> You seem to have a few of your own: "Canada only has to patrol its northern border"
the Canadians do not aggressively patrol the southern border because that is where all of the people are -- unlike the north -- and because the reality is that the entire Canadian military is basically a speedbump for if/when the US invaded in earnest.
Americans: X country is only a speed bump for our awesome military.
Also Americans: Have never managed to win a single war on their own while usually fighting underdeveloped tribes whose most advanced equipment is sandals, while at the same time both allies and enemies have a billion jokes on how bad they actually are.
You need a special kind of personality to be this confident while currently losing a war, one that is, well, associated with Americans.
Erm, they can stay in NATO with the other European members just fine. It's the US that is making noises about leaving. NORAD is another matter, but the US and Canada can each run their own radars - the targets are south of the 49th parallel for the most part.
America threatened both Canada and Greenland. Both NATO countries. It is engaged in murders of boatsmen, it started an illegal war that literally harmed countries around the world, it kidnapped a president just so it can blackmail is former right hand and is intentionally causing humanitarian catastrophe in Cuba to blackmail its government.
Open a history book. They do a lot more than patrol the northern border. Canada was involved in WWI, WWII, Korea, Iraq 1 and 2, Fall of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libyan civil war, Iraq civil war, Syrian civil war and ISIS conflict, Yemeni civil war, and a smattering of other conflicts over the past century.
Canada would only have to patrol its southern Alberta border /s
No coincidence that Albertans are sparking up the seceding issue again. When 10% of the population produces nearly 20% of the country's GDP it's a breeding ground for contempt. And it also seems like Albertans are the butt of a lot of jokes from the other Canadians anyway.
I'm sure this US government would love to see an "independent" Alberta.
You're right but you should cite something other than the CBC, since it will just be immediately dismissed by the biased as biased.
Alberta is very important economically. I'm from there. Ontario (I live there) and Quebec and BC are also massively important. And fanning the flames of disinformation and playing grievance politics to make Albertans feel discriminated against has become an extremely serious problem.
Wab Kinew was very eloquent on this topic yesterday.
I would think Ontario is the centre of Canada as it has the most people and the financial centre. Google's AI says 38% of GDP. And the problem Alberta faces is who wants to separate, what do they want to do afterwards and what ground do they actually own (vs. treaties that predate Alberta).
When Alberta at least catches up to Quebec in practicing being independent (runs its own police, collects its own taxes, has its own pension system, maintains foreign services, ... They might decide the extra taxes to pay for such is less "fun". And they need a border to ship stuff through.
North America's biggest oil pipeline -- Enbridge Mainline, which has a capacity of 3.2M barrels per day -- runs east through Sask, Manitoba, ducks down through Michigan, and then splits before coming back into Canada in Ontario in two places (including Line9 ~1km from my house.)
Ontario is one of Alberta's biggest customers.
Then there's westbound ... TMX capacity of 890,000 barrels a day, to BC ports (and then on to China).
Did you watch this video? About half way through he confirms that Alberta has the highest GDP/capita in Canada and is the largest (per capita) tax contributor. Ontario is obviously larger in absolute terms, but it has at least 4x the population.
As with any time you deploy an average... (And I'd expect better on this forum of all places)
Show me the distribution. Show me the median not just the mean. Show me the standard deviation.
Otherwise ... abused.
Yes, we all know oil is an extremely profitable (and environmentally destructive) commodity. That doesn't make the typical Albertans somehow responsible for holding up all of confederation. Just means oil is making some people very rich. For now.
I'm from there and my family is in Alberta. I can tell you now that the oil industry ain't doing jack squat for them.
I think 70-80% of investors are down South, so not much stays here no. And jack shit goes into the heritage fund, just for aimco to throw away (sorry invest).
Texas has entertained the idea of seceding for 150 years. And they would be a G7 country if they did. But they would have to fight a war to do it. USA already went through this once.
The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.
And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Texas would be a G7 nation for about a week if they seceded from the US. Being the logistics hub for a country only works if you’re part of that country.
>The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.
Unlike the individual US states, Alberta never joined Canada. It was not an entity that existed prior to Canada's confederation. Alberta was basically pencil-whipped into existence by carving out a chunk of an already existing territory (the Northwest Territory).
Despite American and Russian destabilization campaigns in Canada, there is no legal mechanism by which Canadian provinces can unilaterally secede.
>And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Recent past polling overwhelmingly showed Albertans in favor of remaining in Canada. This latest frenzy is widely known to be a foreign influence operation.
The implication that this somehow weakens Alberta’s constitutional status is false. Alberta is a full province under the Constitution of Canada with the same constitutional standing as the other provinces.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that Canada and other provinces would be obligated to negotiate terms of separation should a province ever vote to leave in a clear referendum.
Yes, support for leaving is probably at 10-20%. Just having the referendum will build the infrastructure and political machinery for keeping it alive for a long time from the first try. I live here and I'm not a fan of Smith for encouraging it at all.
>The implication that this somehow weakens Alberta’s constitutional status is false.
I implied no such thing. In fact I was careful to use the term "unilaterally" when referring to secession. My understanding is doing it properly would require a full constitutional amendment.
>Albertans can just declare that they don't respect Ottawa's authority, right?
Sure, but just like nobody gives a shit about what Sovereign Citizens do or do not respect, such a declaration would only carry weight if there are enough people that want to mount an armed rebellion. And despite what American influence operations would have you believe, there simply aren't. Most Albertans want to remain in Canada.
The instant Alberta secedes from Canada, the Indigenous would secede all unceded Treaty land from the independent Alberta. Which includes all of the tar sands, the source of Alberta's wealth.
Canada might not be willing to fight, but the Indigenous probably are.
None of this matters in this context. The indiginous people literally do not matter. It's bad, but it's just how it is when white Europeans start fighting over land in North America. We have 3 centuries of evidence.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say if Canada wasn't willing to let Quebec leave, and they've tried with significantly more effort than Alberta ever has, then they're not going to let Alberta go.
We already have a clause in our constitution to allow for orderly withdrawal from Canada. We'd have to resolve the first Nations angle which would probably be more of a hurdle.
That's not the injustice. The problem is that Alberta's political interests are very poorly (if at all) represented federally. This has come to a head a few times in the past with things like cancelled pipeline projects or the NEP[1]. So the issue is that Alberta has 11.52% of the population, contributes 15.25% of the GDP, yet must constantly fight against policies that put it at a disadvantage or run counter to its political leanings.
> Estimates have placed Alberta's losses between $50 billion and $100 billion because of the NEP.[32][33] Alberta still initially enjoyed an economic surplus due to high oil prices, but the surplus was heavily reduced by the NEP, which, in turn, stymied many of Lougheed's policies for economic diversification to reduce Alberta's dependence on the cyclical energy industry, such as the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and also left the province with an infrastructure deficit. In particular, the Alberta Heritage Fund was meant to save as much of the earnings during high oil prices to act as a "rainy day" cushion if oil prices collapsed because of the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry.
Cancelled pipeline projects? Ottawa doesn't cancel pipeline projects. All the problems with pipeline projects are caused by environmental reviews etc, which fall under legislation brought in by Stephen Harper, an Albertan.
It's much the opposite, Canada just spent $34B to ensure the Trans-Mountain pipeline got built. Alberta is the one that gets the resource revenue, but it's Ottawa that has to pay for your pipelines. That's hardly fair.
Alberta has one legitimate grievance, the NEP. Which is a plan that was cancelled by Mulroney over 40 years ago.
The AHSTF performed poorly because successive Albertan provincial governments slashed contributions to it, not because of the ghost of the NEP. It was established in 1976, then contributions were cut in half in 1983, and eliminated entirely in 1987. The NEP was gone by 1985.
What hurt Alberta was every cyclical crash in oil prices, and their steadfast refusal to implement additional revenue streams like a provincial sales tax while spending instead of saving their resource-boom surpluses.
Of course the US gov would love to see an "independent" Alberta... They'd see that as easy oil reserves to put their hands on and a weaker Canada. They're working with traitors in separatist organizations as well as PP and trying to import MAGA into Canada.. Albertan's, due solely to their location, stand on oil riches... They don't have to do much to be the country's highest earners, its literally handed to them on a sticky black oil platter. (Not saying they don't work hard... loads of people work just as hard in other fields that aren't covered in gold though). They have the highest median pay in Canada, pay the least taxes.. Yet still spend their time crying and saying they're keeping Canada afloat... They're not Canada's highest GDP province... And other provinces don't spend their time trying to sell out to the US, even after the US threatening to destroy Canada, economically or otherwise. That's treason my guy. There's not too many ways to say it. Also, Alberta's population isn't even close to having the votes to even considering separating, without getting into all the other issues they're trying to pretend don't matter. The whole thing is a joke.
The Saab is likely cheaper to operate as it's a smaller plane and Canada only has to patrol its northern border.