The true North is strong and free, and, for the moment, intact. From The New York Times:
Residents of Alberta voted overwhelmingly on Monday to remain part of Canada, rejecting a campaign to try to separate the oil-rich western province from the rest of the country and further bolstering Prime Minister Mark Carney’s efforts to advance a united Canada. Voters in a referendum endorsed remaining in Canada over the option of holding a second vote on whether to secede. With 86 percent of votes counted, 75.5 percent of voters chose to remain part of Canada, with 24.5 percent seeking another vote.
This was a big win for Prime Minister—and native Albertan—Mark Carney, who campaigned hard to keep Alberta as part of Canada, despite pressures from inside the country and out.
Mr. Carney’s efforts to promote Canadian unity and lessen Canada’s economic dependence on the United States stem from recent threats by President Trump. Since his second term began, Mr. Trump has insulted Canada and its leaders, levied punishing tariffs in an ongoing trade war, and repeatedly suggested that the country should be annexed as the 51st U.S. state. Some prominent separatists leaders traveled to Washington three times last year seeking support in meetings with low-level State Department officials.
And 75 percent of the voters in the province told El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago to get stuffed.
In a speech to supporters in Edmonton, Thomas Lukaszuk, a former provincial lawmaker whose Forever Canadian organization led the campaign to oppose secession, addressed Mr. Trump, saying the vote “will send a very strong message to the rest of the world: Don’t mess with Canada.”
Unlike in Quebec, a province that held two unsuccessful votes on leaving Canada, secessionist sentiments have always been a minority viewpoint in Alberta. Still, before the vote opponents of separatism worried that voters might support holding a second referendum to show their unhappiness with the province’s relationship with Canada, even if they did not want to secede.
Alberta is home to the tar sands fields that have proven to be a jackpot for the extraction industries, despite the fact that it is the world's dirtiest fossil fuel, and that its extraction has turned a huge part of Alberta into a toxic wasteland. Recall, also, that it was this poisoned juice that supporters of the dead Keystone XL pipeline proposed to run through their continent-spanning death funnel. I mention that because, just this week, vice president J. Divan Vance blamed the high cost of gasoline on the previous administration's energy policies, which included the cancellation of said death funnel. However, most of the economic elite in the province were staunchly behind staying in the confederation anyway. And what I find most intriguing is that the current separatist movement had its roots not in the tar sands, but in another wing-nut obsession entirely.
Many separatist leaders are veterans of the large protests in Alberta during the Covid pandemic that were aimed at public health restrictions. They never laid out specific plans for an independent Alberta and their various factions offered a variety of futures, including a state guided by Christian doctrine, but their complaints about Canada were largely based on economic issues.
We have become a terrible influence on this continent.