s and the inability to build pipelines in Canada, so that they didn’t have to sell energy at a deep discount, has long sullied Canada for many Albertans. This may have been a subconscious thought for a long time.
I wish we would nationalize all resource extraction nationwide. Fuck private companies owning this shit. I’m Albertan and love watching my coworkers squirm when I bring up this topic.
Literally every single thing Danielle Smith and the UCP espouse to care about is made worse by Alberta becoming a sovereign nation:
- Taxes
- Coastal access
- Pipelines and transfer taxes
- Tanker access and global markets
- Trade sanctions as a function of per capita CO2 emissions
- Infrastructure access
- Energy markets
- Codified projects and say in what they detail
- Comprehensive national strategy cost averaged down against 40 million instead of 4 million (aka costs 10x).
Think about what happens to Albertan property values on separation - literally no one is moving here, and many will leave. The “Alberta Edge” becomes even less tenable, and quality of life rapidly erodes.
But maybe they can empty everyone’s pensions before they fuck off into the sunset, once the last drop of blood is squeezed out.
They’re really talking about becoming the most taxed 51st state, or an erosion of living standards so sharp they’ll get whiplash. Ghoulish politics.
Pissed that the rest of Canada won’t build pipelines for them. Give them better access to refineries in other provinces. Clearly, leaving the country is the solution.
This is like moving out on your own because your roommates won’t clean up after you, and make you pay your share of the bills.
I’d say it’s more like insisting your parents legally give you their basement as a separate property.
Even the “for them” is such bullshit. It isn’t like they are taxing the oil and gas companies to build a better social welfare state. They have the lowest corporate taxes in Canada, very low income taxes, no sales tax. If they wanted they could have made themselves into fucking Norway but no, better lick Oil and Gas boot and identify as a derrick well.
Me, a Nova Scotian listening to Albertans whine about how underrepresented they are.
Nova Scotia is kinda over represented though.
How?
Average population per riding federally is about 108000 (2021 numbers). For Nova Scotia it’s about 88000. AB, BC, and ON are all around 115000 and Quebec is pretty much the only one right on the average.
Edit: I just did some quick spreadsheet math to see how even it could possibly get with the current total number of seats and making sure the territories each kept their seats: SK -3, NB NL NS PE -2 each, MB -1, NT NU QC YT no change, AB +2, BC +3, ON +7
How do those numbers show NS is over represented?
It is what it is, I’m not complaining, but your MPs represent less people than average. NS isn’t even that disproportionate, PEI and the territories are way worse.
MPs/100,000 people
BC 0.86
AB 0.87
SK 1.24
MB 1.04
ON 0.86
QC 0.92
NB 1.29
NS 1.13
PE 2.59
NL 1.37
YT 2.49
NT 2.43
NU 2.71
Canadian average 0.93If you want to argue whether or not population is actually a good measure of over/under representation that’s fine, but you can’t argue some people’s votes count more or less than others.
That makes more sense. I genuinely didnt understand what you were getting at with your previous numbers. This isnt Reddit. It was a genuine question.
But yes, I would argue that Alberta has more actual influence due to its far greater economy. Oil money brings with it influence. We shouldnt pretend Canada is above that.
Nova Scotia simpy isnt that big a player in day to day decision making at the federal level. There isnt as much at stake.
This all has remarkable parallels from the Anschluss between Germany and Austria in the 20s and 30s. There was support for it in the 20s, but Hitler said Austria should join with Germany and how wonderful it would be. He used agents to influence pro-unification. Some Austrians agreed, and even tried an coup to overthrow the government and join with Germany.
In 1938 Austria was finally bullied into holding a referendum, but it looked like the outcome would be against unification. Hitler marched his armies in to Austria less than 24 hours before the referendum and annexed the country.
It was 5 years after he rose to power in 1933.
Trump will come for us, and it’ll be traitors like this that give him the excuse to do it.
Hitler marched his armies in to Austria less than 24 hours before the referendum and annexed the country.
Based on your account, annexing Austria before the referendum indicates Hitler didn’t need an excuse. Not marching would have saved resources, but clearly he was going to take it regardless. I doubt Trump will need an excuse either - if that’s what he intends to do.
If you could mobilize 1000 people to achieve your goals instead of 10000 people, why would you mobilize the 10000? And if the 1000 doesn’t work, trying only costs you 10% more than not trying and then having to go with the more expensive option. And coming in before the result that would delegitimize your claim is simply pragmatic.
The same as Hitler, Trump won’t need an excuse, but why would he choose the more expensive option? Now we’re talking about Trump, so well thought out plans aren’t the norm, but he does like to save a buck…
“I thought it was a beautiful, fantastic country. But now I’m so disappointed. I’m literally crushed that we’ll never be represented in this country and there’s never a chance of changing the government,” Speck said.
What the fuck. It was only 10 years ago that Conservatives were in power.
“Never been represented” forgets that there were ten years of conservative government before the liberal one.
Are they for real, or are they always this delusional?
But those were Ontario conservatives, not good God fearing Alberta conservatives.
The UCP didn’t win the federal election, so they wanna separate.
The UCP are fascist apologists, so they want to align themselves with Herr Drumpf. Ftfy
Conservatives are always the perpetual victims
Conservatives tend to live in an eternal now- what’s good for me now? This explains why they don’t care about hypocrisy.
