Supporters fly flags in support of Mitch Sylvestre as he submits signatures supporting a separation referendum to Elections Alberta in Edmonton on May 4.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Tyler Dawson is an Edmonton-based editor for The Globe and Mail’s Opinion section. He is the author of The Republic of Alberta: An Idea That Won’t Go Away.
The era of the duelling discussion papers has arrived. And it’s more interesting than it sounds.
The campaigns over the 10 referendum questions being put to Albertans in October are heating up. Forever Canadian, the most significant pro-Canada organization, has pivoted from generally pushing for Canadian unity to a get-out-the-vote campaign to make sure federalists bother to cast their ballots on Oct. 19. The government of Alberta has launched its own advertising campaign to promote its side on the referendum questions. Premier Danielle Smith has made an emotional plea recounting Albertans’ grievances and has spoken out against separation.
It’s likely, at this point, that the votes are pretty much set, at least on the question of whether Alberta should remain in Canada or move toward having a binding referendum on secession. So it’s unlikely that all that many people are going to be persuaded, if they bother to trudge through the mountain of documents now available for their perusal. Still, it adds some flesh to the bones of debate, and more importantly, shows how the two sides are attempting to frame the choice over Alberta’s future.
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First out the gate was a report from the Canada West Foundation, written by eight experts in their respective fields. Its defining vibe, crucially, is uncertainty. It notes, for example, how it’s not entirely certain just what proportion of Canada’s national debt Alberta would be saddled with should it walk away from Confederation, though either way it would dramatically increase Alberta’s debt. It asks how borders would be drawn around First Nations lands in the province. On and on it continues.
In contrast, the Alberta Transition Council has released a report on, well, the transition to an independent state, and it works hard to project calm and certainty. The world won’t implode upon a secession vote, they insist. In fact, there are many incentives for everyone to keep the divorce amicable and Albertans can be assured their lives won’t be wildly disrupted.
It continues in this vein with what purports to be a budget and a budgetary planning document. Alberta, it says, will be in a safe fiscal position, able to fund the services Albertans rely upon, a military and any other functions a new country would need to take over from the Canadian government.
Of course there’s no reason to believe it’s true.
It’s possible that some smart people were involved in writing it, but their identities, other than that of Dennis Kalma, a retired executive, and Keith Wilson, a lawyer and the co-founder of the separatist group Let Alberta Decide, have been kept secret because, allegedly, cancel culture could come for them.
Whatever the numbers say – and they’re debatable enough, with some glaring omissions – and however persuasive the documents might be, we just don’t know if anyone who knows what they’re talking about has actually endorsed this thing.
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On the other hand, those who are willing to put their names to their work are an awful lot less confident that all will be well. On Sept. 16, the Alberta government released – without much fanfare – an analysis done by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy on a number of facets of separation. It says that administering the new state could cost up to $170-billion over the first five years, and that in a “difficult” separation, Albertans’ wages could decline by nearly $12,000 annually.
It’s probably true that Alberta and Canada, were separation to occur, would figure out a separation agreement and then life would go on on both sides of the border. But that it could happen smoothly is no guarantee that it will, and that it could be a success is even less of an argument in favour of separation than you might think.
The risks, as the School of Public Policy reports detail, are simply too high. It might be true that an independent Alberta would be prosperous and well-funded, the transition smooth, the services uninterrupted. But do you trust the unnamed people who are making that case?
It’s true, as a general matter, that we should question what we’re told and exhibit skepticism – including of experts.
But when it comes to a choice between largely anonymous separatists – their work bolstered by AI, which is never a good sign – and Alberta’s top experts on a question as portentous as the effects of separating from Canada, that choice is no choice at all.