Alberta III
If they threaten to start a fire, fill a supersoaker with kerosene.
If you’re here, I assume you have read the first and second posts in the series. The argument is that Canada should force an Alberta referendum as soon as possible, while the adversaries are still mobilizing and coordinating. During the campaign, the federal government’s goal is to maximize the fear and uncertainty associated with secession. Use the time difference to drive the news coverage every day.
By the time the secesh are finished their morning leak and starting the coffee machine, they should have 50 texts and voicemails from media asking difficult logistical questions on whatever the issue of the day is.
The overall theme is that if Alberta wants independence, Canada will immediately give it to them, good and hard.
Everyone in Alberta when the referendum writ dropped is an Albertan and not a Canadian unless there’s a negotiated settlement otherwise. The federal government will immediately stop all services in Alberta (except to Indigenous peoples), and will proactively move federal assets and workers out of Alberta before the referendum results.
Will all of this survive a Supreme Court challenge? Probably not. But why not get ahead of that game and pass legislation saying the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over negotiated deals with secessionists, it’s purely a political question, and there’s no standing in Canadian courts for independent former provinces.
This isn’t a couple well-developed ideas. It’s a list of things that will scare the normal people and waverers into showing up and voting for the maple leaf. Keep some of them in reserve if the secessionists start winning the headlines on a given day.
Consider your speakers too. If Scott Moe wants to talk about how great it will be for his constituents if Albertan farmers are banned from loading their crops onto Canadian rails, let him. A BQ or PQ politician wants to float appointing Steven Guilbeault as CEO of TMX with a mandate to shut it down? Fill your boots. NDP leader wants to demand job protection for federal workers so long as they move out of indy Alberta? Sure thing.
Don’t make the Brexit mistake and have suited technocrats issuing dry papers and measured warnings explaining the five- and ten-year consequences. Make the consequences as immediate and visible as you can.
Federal Assets and Workers
Canada is making a list of all payments and monetary flows to people resident in AB.* If AB votes to secede, Canada will cease these payments immediately, and Alberta can take them over during negotiations if it wishes.
Order all Canadian Armed Forces members in Alberta to prepare everything from fighter planes to pillowcases for orderly removal. Use emergency powers to beg, borrow or steal any place to rebase. Bonus points it those rebasing locations are in southeast BC or southwest Saskatchewan. Extra bonus points if they’re in Banff or Waterton Lakes. Let the Armed forces vote early, they’re going to be packing and moving out extremely visibly the entire week before the vote.
Beginning of the campaign, tender contracts to deconstruct and move any buildings or fixtures from the bases. And jackhammer any concrete pads. Leave nothing useful behind.
This would create complications. There’s a lot of Albertans in the forces. But this is about winning the campaign, not the day after.
It’s probably too obvious to even make this point, but it is unwise to leave a bunch of guns, ammo and Canadian uniforms around a seceding province.
Passports: Put out a notice to all other countries that if Alberta secedes, every passport bearing a maple leaf and an Albertan address is immediately void. Send a letter to every passport holder in Alberta reminding them that the passport is property of Canada, and if Alberta secedes they must immediately return the passport the day after the vote. Enclose an envelope for them to do so, but do not prepay postage. Tell them that as independent Albertans they will have to arrange postage from whatever postal system Alberta sets up.
Canada Post: Like the military, start visibly moving assets out and decommissioning fixtures for transport out of province. The goal here is that in the last week or two before the referendum, there are no Canadian stamps left in Alberta and the only remaining staff are entirely dedicated to delivering letters and packages sent in from outside the province.
Checkpoints: Start spinning up checkpoints prior to the vote. Have people checking papers at every road exist west, north and south (and the major ones east, but that’s a heavier lift). They’re checking IDs. Give these staff a couple simple talking points:
This might be an international border in a couple weeks. We’ve gotta start setting up border controls. Word is probably a year before there’s any deal allowing visas or entry permissions to Canada.
From what they’ve heard, their job is going to be stopping Albertan refugees, letting humanitarian aid in, and making sure truck traffic gets through without interference.
We’re training on how to check for an Alberta address and turning away. Word is the heavy equipment will start arriving right after the vote.
Every federal civil servant in Alberta gets notice that they will need to make arrangements to be physically located in Canada after the vote. The federal government will allow temporary remote work from anywhere in Canada for those eligible, but those with in-person jobs will be reassigned.
If they remain in Alberta after a secession vote, this will be deemed constructive resignation effective immediately.
Yes, even the mounties.
If you want to get really nasty, an independence vote immediately terminates their employment because they are no longer Canadian. If they would consider remaining Canadian and serving as a border guard, here’s the application portal.
Money
Rail is a federally regulated industry, located on land that was carved from the territory before Alberta was a province. Ottawa needs to declare loudly and immediately that there is no way Canada will cede an inch of land that was Canada before Alberta existed. This is a precondition Alberta must recognize before any negotiations commence. The rails stay in Canada, as they always have been.
Yes, there are provincial rails, we’re talking about the pre-1905 mainlines.
Here’s the payoff for the boring bits in my previous posts about Cabinet having the power to set rail prices and fees in secessionist former territories. Guess what Alberta farmers? We’re just going to prohibit cargo loading in Alberta until all negotiations are concluded. Will probably take a couple years. Figure your own exports out until then.
Pipelines too. TMX is federally owned. When the referendum writ drops, call all the oilfied CEOs into a room. Tell them if Alberta secedes, no cargoes are going west until negotiations are concluded. Watch how quickly they learn the Canadian unity songbook, and listen how loudly they sing.
If the patch gets ornery during the referendum, have the Globe & Mail report a rumour that Steven Guilbeault is talking with Carney about taking over as TMX CEO if Alberta votes to leave.
Federal crop insurance or reinsurance? Go fuck yourself.
Tell CFIA that if Alberta secedes, no food exports will be inspected or permitted to enter or transship through Canada until negotiations are complete.
Any permissions WestJet has allowing them to fly between or to Canadian airports are immediately void until negotiations are complete. Direct airport authorities to start auctioning those berths, suspend cabotage regulations for these vacant routes only.
If they’re up for it, have David Eby and Scott Moe start talking about how much they wish Alberta stays in the country. But if it does secede, Vancouver, Abbotsford, Prince George, Regina and Saskatoon are open for business. Maybe the legislatures in each province put together relocation legislation to sweeten the pot.
Ottawa can send some money west to smooth these relocations, generous first-year tax exemptions and breaks, a favourable depreciation schedule for any company scrambling to relocate.
You could even soften the force majeure dirty bomb in my last posts. BC and SK pass laws saying they’ll respect Alberta-origin force majeure clauses impugned by the federal legislation, but only if that party is incorporated or headquartered in their province. The feds could concede this after the referendum.
And the other way, have some Quebec MP quoted in a sneering tone saying that they’re looking at tax breaks for Canadian agri-business who want to buy land on the cheap once Albertan farmers and ranchers go broke — but only if the value-added parts of the supply chain happen in Canada. All that whining about Central Canada treating Alberta like a colony? Bonne idée.
And the Ethnic Vote
Remember how we froze the residents list? Anyone resident in Alberta on the day the referendum was called will be an Albertan (and not a Canadian) in the event of secession. There are a lot of people who chose Alberta as their home within Canada, not Alberta in and of itself.
Messy things happen when a country splits. Everything is going to be up for negotiations, including whether any Albertans get to keep their Canadian citizenship. There are plenty of MPs fluent in Chinese, Tagalog, Punjabi, and other common languages among immigrants who have settled in Alberta. They need to be doing constant visits to every temple, church, mosque, community centre, banquet and non-English media. They need to be on the WhatsApp groups and social media. The talking points are simple. The government lawyers are saying:
There’s no guarantee any Albertan keeps Canadian citizenship if the province leaves. Canada’s position will be that they are Albertan now, not Canadian.
Anyone resident in Alberta won’t be eligible to move to Canada after secession, unless they meet new requirements. The government is already swamped with people trying, so the points system is going to be even stricter than the one for getting into Canada.
If people had claims or applications in process based on their own or a relatives’ residency in Alberta, Canada is going to void that category entirely. It might transfer the in-process applications to the government in Edmonton, depending on negotiations and privacy law.
If you are living overseas and hold a Canadian citizenship or permanent residency with a last Canadian address in Alberta, you’ll be an Albertan after secession, not a Canadian.
Break Their Symbols
Did the list above seem weirdly focused on the symbolic representations of Alberta as the oil patch and farm country? Ignorant of the developed and diversifying consumer service economy in the province? That was intentional. Alberta secessionists will use those symbols to argue for independence. Defending Confederation requires breaking confidence that those symbols will endure.
Graphic design is not my passion, but I’d bet the secessionist media converges on the iconic provincial silhouette. But that’s not actually what independent Alberta will look like. You need two images: One showing a proudly defined Alberta emphasized within Canada for the pro-remain message; and another showing the malformed rump Alberta where Canada retains its federal lands.
Black interior lines are the pre-1905 rail grants. Dark green is Banff and Waterton Lakes. All these were federal land before Alberta became a province, and will remain so if it leaves. The light green are the post-provincehood national parks, we can negotiate those after secession.
Have your graphics people pretty it up, but you need clear visual language that independent Alberta will look weird, and wrong, and be split into five separate mini-states. Give the railroads some money to visibly start measurements and planning for major fences that will close out the existing level road crossings of federal rails. If that screws up traffic in Calgary and Edmonton? Maybe you should vote to stay in Canada.
If we do all this, I think we can get the leave vote to single digits. But we won’t. The government in Ottawa is going to waste the nationalist wave we’ll get from the Olympics, and let the secessionists and their allies plan and organize. We’ll face a suspiciously well-funded movement that gets a heavy thumb on the social media scale. Carney will be defending this when the economy is worse and Albertans are getting increasingly impatient about the lack of progress on pipelines and other major projects.
When it does all come down much closer than we hoped, please remember there was another option, and it looks like people ducked it out of cowardice, and because they were considering a spring election to benefit the Liberal Party, instead of one to benefit Canada.
Footnote:
*Throughout this series I’ve refrained from commenting much on Indigenous issues. There’s at least one live lawsuit about this. Fundamentally, it’s not really my place to speak for them, in the event of an independent Alberta, they’ll hopefully get to choose their own courses. Any federal relationship or payments to Indigenous peoples in Alberta should continue regardless of the measures outlined here.
Safer to spray fires with less volatile diesel oil, the flame won't race up the stream back to you as fast. /s
Making it clear and certain that all the advantages of being in Canada disappear is sensible though. Have your cake and eat it too is what separatists always promise and gullible people will believe it without loud clear warnings.