Opinion: Alberta separation was a bad idea to begin with - but COVID-19 has shown it’s never going to happen

Max Fawcett is a freelance writer and a former editor of Alberta Oil magazine and Vancouver magazine

This is a nightmare for those who have been dreaming about an independent Alberta, one that’s equal parts political revenge fantasy and Ayn Rand fan-fiction. Only once unshackled from the burdens of supporting the rest of the country and the ungrateful people in it who were holding them down, it suggests, will their province truly flourish.

It was the federal government that implemented important tax changes in the 1990s that made the oil sands a far more attractive investment and helped kick off a decades-long building boom that disproportionately benefited Alberta. And it was the federal government that bought and is building the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, effectively doing for Alberta what the private sector couldn’t – or wouldn’t.

But I do hope that politicians such as Jason Kenney and Michelle Rempel, who have carefully nurtured the idea that Albertans are being mistreated by the federal government and used that feeling to advance their own political objectives and agendas, will stop trading in this fiction. Mr. Kenney’s equalization referendum, for example, is a cynical effort to feed the sense of alienation rather than fix it.

GlobeDebate Why do anti-separatists assume there will be zero creativity with regards to the First Nations issues?

GlobeDebate It's more relevant than ever now!

GlobeDebate The Globe gets it wrong on literally everything. Along with the rest of the media, they are 100% out-of-touch and clueless when it comes to people out West.

GlobeDebate Does that mean that poor little MichelleRempel will have to find another issue to inflame on behalf of the perpetually aggrieved malcontents of the right wing?

GlobeDebate I would love to vote on leaving this shitty broken country.

GlobeDebate WEXIT!

GlobeDebate 🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️

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