[jgon]

Respectfully, as an Albertan who still lives in Alberta, and who wants to remain a part of Canada I don't think that the persecution complex is 100% bullshit, and dismissals of it as such by eastern Canada only serve to reinforce it.

Re: equalization, of course the massive economy of Ontario makes a big part of GDP, but the point of Alberta's importance is that its economy allows it to make an outsized impact compared to its population. This surplus GDP/capita makes a huge difference in contributions to the equalization program wherein a province with 1/4 the population of Ontario can make the same size of contribution to the program. If you remove Alberta from the pool it becomes much much harder to retain the same size of payments to other provinces on the back of Ontario among others.

Second, Alberta has been one of the most under-represented province in the federal government, and that trend has gone on for decades. Lured by Alberta's economy people keep moving here and our ridings keep getting more and more people while we retain the same number of seats. This has been slowly changing as the government is basically forced to allocate more seats to Alberta and now between Ontario and BC, Alberta is no longer the most disadvantaged, but it still isn't a great situation.

Finally, there's all the one off issues that add up over time. As an example in the mid 2010s oil was in the gutters and Alberta was facing real economic issues. In 2015, there were roughly 35,000 job losses, and in 2016 there were another 25,000 direct job losses in the oil and gas sector. In 2018 when GM announced they were going to close their oshawa plant and put 3000 people out of work the federal government held an emergency midnight meeting to discuss how to help the workers. Those types of optics don't go unnoticed, that Alberta could lose roughly 100k jobs over 2014-2017 and that 3k jobs in Ontario gets a midnight cabinet meeting. Alberta still paid into equalization as a "have" province during that time, despite huge deficits as the provincial government tried to backstop revenue losses.

All of which is to say that the separation crowd is a bunch of bad actors and the flames of western alienation are certainly being fanned by people with ill intentions, but the core of that alienation stems from a real place and from real actions both current and historical, and glibly dismissing it is just not something I can agree with.

[cf100clunk]

> Alberta has been one of the most under-represented province in the federal government

Each time Albertans (I'm a 4th generation of that group) complain about lack of representation within federalism, I remind them of the many golden opportunities that came and went with their popularly elected and re-elected federal parties in power for long stretches of time, with Harper even representing an Alberta riding, yet here we are with complaints that rehash the same old, same old stuff. Nothing about federalism is ever good enough for them even after all those years of pro-AB feds in power.

[jgon]

You're misunderstand my point here. Alberta, until the most recent seat redistribution, had the largest federal ridings by population. Now they're only the 3rd largest. That means that the average Albertan's vote was worth far less than the average Quebecer's, and faaaar less than the average maritimer's vote. It gives disproportionate power above and beyond just representation due to population. Its not about which party they vote or don't vote for, although we could dig into that too, as its not nearly as cut and dried at the reductionist take would make it seem.

[cf100clunk]

If I remember correctly, the guidance from the Supreme Court on riding sizes is plus/minus 15% difference from average, with special cases of low population density over large geographic areas allowing as much as plus/minus 40% from average.

Electoral boundaries commissions in Canada have been obligated to take input from all who submit complaints about riding sizes. That's different than those commissions being able to actually achieve something asymptotic to ''parity'', of course, but the net effect is that all those golden opportunities in long term AB-friendly power were missed, as I say.

[FatherOfCurses]

Confederation isn't a business transaction where everything needs to zero out every year.

Alberta's strong financial position today is thanks to all the work the rest of the country (private or public) put into building the infrastructure and economy - prospecting, railways, roads, military bases, etc.

Albertans may pay more taxes to the federal government than they get back in services but thanks to oil they probably have a positive trade balance with the rest of the country.

[cmrdporcupine]

There is also zero guarantee that in 50 years Alberta won't be in a worse revenue situation than its neighbours and needing equalization. In fact it's likely.

Not just because there's the off chance that human civilization decides burning hydrocarbons is a really bad idea. But because Alberta is profoundly vulnerable to drought and water shortage due to deglaciation as a result of climate change.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Relevant:

https://thewalrus.ca/alberta-separatism-fuelled-by-russian-n...

[jgon]

I mean one of the opening paragraphs of that article is as follows:

"This is not because Alberta’s grievances are illegitimate. They are not. Albertans have real and long-standing concerns about energy policy, federal–provincial relations, and economic fairness within Confederation. Those concerns deserve to be debated openly and democratically by Canadians, among themselves, on their own terms. The danger is who has joined the debate and why."

This is my point. The separation stuff is clearly completely illegitimate, but the underlying causes of the grievances, several of which I've pointed out in my post above, are entirely real and legitimate, and just blowing it off as "meh, its just russian disinformation" etc, etc, is just a really lame way of not dealing with the issues at hand.

[cmrdporcupine]

Appreciate the response and respectful tone, but almost none of this conversation makes sense to me because it's based on a strange assumption that Albertans should and must identify their own interests directly with the interests of the oil industry.

I do see that people often do that. I also think it's kind of a messed up perspective.

It's a destructive industry doing just as much harm (actually more, see forest fires, etc) to Albertans as it is doing to the rest of the world. Also as an Albertan who grew up watching his father cycle in and out of brutal unemployment on the cadence of erratic oil prices -- it's kind of a shitty patron to have, frankly.

There are other industries in Alberta. And new ones developing. But I just watched Smith's government sabotage renewables, so...

You're also seemingly making the giant assumption that people in Ontario somehow do the same around car manufacturers or something, or that people in "eastern Canada" have this monolithic view generally about either the west or whatever.

Ontario is actually often a giant sea of blue seats with red and orange in urban centres. It's actually a strong core of conservative support, historically.

But when conservatives take out of mainstream positions on cultural issues -- such as, I dunno, blockading the streets of the capital city, or effectively denying climate change -- they suffer at the ballot boxes even from people who often vote conservative.

I hated Harper, but he was smart enough to avoid this whenever possible. Can't say the same about the latest batch.

Anyways, I'm out there often. And my kid is going to do her BFA at the U of A (knock on wood, acceptances are this month), so I'll likely end up buying a house there long term and our family often talks about moving back there...

(BTW when Harper was in power we had the same blatant regionalism happening. I'd go out to visit family and find huge "stimulus" projects being built all over the province [e.g. Henday north construction, etc] while projects in Ontario failed to get funding ... unless the riding was a conservative one [see Vaughan subway extension, blatant vote buying]. The Canadian dollar sky rocketed to above the USD which severely harmed central Canadian manufacturing in ways it still hasn't recovered from. Should we have talked about central-Canada-alienation at that point?)