I'm genuinely curious to know what you think the author's pre-existing beliefs are.
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.
You need a special kind of personality to be this confident while currently losing a war, one that is, well, associated with Americans.
Another belief I hold is that you didn't care to click the link or read past the title because it literally states "aircraft to patrol Arctic territory" in bold font in the sub-heading.
You're being deliberately obtuse with nothing constructive to add to this discussion.
And fine, buy all of your military hardware elsewhere. When will you be leaving NORAD and NATO then? Of course you won't. So this is performative.
At what point on this current trajectory in the US would that change... mostly facetiously, but not entirely..
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.
They (and Sask too) do swing on the higher end in GDP per capita, but it's not a 2:1 by any stretch.
Which isn't that far off from BC's 13.80%:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...
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.
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.
Nunavut and NWT have higher per capita numbers, but that's territory versus province:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...
Yukon and SK are in the >90k range, both ~5k below AB.
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.
https://www.pgic-iogc.gc.ca/eng/1588343274882/1588355750048
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/abaondoned-oil-well-o...
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/what-did-alberta-do-with...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-more-than-1...
But Trudeau had it out for Alberta. Better off separating. Yep.
Because as you would might say: I'm sure this Canadian government would love to see an "independent" California.
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....
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.
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 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.
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.
Legal? Who's laws? Albertans can just declare that they don't respect Ottawa's authority, right?
Guns and bullets are the only "legal" currency. It's not paperwork.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program
> 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.
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.
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.
This is hardly my experience as a Canadian. They're not Newfoundlanders, for crying out loud...