Wexit: The push for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to declare independence
It’s one of the world’s wealthiest countries and a favourite for Australians to visit, but a new map shows just how divided it has become.
Last year, 350,000 Australians visited Canada, a country so similar to our own in terms of history, size and outlook, it’s often seen as our equivalent in the northern hemisphere.
But something is stirring in this huge nation, a country not known for getting angry with anyone let alone itself.
The ramifications of Canada’s election this week has brought to the fore a fissure running through the heart of the globe’s 10th largest economy,
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau breathed a huge sigh of relief on Monday when his Liberal party clung on, precariously, to government.
But in some parts of the huge country, that sigh became a scream of frustration as it dawned on many Canadians that a party with fewer votes than the Opposition had retained power.
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 200,000 less people voted for the left of centre Liberals than the Conservative Party, yet it won 36 more seats.
Nowhere was the Conservative’s support more pronounced than in the west of Canada, far from the big cities of Toronto and Montreal and the capital Ottawa.
This is vividly shown on the election results map where a chunk of the nation, between Ontario and British Columbia, is coloured almost entirely blue for the Tories.
In the province of Saskatchewan every single electorate went blue. In wealthy Alberta, of the province’s 34 seats 33 went to the Conservatives, similar to Australia’s Liberals, and none to Mr Trudeau’s party.
So incensed are voters in what is known as the Prairie Provinces, there is even a movement to secede from Canada.
While it’s often French speaking Quebec that talks of independence, now some in the English speaking provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are making murmurs about breaking free from Ottawa’s grip.
It’s been dubbed “Wexit”, a play on Brexit but meaning “western exit” given the three provinces’ location.
Last night was very clear
— Alberta Separation (@albertaseparate) October 22, 2019
Canada is broken
Today Oct 22 the clock starts for Alberta Separation, we have a short window to fix Alberta
GAME ON#albertaseparation#wexit pic.twitter.com/32XrI2SnBB
Wherever you may be from, #WesternCanada needs #WExit! #WesternSeparation #VoteWExit #TheWestWantsOut pic.twitter.com/52CrjF1aA5
— #WExit Canada (@VoteWExit) October 23, 2019
I am a proud woman welder from Alberta.I'm not going to sit back while our jobs dissapear ! The east betrayed us once again! liberal voters and NDP, dont complain when thousands are living off your taxes or taking your jobs when it happens because this is on YOU 👇 #WEXITALBERTA
— Selena Lavallee (@LavalleeSelena) October 23, 2019
If Alberta separates do they keep the same time zone or set their clocks to 1950?#wexit
— simon king (@unfamous) October 22, 2019
More than 50,000 people have signed a Change.org petition calling for Alberta to separate. According to the Calgary Herald, the VoteWexit Facebook page went from 2000 members on Monday to 170,000 by late Tuesday afternoon.
Alberta’s premier has said he sympathises with those who want to break free of Canada.
“Canada is broken,” said one Alberta separatist.
THE TEXAS OF CANADA
Talking to BBC News, Barry Cooper, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, based in Alberta’s largest city, summed up the mood.
“Albertans and Saskatchewanians are p**sed off because they haven’t found a voice in Ottawa. It’s a failure of trying to understand the other — we don’t share the same myths about what the country looks like, and we never have.”
Indeed, Alberta became a province of Canada decades after the far bigger Ontario and Quebec.
But at the heart of the modern issue is oil. Alberta and its neighbouring provinces have lots of it, while lots of people living in the major cities don’t like it.
Oil has made Alberta rich. The province is nicknamed the “Texas of Canada”. Mining, oil and gas account for a third of the province’s economy and employs around 150,000 people or 6 per cent of the workforce. Albertans have the highest average incomes in Canada.
Alberta makes up 17 per cent of Canada’s GDP but it has only 10 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. And under a system of equalisation payments, Alberta loses billions of dollars of its revenue each year to subsidise less affluent regions.
It’s a similar system to Australia where wealthy states like New South Wales lose some of their GST income to smaller states to bolster their budgets.
CARBON PRICE
The Liberal’s support base is far from Alberta’s vast flat prairies.
The party’s MPs dominate the inner cities of Toronto and Montreal where voters, concerned about climate change, look unfavourably at the oil industry to the west.
Mr Trudeau has tried to balance these opposing concerns.
His party plans to introduce a carbon price but will also push ahead with a pipeline to transport Alberta’s oil to the coast — seen as crucial for jobs.
Mr Trudeau has tried to square this somewhat contradictory circle by stating any revenue from the Trans Mountain Pipeline will be invested in cleaner energy technology.
“Canadians know you can protect the environment and grow the economy at the same time,” Mr Trudeau said last month.
However, Albertans are deeply sceptical of these promises and critics have said investment in the Prairies has diminished since the party gained power in 2015.
Consequently, the Liberals were thrashed by the Tories in this poll. In Saskatchewan they were barely able to cling onto one-in-10 votes.
Arguably the result was worse for the Prairies than an outright Liberal win. The hung parliament means the Liberals will have to rely on the more left wing New Democratic Party (NDP) to govern, and that party detests the new oil pipeline.
A LOT OF ANGER
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe penned a letter to Mr Trudeau following his victory that said the sense of “frustration and isolation” in his province “was greater than it has been at any point in my lifetime”.
He said Canada would now be run by a minority government that didn’t win the popular vote and has to rely on the fourth biggest party to govern and whose MPs don’t represent anyone in his region.
Mr Moe called on Mr Trudeau to “cancel the carbon tax”. That’s unlikely to happen.
“There’s a hell of a lot of anger out here right now,” Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Alberta told The Washington Post. “I think Trudeau ignores this at his peril.”
Some have already labelled the movement “Wexit whiners” throwing tantrums because their guy didn’t win. Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel said other Canadians shouldn’t mock Alberta’s alienation.
“I think that would be very dangerous for the rest of the country to do or ignore. It’s a real feeling that a lot of people have very justifiable reasons for.”
The likelihood of the Prairie Provinces ceding from Canada is small, akin to Queensland ceding from Australia.
Even the region’s premiers are cool on the issue and have pointed out leaving Canada will make a pipeline to the sea even harder to achieve.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney told reporters: “If the frustration and alienation in Alberta continues, it will pose a very serious challenge to national unity,”
In a tweet he said he didn’t want Mr Trudeau to “push (Alberta) out of our country. Rather, he wanted Alberta to “separate” from Mr Trudeau.
After last night's federal election, it is clear we need a New Deal with Canada. Read my statement here: pic.twitter.com/DsemIHN3qR
— Scott Moe (@PremierScottMoe) October 22, 2019
Albertans have been rightfully frustrated by the unfair deal we are getting in the Federation going as far as to even express support for separation
— Jason Kenney (@jkenney) August 3, 2019
I don’t want to let @JustinTrudeau push us out of our country
I’d rather focus on separating him from the Prime Minister’s office pic.twitter.com/AEMq22BrXt
A lot of poopy diapers in the prairies today #WEXITALBERTA pic.twitter.com/B9U6uYzm8y
— Steve Allen (@steveavic) October 23, 2019
In his victory speech, Mr Trudeau reached out to the restive regions.
“To Canadians in Alberta and Saskatchewan, know that you are an essential part of our great country. I’ve heard your frustration and I want to be there to support you,” he said.
But it didn’t help that he began his speech in the middle of the concession speech of Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. He wasn’t speaking from metropolitan Montreal, like Mr Trudeau, but rural Regina the capital of Saskatchewan.
It’s unnecessary snubs like that which has driven the increasing ruminations about a possible Wexit.
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