The separatists aren't just threatening Canada

The separatist movement is small, and loud, and most people in Alberta think they're horrible, too.

Credit: CBC News

When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith or former Reform leader Preston Manning — or any number of the province’s self-appointed jackasses — threatens a constitutional or national unity crisis with the rest of Canada, it can escape people’s attention outside of the province that they aren’t just threatening the rest of Canada; they’re threatening the vast majority of Albertans as well.

For decades, our province looked like a monolith; we had one party in government, and they held massive majorities. We also send a lot of blue signs, or party names, to Ottawa and promptly forget about them until the next election. In a province with some of the safest blue ridings in the country, we’re a beacon for useless twits who couldn’t get elected anywhere else.

While I admit that it does, and should, reflect poorly on us, it’s far from the whole story.

Alberta has been held captive by an identity that no longer reflects its people but is thrust upon us with fierce regularity. Some would even call it psychological conditioning.

Dr. Jared Wesley’s research with Common Ground Politics has done a fantastic job of gathering data from people who live in Alberta that demonstrates how a majority of people, when asked to describe or draw “a typical Albertan” have barely two versions to choose from; and look nothing like themselves. Regardless of the characteristics of the Albertan being asked, they will usually draw a man in a cowboy hat or standing near an oil rig. He’s hardcore ideologically conservative and he’s basically a bully.

Dr. Wesley named him “Joe”.

Joe doesn’t like government, he is highly opinionated, and he’s the person who will get steaming mad and start turning over tables when he doesn’t get his way. As Health Minister, Tyler Shandro once said of mask mandates, “how do we tell the guy in Cold Lake that he has to wear a mask?”

“The guy in Cold Lake” is Joe.

When then-Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was stalked by a giant guy in Grande Prairie, that was “Joe”.

We live in a province where Joe has outsized influence over our government, and our people. It’s a myth that is based on real people — most of us know a Joe — and we’re told that there are more people like him in our province than people like us. For a province that “values” individuality, it’s only respected if it looks like, and sounds like, “Joe”.

“Joe” doesn’t like change and, luckily for him, he rarely has to deal with any because, in his small pocket of the world, nothing really changes. He won’t let it.

And since it benefits them, our conservative representatives don’t want it to change either.

When the world went “woke”

Once upon a time, I was rather jealous that my nana had seen so much change in her lifetime. Both of her grandparents, as well as her dad, came to Canada from Scotland in the early 1900’s. Her mother saw women get the right to vote and instilled in my nana the importance of exercising that right so it could never be taken away again.

She was born in 1931 and remembered the impact of the Great Depression for the rest of her life. She lived through a world war, the evolution of television and film, civil rights, and women’s equality movements. She lived through a technological revolution as well.

At some point in the 1990’s, she had to take classes at the college to learn Excel. It’s the first time I remember her dropping the F-bomb. Not only the first time, but every day she returned from those classes. When my mom asked how that day went, she managed to both hiss and sigh the word in response.

I grew up feeling like my generation wouldn’t see the same kind of impactful change that changed the world, and I didn’t even notice when some of it took place. GenX often brags about how we were the last generation to have an unscheduled childhood that mostly revolved around play but we were also turnkey kids who had to be responsible for our own safety all summer long.

Gender roles were still being challenged when I was in my formative years. My mother was a journeyman heavy-duty partsman. Obviously none of those titles were created with her in mind. Being raised in my grandfather’s household, she was responsible for “girl chores” and her brothers were responsible for “boy chores”, something she never stopped being bitter about.

In an attempt to avoid doing the same thing to me, however, she didn’t teach me a lot of those “girl chores”. Then again, I grew up in a household of women, so it’s not like we could separate them that way. More to the point, I suppose, is that she didn’t try to “domesticate” me. I still fight it, to be honest, but mostly just with myself now.

We also grew up reading standardized “he/him” in almost anything written for informational purposes. At some point before I graduated high school, that changed. If it was informational and referring to a reader generally, it began to either read “he/she” or would switch back and forth inclusively along the document. I didn’t realize how commonplace that had become until I was reading a book published in 2017 on writing for late-night comedy. After the first 15 or so pages, I began to feel like it wasn’t written with me in mind because it only referred to a writer as “he”. It was 27 pages in before that changed. I stopped reading after about 70 pages because we never got to a point where the author considered that a host whose pronouns were “she/her” would exist.

Until that moment, I hadn’t understood how much I relied on feeling included as an audience for whatever I was reading. Yet, it wasn’t just that one time.

I always felt like an outlier. Growing up in a small town surrounded by rural, raised by my nana, a farm girl, and my mom, who worked in a male-dominated industry, I was out of step because I harboured absolutely no inclination to do hard labour. Yet, it wasn’t just at home that I was an outlier, it was small-town Alberta, and rural. Hard work is how you get ahead in this life and if it didn’t make you sweat, you weren’t doing “work” right.

Dr. Wesley’s research spoke to me because I was raised to think the same; an Albertan is someone who is willing to break their back, or at least a horse; the rest of us just live here.

When Jason Kenney was Premier, sometime between 2020 and 2022, he shared a video the province had commissioned to promote the province that sparked a lot of conversation. It was standard Alberta fare, with fields and horses, cowboys, mountainous landscape, and oil rigs; and not one woman or person of colour in sight.

During Question Period in the Alberta Legislature since the 2025 federal election began, I’ve been treated to members of the governing UCP outraged at the Official Opposition for potentially voting for the Liberals. It’s un-Albertan, don’t you know, not voting conservative, and they want to ensure we all know it.

It’s not just Canadians they’re angry at for potentially sending the Liberals under Mark Carney’s leadership back into government — they’re angry at Albertans, too.

“What happens if the Liberals win?”

Someone asked this today and I’ve already been thinking about it a lot because I know I’m not alone in thinking Mark Carney is the strongest to lead Canada through this time, and the separatists are already gearing up for the possibility of raising millions for themselves to own the libs, and Canadians, and Albertans who don’t think much of them.

A smarmy new party calling themselves “Alberta Republicans” has emerged with a list of UCP MLAs who supposedly support a referendum on separation. As I was going through the list, some of the names tracked with what I already thought about them but some didn’t. I expect it’s their attempt to get some free media attention, and as far as controversy being the ultimate selling point, I’m sure it’s just the beginning.

Some UCP MLAs will likely get on board the separatist train. Danielle Smith will talk out of both sides of her mouth trying to use it as both leverage and pretending she’s saddened by the possibility of an outcome that will never affect her personally. If it works out, she’ll take credit; if it doesn’t, she’ll slink away but still retire in Panama.

Her Chief of Staff probably already has a few things ready for the “Separation panel” Smith has promised to give a minority of already angry Albertans since it’s perfectly natural to piss yourself to show the rest of the country how mad you are. I got the analogy from someone many years ago. He said that being angry was as useful as wetting your pants; everyone can see it, but only you can feel it.

The goal of separatism, however, is trying to make everyone around them feel it, too.

Here in Alberta, the UCP will ignore the fact that any Liberals are elected; kind of like how they ignore the fact that Albertans elected representatives from the NDP and act like they don’t even have a right to be in the Legislature, period.

In the end, on behalf of a lot of Albertans, I’m asking for a little separation from being lumped in with these awful people. When we’re talking about unity, it’s wonderful to include all Canadians. When we’re talking about people pissing themselves, though, let’s be sure to put the blame on them alone; not the rest of us who have to watch them do it.

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