[d_burfoot]

Many commenters seem to be appealing to an almost religious defense of present political borders. That attitude is untenable: there is nothing sacred about national boundaries, they are mere political artifacts like rules, regulations, tax codes, etc. If the people want to change them, they absolutely have the right to do so.

https://unifixion.substack.com/p/political-boundaries-are-no...

[hash872]

OK, but there are some logistical issues here- let's say Alberta votes to secede and this is somehow legally viable. All of the Albertan voters who didn't want to secede- including the native tribes- could then by your rules vote to secede from Alberta and join back to Canada. It'd be a mess. Towns and counties would split themselves in half, and so on.

What would happen if a landlocked town within Alberta wants to rejoin Canada- how would you handle that?

[PowerElectronix]

It's like having to belong to a higher imposed authority (either the original country or the seceded territory) is bad for the individual that doesn't want any of that. If only there was a solution to that problem...

[ben_w]

> If only there was a solution to that problem...

Sure, but as one who has done it, moving country is surprisingly hard.

[conorcleary]

try moving TO another country instead of trying to move the country. Scales easier.

[shepherdjerred]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave

[gamblor956]

It is legally viable. Canada passed a law allowing this after Quebec tried to secede. It lays out the procedures for how the separation would occur.

[scrubs]

Ah i forgot that.. that was dumb on fed Canada's part

[conorcleary]

nah, makes the treasonous stand in the spotlight and claim their prize.

[ChoGGi]

Eh, it ain't ever happening anyways, this is just the UCP and other assorted wack-jobs playing games with Ottawa again.

All the Oil Sands land is treaty land, so First Nations get it if we leave.

[foepys]

Russia is currently placing Russian citizens in the occupied parts of Ukraine exactly for this reason. If there will ever be a vote whether the Donbas Oblast or the Luhansk Oblast want to rejoin Ukraine, you can bet the vote will be pro Russia.

[05]

That vote happened in 2022.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_annexation_referendums_in...

[dorgo]

They probably mean a vote which doesn't violate international law.

[ryandrake]

The huge problem is that geographical borders don't nicely line up with cultural/ethnic/attitude borders. Let's say you let a province (or US state) secede over political/cultural issues. What happens to all of the people who don't want to go along for the ride? They're now at a huge risk. Those dissenters might even be persecuted or, at worst, cleansed, depending on the laws of the new seceded country.

So then you say, ok let's do it by county (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is) instead. Same problem. Even within a county-sized area, you're going to have dissenters who are at risk in the new country. Even within a single town. You can't draw geographic borders around and write laws for swiss-cheese-shaped clumpings of individual people.

I live in a pretty "red" area in a "blue" US state. If Team Red decided that half of my state (including my home) was going to secede into their own Red Utopia, my family would legitimately be in fear for our lives. I don't think secession is ever going to be a viable option in the real, polarized world where political beliefs are peanut butter spread across the geography.

[xboxnolifes]

> Let's say you let a province (or US state) secede over political/cultural issues. What happens to all of the people who don't want to go along for the ride?

Well, thats politics? The people proposing this are supposed to be considering that. And the people in that position are supposed to be considering that.

Every day there are votes with outcomes people dont want to go along with the ride for. But they do, or they resist, or otherwise.

[scrubs]

Politics? Is it? Or is politics a grand word for whining and adults in a perpetual small world? Law, history are at least more grounded as a basis to argue for or against.

Let's not let politics' meaning become so diffuse it's just free speech by another name. Herein "politics" seems to be too inconsequential for a far more consequential result than cycling out party A for B for a few years would have.

I've half joked before that brexit was the only solution Cameron et al saw left because they didnt have a way to hold Brussel's paper pushers to account. Taking your ball and going home is not bold leadership: it's an admission one's argument and solution is weak.

[yibg]

In this case though it's a conflicting view. Let's say 40% of the province don't want to be separated, so they vote to rejoin canada (or form their own thing). Does the now independent Alberta allow it? If not, then why are they allowed to split from Canada? If they do, now this opens up the door for a infinite amount of splits.

[xboxnolifes]

Well, it would depend on how the new Alberta is structured. It would be its own country with its own rules. Practically speaking, it would highly depend on whether those 40% are geographically separated from the rest enough to geographically split the new Alberta.

[ben_w]

> Well, thats politics? The people proposing this are supposed to be considering that. And the people in that position are supposed to be considering that.

People are very bad at considering stuff like this. Both voters and politicians.

When I left the UK, a former acquaintance was very confused that their support of something they thought was "just politics" led to me having no interest in continuing to talk to them.

I very much doubt that David Cameron or Theresa May expected a newspaper to have a front-page headline calling judges "Enemies of the People"[0], similarly for a half the politicians who have been milkshaked[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_people_(headlin...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkshaking

[gambiting]

>>What happens to all of the people who don't want to go along for the ride?

All of Scotland voted against leaving the EU. Every single county has voted no. And yet it still got dragged out.

So I guess the answer is - people get told to shut up and deal with it.

[happymellon]

The area of England that I'm in voted remain, as well as all the other districts around us. It might fracture England (which may not be a bad thing) but I would be fine with southern England joining Scotland.

[slopinthebag]

Yes, also the right to self-determination is an unalienable human right.

I find it sort of fascinating because people really do have a fanaticism about this that they don't have for other political artifacts. Nationalism is a powerful force. And people will special-plead themselves silly arguing why one group should be given self-determinism and others shouldn't, including invoking federal laws, untestable predictions about future events, etc. But when it comes to other politics, they revert back to a globalist position.

On the flip side, separatists are often driven by nationalistic interests as well - look at Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries as fantastic examples of this.

[pfortuny]

What about the right of not being determined by others? Say, the 10% who vote no.

[slopinthebag]

Isn't that the problem with democracy? The tyranny of the majority and all that?

[scrubs]

No, not tyranny necessarily. If it's malign morphing into hate speech, racial or genetic seregation, imposing religion, esp. backed up by state power that's a problem. For example, the US has a senate to balance out the house while at the same time California's take on something cannot be rejected out of hand reflexively as tyranny

[the_gipsy]

But the meaning of "people want" is very delicately depending on the geographical area and moment in time.

[qball]

Yes, and here "Canadians want" is used to say "the people within 100km of the St. Lawrence want". (That's actually part of the problem.)

Claimed identity isn't a suicide pact and consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed.

AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development. The justifications for those policies (whether you agree with them or not) matter less than the fact they're being imposed from a condition of moral hazard.

Hence, the people of AB might vote to ban the people of ON/QC from imposing their laws; that's what separation is and why it happens.

[transcriptase]

> AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development.

Not only that, but the Feds typically use their outsized tax revenue from Alberta to “invest” in Quebec to buy votes via propping up unviable businesses, subsidies, outsized proportion of public sector jobs, and federal spending in general.

[philistine]

Hey, the little old lie that Québec, which does get an outsized proportion of the political attention, gets an outsized proportion of the federal money, which it doesn’t.

You can find many examples of specific programs where Québec gets the federal government’s money in incredible amounts. But you add all these programs together and you still come up short per person compared to Ontario. Why?

The Southern Ontario car sector.

[transcriptase]

The only possible way to come to a conclusion as wrong as yours is by looking at gross instead of net federal spending by province.

When you consider the tiny detail of actually contributing to federal finances, in the past 20 years alone Quebec has received ~360 billion more than it contributed, whereas Ontario has received ~232 billion LESS than it contributed.

Nearly half a trillion difference between the two, and nothing to do with the auto industry whatsoever.

[jleyank]

Any dime that goes to the oil or gas business is a mistake, especially at the moment. Blindingly profitable, let them pay their way.

[jleyank]

Before you rag Quebec too much, note that they are at least practicing being independent. They maintain a police force, they have foreign services. They collect their own taxes. See what Alberta thinks when they have to pay their own way rather than letting Canada handle things. While they rent the ramp I doubt they’re handling their pensions. QC runs its own pension.

And all the First Nations treaties are with the Crown and predate Alberta.

[the_gipsy]

And tomorrow people in the rich half of AB don't want to subsidize the poorer half, and so on.

[port11]

Where do we draw the line of “people want to change them”?

I’m 100% with the political philosopher Bertrand Russel on this topic: borders are arbitrary, and a benevolent world government/federation of cultures would not restrict your movement or sense of belonging.

But! But how many people must vote yes? What percentage of abstention? If 60% vote to leave, but half the people didn’t vote, only 30% of the yes is valid.

I don’t think this should be taken lightly by populist movements. To me, Brexit has shown us exactly what the dangers are of a non- or weirdly-qualified majority.

[braiamp]

That's fine and all, but leave all by yourself. A territory isn't owned by the people that happen to be there. It's bound up in the systems and institutions they found and accepted, ingrained into a much bigger machinery. Alberta's own referendum already shows this: a court halted the petition because First Nations weren't consulted, because their claims predate any popular vote.

Unless you get everyone with a stake on board, which is hard, and accept it will take a long while to unwind, it's irresponsible. And if you aren't willing to do that work, just pack your bags and leave.

[illiac786]

I think the problem is the irreversible aspect of this. Once they leave they will never join back.

I’d love to see stats on countries merging vs splitting, may sumptuous is 1 to 50 at least.

[627467]

> Once they leave they will never join back.

Seems like a hard to prove statement.

[0dayz]

Which is why most countries have border guard agency?

It's kind of obvious that borders are not a physical phenomenon but a social construct.

[PearlRiver]

Lincoln disagreed. The good man even had the balls to let loose Sherman.

[TheGRS]

Sure, and history deals the cards we're given and so on and so forth. Why don't we have referendums on keeping the US Constitution every year? That would be democratic as hell.

[yummypaint]

Because the procedure for changing the constitution is in the constitution. That would have to be followed at least once.

https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text

[jleyank]

It looks like the us had a referendum on their constitution in 2024. They voted to ignore it…

[bad_username]

If it is untenable for a country to defend its boundaries, why is it tenable for you to lock your house?

[scrubs]

>If the people want to change them, they absolutely have the right to do so

Not so fast. They are in a union with other provinces ergo they have a say.

If nonetheless in some asinine way they secede, will they take their portion of Canada's debt, and other liabilities?

Won't all other provinces require them to negotiate a border, security, and trade policy? Surely they can't expect to be separate yet equal to BC or even the NWT?

[kazinator]

> If the people want to change [political borders], they absolutely have the right to do so

That's exactly what Putin thinks, right? "I'm one of the people; I wanna change borders!" :)

[asjhg]

Cool. I suppose we'll see the U.S. support referenda in the Basque territory in Spain, Northern Ireland, the West Bank, Gaza, and Texas soon. Maybe in Guam and Hawaii, too.

Nice NED propaganda.