'Hockey and nostalgia' won't keep us together: Albertans say they're serious about separation after Liberal win
OTTAWA — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith didn’t immediately issue a statement when the networks called the federal election for Mark Carney’s Liberals at 10:15 PM EST, but it’s safe to say that not all is calm on the western front.
The Liberals’ fourth straight federal election win keeps Alberta and Ottawa on a collision course, raising the once unthinkable prospect of a referendum on the Prairie province’s separation from Canada.
At the time of the election call, the Liberals were leading in just two of Alberta’s 37 ridings .
Cameron Davies, an ex-UCP organizer who supports Alberta independence, said he was disgusted by the Liberal campaign’s use of tired national cliches, which he said made light of the serious issues facing the federation.
“Hockey and nostalgia doesn’t pay the bills… that hockey and nostalgia, it’s not going to keep Canada together,” said Davies.
“Without a reimagined confederation, there will be a strong separatist movement in Alberta,” said Davies.
Davies, who tendered his resignation to the UCP on Thursday, says he plans to spend the next few weeks having “honest, difficult conversations” with likeminded Albertans.
Smith had warned heading into the election that a Liberal win could lead to an “unprecedented national unity crisis,” if Carney didn’t, within his first six months, undo a handful of Liberal policies that she said unfairly hampered Alberta’s oil and gas sector.
“ Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we’ve been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years,” Smith said in a social media post.
Federal election results map for Alberta
Reform Party founder Preston Manning soon upped the ante, calling Carney himself a “ threat to national unity ” in a widely circulated op-ed.
Manning wrote that “large numbers of Westerners simply will not stand for another four years of Liberal government, no matter who leads it.”
He predicted that, if Carney were to emerge victorious from Monday’s election, he “would then be identified in the history books, tragically and needlessly, as the last prime minister of a united Canada.”
Smith has already announced she’ll launch a post-mortem election panel to give Albertans the chance to weigh in on issues they might want put to a referendum.
Polls show as many as three in 10 Albertans would vote to leave the federation if the Liberals continue to hold power in Ottawa.
Carney needs to seize the chance to reset relations with Alberta, said Martha Hall Findlay, the director of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.
“I think the opportunity to move forward is absolutely there… I have every confidence that the prime minister of Canada and premier of Alberta will realize they can accomplish a lot more working together than by being at each other’s throats,” said Findlay.
The two leaders will have some fences to mend after trading barbs throughout the campaign.
Smith notably accused Carney of sexism after he took a jab at her at a campaign event, saying the Liberal leader clearly had a problem with strong conservative women .
Hall Findlay said that Carney could build immediate goodwill with Smith by dropping the existing targets for the federal emissions cap, set by Trudeau-era environment minister Steven Guilbeault.
“My hope is that (Carney) shows a pragmatism with respect to the West. Perfect example: he stops being coy about an emissions cap, even if he says we still believe in a cap on emissions but the time frames need to be revisited,” said Hall Findlay.
Hall Findlay was a Liberal MP from 2008 to 2011, holding a Toronto-area seat, before moving to Alberta to work in the oil and gas sector.
Rachel Parker, an independent journalist who travels in independentist circles, said she wasn’t as sanguine about the election’s outcome.
“You know, frustrations in Western Canada have grown quite high. They’ve always sort of been there bubbling underneath the surface, this put things into overdrive,” said Parker.
Parker said that Alberta’s independence movement had been organizing in the weeks leading up to Monday’s federal election and she expected to see this activity pick up in the weeks to come.
She added she doesn’t think much will come out of Smith’s post-election panel.
“Panels are really a government’s way of saying ‘we’re doing something, we’re doing something,’ when it’s really just kicking an issue down the road.”
Smith’s predecessor Jason Kenney launched the Alberta Fair Deal Panel shortly after becoming premier in 2019, citing the province’s growing frustration with Ottawa.
The panel generated 25 recommendations, paving the way for a fall 2021 referendum on Alberta’s participation in the federal equalization program .
Kenney’s panel came with a steep price tag of $650,000
Jack Jedwab, the head of the Association for Canadian Studies, says that Alberta sovereigntism differs from the more well-known Quebec variant in several important ways.
“I’d describe it as a form of economic nationalism which is driven by a sense of grievance wherein many Albertans feel they give more than they receive from the federal government,” said Jedwab.
“Albertans strongly identify as Canadian and do not feel emotionally detached from Canada which is something that more likely characterizes Quebec’s expression of nationalism,” he said.
Smith is expected to speak on the election’s result tomorrow.
With additional reporting from the Canadian Press
National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com
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