Originally Posted by GranteedEV
Let's talk about values.
1) I value education and critical thought.
I used to be a proud Albertan because in my childhood (Premier Ralph Klein, PM Jean Cretien era), Alberta was consistently the national leader in education. The reason for this was because the government dating back to the days of Peter Lougheed believed that investing in education was paramount.
But this is also a core Canadian value. Canada is one of, if not the most educated countries in the world. We value education, and that allows us to be a country that produces quality. Quality in metrics like worker safety, engineering standards, health standards, quality of living standards... the list goes on, but at their core, is education and scientific approaches.
The current Alberta UCP government is one that is anti-science, anti-education, pro-propaganda. In a hypothetical world where the land of Alberta were a sovereign nation, this current Alberta UCP government would cause this land, to decline rapidly away from the Canadian values that built it to be a prosperous land.
And in a world where controlling information is power, and the means of information control are either owned by eastern Canada and from corporations in the United States, an Alberta separate from Canada would therefore be even more strongly influenced by the United States than it already so dangerously is. A United States that is openly fascist. You know what fascism is, right? I hope so, because your education allowed you to learn to identify the signs. Well guess what, a bonafide fascist United States of America influencing an already borderline-Fascist Alberta would lead to... a bonafide fascist Alberta. These claims sound fantastical to me to even be needing to discuss in the year 2025 and yet - the facts point to it being far closer to reality than not. It is ####ing terrifying.
2) I value safety.
I am aware of foreign threats to my safety. From the south, a fascist US government looking to annex us. From the north, an authoritarian Russian government that is deterred by Canada's membership in NATO yet still performs successful pysops to deteriorate the strength of the Canadian values. From across the Pacific, more pysops and other forms of foreign interference. Not only would a quoteunquote independent west lack the diplomatic means to protect us from these threads, it would lack the military means. So your safety would be dependant on... about a century of military cooperation between Canada, Europe and the US. Sure does not sound independant to me.
I value the safety of vulnerable populations and minorities to not be subjected to the aformentioned facist American attitudes and policies that are driven by Christian Nationalism and White Supremecy. These are not the Alberta I want, are they the Alberta you want? They are the Alberta the separatists want and they are the Alberta the rich Americans fueling the fire want so that they can take our abundant resources for themselves and turn us into a territory. History has taught us that fascists target the weakest people in order to divide people and smokescreen their atrocious policies.
I also value the safety of kids to go to school without a mass shooting. An Alberta that lacks the Canadian value of gun control would so quickly open up access to American style gun politics that you would be hearing about shootings at John F Deifenbaker or Sir Winston Churchill Senior High. Is that the "Independant West" you want?
3) I value social and economic security.
I'm somewhere between a socialist and a liberal politically. Exactly where, I couldn't tell you, but I believe that I should be paying taxes so that everyone, no matter their situation - gainfully employed, unemployed, entrepreneur, student, single mother scraping by, people affected by long covid, all of these people should be able to access health care, education, means of meeting the basic needs of food and shelter.
You know, basically what Canada on a whole values. What the UCP is ####ting on.
The United States of America does not value this. Even in a progressive state like California can they not hit the things us Canadians take for ####ing granted. Have you ever had a birth in your family? A child of your own, or a nephew, or a niece, or a cousin. A basic event like this should not put any family into five, six figures of debt, but this is how a capitalist society with private health care works.
A west that is moving away from Canada, is moving towards America. It's moving towards a gross quality of life for all but the rich.
Beyond that though, it's simply impossible for a landlocked region surrounded by Canada to the west, north, east and USA to the south to have anything resembling a functionally independant economy. Your job will suddenly become even more critically dependant on the whims of American O&G corporations. They'll start buying the small producers, then they'll move to the AltaGas' and the Cenovus'. And the crown corporations... like Trans Mountain... they wouldn't belong to Alberta, they would need to leave Alberta.
The pipelines to BC or Manitoba or Quebec we dream of to get our O&G to Europe and Asia? A pipedream at that point. You've lost any influence Alberta had on Canada (which is a lot more than people are willing to admit.
That isn't an independant west, it's a west controlled by American interests.
That's three basic reasons which I hope suffice, for telling you why I am a Canadian, and shouldn't even be having to sign a ####ing petition to state I am Forever Canadian. But here was are, and any of us that haven't signed the petition need to go sign the petition. And we need to heal our province by booting the UCP, and addressing the propaganda poisoning problem.
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