Atlas Is Shrugging and He May Be a Canadian
Atlas Is Shrugging and He May Be a Canadian
Diane Alden
Sept. 10, 2002
Part II of 180 Degrees of Separation; read Part I
As the famous U.S. election map of 2000 indicates, the division between red country and blue country is just one small indication of how divided we are as a nation.
In the U.S. and Canada today, serious questions have arisen regarding basic issues about the sanctity of life and justice, as well as how our spiritual, cultural, economic and political existence should be conducted. These questions find us 180 degrees apart. Left and right polarization and our divisions are becoming greater than what unites us.
In that regard, Professors Thomas Naylor of Duke University and Donald Livingston of Emory University in Atlanta stated in the late ’90s: “A booming economy and a roaring stock market can cover up a host of social, economic, and political sins. But once the bubble bursts and everyone discovers that the emperor truly wears no clothes, whether in the Oval Office or elsewhere, local independence movements may seem a lot less radical than they do today.”
Without the election of George Bush and the events of September 11, 2001, talk of secession or autonomy for states would be on the lips of many more Americans than it already is.
The Canadian Example
I had to think twice about bringing Canada into this essay. But the fate of Canada and the Western Provinces will have an impact on all of us in the United States.
The problem is that most Americans cannot name the vice president of the United States. It should not be surprising that they don’t know or care about who the prime minister of Canada is, nor do they care about who runs any single Canadian province.
Most Americans think Canada is up there somewhere, has lots of trees, has a French-sounding prime minister with a name that sounds like “cretin.” Canada sends us singers Alanis Morrisette, Celine Dion and Shania Twain, as well as comedians John Candy and Mike Myers. We get Canadian actors like William Shatner and talking heads such as Peter Jennings.
Americans might know that a Canadian province wants to separate from Canada, but probably they don’t. Most Americans don’t have a clue about what is really going on in the United States, let alone Canada.
Actually, Canada is in worse ideological separation than we are in the U.S.
Canadian writer Ilana Mercer remarked in a recent column: “Thomas Jefferson viewed extreme decentralization as the bulwark of the liberty and rights of man. Consequently, the U.S. was created as a pact between sovereign states with which the ultimate power lay. Sadly, the U.S. has progressed from a decentralized republic into a highly consolidated one. In the U.S., to speak of the Rights of the States, much less of secession, gets you consigned to the lunatic fringe.”
“Canada, on the other hand, was born of a highly centralized regime, and has always cleaved to an expansionist national policy. Yet, paradoxically, it is Canada in recent years that has outstripped the U.S. in spurring powerful regional movements and in reviving secession as an arduous but valid political route.”
Canadian separatism is always associated with French Quebec. But when you look into the social and political situation in Canada, the Western Provinces have a case for separation, and a better chance of splitting from the Canadian Federation, than any U.S. state has of achieving autonomy from the power centers of Washington and New York.
Admittedly, in the United States Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley have placed a proposition on the November ballot in which they seek to secede from Los Angeles. That probably won’t pass. But the Western Canadian Provinces, in spite of what establishment conservatives and the left are saying, will be the first to declare some sort of autonomy from the central state located in Ottawa. In Canada, federalism is in trouble.
U.S. and Canadian establishment commentators, on both sides of the political spectrum, pooh-pooh the very idea of secession or separation. They don’t give the notion of autonomy or achieving a loose confederation of provinces or states a fighting chance. Invariably, they inform conservatives, libertarians or discontented Westerners in Canada and the U.S. that they will just have to try a little harder to get their people elected to local, state or federal office.
In a recent piece in the Washington Times, Arnold Beichman of the Hoover Institute decries Canadian conservatism as dead for generations to come. He believes the failure of the two Canadian conservative parties, the Progressive Conservatives and the younger Canadian Alliance, to form a coalition party dooms their chances to control the Canadian Parliament.
Our very smart people always believe it is always about getting elected. Seldom is it about reformation of government or re-establishment of republican constitutional principles, or allowing a region which has nothing in common with another region to have an amicable divorce. Seldom are elections about changing the direction of the collectivist state. The establishment answer is always the same, and that is to vote for Republicans.
But like deer caught in the headlights of a fast-moving SUV, Republicans spastically mutter “government shutdown of ‘95,” evisceration by the media, Newt as Scrooge. Time magazine covers and PBS stories about bureaucrats starving to death. Carville, Begala and Hillary – oh my. The great Republican silence fell like an andiron on a flea. The democratic left had found the key to shutting conservatives up and demonization of Republicans was it.
In the case of Canada, conservative American pundits suggest the formation of a coalition party in order to get a conservative government. The problem with that viewpoint is that, the trend nationally and internationally, is for all governments to evolve into nothing but different shades of collectivism and UN style globalism.
If Republicans choose, they can slow this historical trend in the United States. They can lessen its impact but they can’t turn the U.S.S Titanic away from the collectivist iceberg. The same holds true for conservatives in Alberta and the Western provinces.
Part of the reason for this failure is that the goals of our power establishment are “harmonization” of economies, which means worldwide central planning. Our very smart people subscribe to that view. When you throw in hyper-self-interested-unethical corporatism, the bastard child of free market capitalism, and call it “freedom,” real liberty does not stand a chance no matter who is elected to parliament or congress or sits in the White House.
Conservative control over the Canadian parliament or U.S. congress, so what? Even if a combined conservative party in Canada does win national elections, do the pundits and smart guys actually believe it will be anything but a short respite before the next leftist/collectivist government is elected once again?
A Canadian poll shows that 44 percent of Canadians would vote for a combined conservative party in the next election. Again I say — so what. An election means nothing unless there is the WILL to reform or change the entire system. Incrementalism in that regard, can not happen because the left won’t let it happen, the people gorging at the public trough won’t let it happen. No serious change is going to take place. Get over it.
Granted it is a far better thing to have conservatives or Republicans in control of policy, in the U.S. or Canada, (at least they slow the collectivist juggernaut down to some SMALL extent). But no amount of wishful thinking on the part of conservatives or libertarians will lead to overthrowing the leftist programs or individual feeding out of the government hand. Nor will it end the extension of power of unelected bureaucracy or the income redistribution which has been in place for decades.
Seventy-five years of the buildup of the Leviathan State is not going to change without extreme disruption to society.
It is going to come down eventually to a few unpleasant choices. There will be conservative/libertarian capitulation to leftist policies and social dogma, or the long twilight struggle against the policies of the left, against political correctness and collectivism will silently wither away. The other alternative is to accept the triumph of collectivism with the repression that would surely follow. Isolation and marginalization of any conservatives who will not convert. All one needs to do is to look at our universities or Cuba to find out how that will happen and how complete that silence and repression will be.
What is needed by conservatives is harsh realism. A decision must be made to separate because we have accepted our irreconcilable differences. We allow each other to live in peace without the constant struggle for control of our national destiny. Let us freely choose how we want to live even if that means a separation.
The Republic of Alberta
Western Canada is the size of Europe. It produces 52% of Canada’s fishery, forestry, mining and agricultural revenue with 27% of Canada’s population. Canada’s ENTIRE population is approximately the same as the State of California. Western Canada produces 90% of Canada’s oil, gas and coal.
Western Canada has a common language, and a direct interest in and access to Pacific Rim trade. There are only three provinces in Canada whose exports consistently exceed their imports in value: B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan.
After the conservative Western Canadian Alliance failed to do well in parliamentary elections last year, ” Canadian journalist Scott Carpenter remarked, ” While politicians from the Alliance and their direct supporters look forward to the next election, westerners are left with the stark realization that we must endure another four (and possibly eight) years of crushing taxation and creeping despotism under a Liberal majority. For the most part we can’t decide whether the light at the end of the tunnel got brighter (as Mr. Day would assert), whether it got fainter or indeed – if it simply went out altogether.
What is undeniable is that that which has traditionally gone undiscussed in the mainstream press, even in the West, is finally being given some serious airtime. What am I talking about you ask? Secession.”
The idea of Western Independence for Canadian provinces has been around since 1975. When Canadian Douglas Christie and others created the Independent Alberta Association. Christie wrote a letter to the Victoria, BC Colonist, which formed the Committee for Western Independence, in 1980, became the Western Canada Concept. The Concept basically was a modern Canadian version of the American Bill of Rights. (See www.aldenchronicles.com for the complete list)
Things came to a head for discontented Westerners in 1980, when Canadian leftist Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the liberals, inflicted the National Energy Program on Alberta and the other resource rich provinces. Simmering resentment over many issues was focused into that one issue. The resources and taxes of a single province were being redistributed to every province. Because of NEP, Alberta’s economy suffered greatly and it is only in recent times it has made a roaring come back.
Journalist Kevin Grace reported in an extensive article on the thrust of Western Alliance autonomy: “Albertans are not the wealthiest Canadians, but they are the biggest contributors to the cost of confederation. According to Alberta Treasury estimates…For a family of four, that amounts to $11,620. The federal government has taken almost $200 billion out of Alberta in the last 30 years. Not that the Liberals are grateful–Prime Minister Chretien says the province needs “tough love.” Well, push has come to shove, and a group of six prominent citizens has declared that Alberta is no longer content to be the cow milked by Ottawa to feed Quebec and Atlantic Canada.”
Since the early 80s, the resentment of the Western provinces has been coming and going in stages, rising and falling, including the rise and fall of new political parties. One conservative party or movement rises to be replaced by another that is up until now.
Who Is Stephen Harper?
Stephen Harper is the head of the Canadian Alliance party based in Alberta. It is the next in line of a series of Canadian Western alliances and political parties which became fed up with the imposition of Ottawa and Toronto’s will on all of Canada. Conservatives and the provinces are tired of a liberal Canada which demonize the very provinces that provide much of Canadian tax revenues. As it is, Stephen Harper may very well be the next Premier of Alberta after Progressive Conservative Robert Klein leaves office.
Harper was also president of the National Citizens’ Coalition (NCC). Along with Tom Flanagan, University of Calgary political science professor; Ken Boessenkool, former policy adviser to former treasurer Stockwell Day; Ted Morton, University of Calgary political science professor and Alberta senator-elect; Andrew Crooks, chairman of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation; and Rainer Knopff, University of Calgary political science professor, the six Canadians sent an open letter to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein. As one of them stated, The Alberta Agenda “is nothing less than the opening salvo in a campaign to make Albertans “masters in their own house.”
The letter from six prominent Canadians might serve as an outline for American conservatives as well.
It states: “During and since the recent federal election, we have been among a large number of Albertans discussing the future of our province. We were not dismayed by the outcome of the election so much as by the strategy employed by the federal government to secure its re-election. In our view, the Chretien government undertook a series of attacks not merely designed to defeat its partisan opponents, but to marginalize Alberta and Albertans within Canada’s political system.”
The Alberta Agenda is rather limited in scope and it is very practical. It is not a Canadian version of the Declaration of Independence. But it does amount to a warning shot fired by responsible thinking Canadians over the bow of the imperial one-size-fits-all government in Ottawa.
Much like American warnings fired over the British bow after the Stamp Act, the Coercive Acts and the Quebec Act, Americans issued verbal and written warnings which came from men like Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, and Samuel Adams. Fair warning to the British was issued that all was not well in the colonies. Along with the eloquence and political reasoning of a sympathetic Irishman named Edmund Burke, who spoke up for the American cause, all of it was roundly ignored by the British establishment.
Nothing changes because the establishment in Canada and the U.S. do not pay attention to cries for autonomy and justice for flyover country.
Alberta Agenda
*Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan to create an Alberta Pension Plan offering the same benefits at lower cost while giving Alberta control over the investment fund.” Opting out of the Canada Health Act would cost up to $700 million, quite feasible for a province that is reporting a surplus of $7 billion. (Equivalent to U.S. states or local government removing themselves from Social Security)
*”Collect our own revenue from personal income tax, as we already do for corporate income tax.” (In other words, Ottawa keep your grubby greedy hands off our money.)
*”Start preparing to let the contract with the RCMP run out in 2012 and create an Alberta provincial police force.” Creation of a provincial police would protect Alberta from the depredations of federal laws such as Bill C-68, the gun registry. (In the U.S. no more national police force like FBI, DEA, BATF to create a Ruby Ridge or Waco, no more gun laws like the Brady Bill.)
*”Resume provincial responsibility for healthcare policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts. If we lose, we can afford the financial penalties Ottawa might try to impose under the Canada Health Act.”
*”Use Section 88 of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Quebec Secession Reference to force Senate reform back on to the national agenda.”
Predictably Eastern reaction to the Alberta Agenda could be summed up by Toronto columnist Richard Gywn, who characterized western alienation as “somewhere between adolescent attention getting and a way of getting through the long winters…an intellectually bankrupt search for outside enemies.”
One of the proponents of the Alberta Agenda, Professor Tom Flanagan stated that the letter represents a realistic appraisal of the Alliance’s chances of coming to power. I don’t think it represents loss of support for the Alliance; I certainly continue to support it. But you’d have to be a moron not to see that the chances of the Alliance winning (national election) soon are not very great. But this isn’t really abandoning federal politics; it’s opening another front.”
Mr. Harper says, “Alberta has the wealth it has because of what it has done with its resources. Saskatchewan has an abundant resource base and has managed to take that and turn itself into not just a have-not province but one with no long-term prospects of growth whatsoever through a long-term series of government polices that drove industry after industry out and replaced them with incompetent crown corporations.”
“The reaction to our letter validates everything in it,” Mr. Harper declares. “I think to some degree the central Canadian Liberal establishment is frightened by what we’re saying. They must try and denounce the debate itself because they have no reply.”
Alberta’s conservatives view the Alberta Agenda as the last chance to maintain confederation with Canada. As Edmonton Journal columnist Lorne Gunter stated in an article, “we may be coming to the point where we have two incompatible visions of Canada: one held by the majority in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces and another held by the West. If this happens, western separation may occur quickly.”
As is typical of the left worldwide, the tactics of division were used to marginalize conservatives and the Western provinces. In the Grace article it was related that Prime Minister Chretien said he preferred working with easterners because westerners are “different.” Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan said that Canadian Alliance supporters–i.e. a majority of Albertans and British Columbians–are “Holocaust deniers, prominent bigots and racists.” A Liberal attack ad implied falsely that Alberta’s Bill 11 had gutted Medicare and that the Alliance planned to do the same nationwide.”
Leftists everywhere all think alike. As an example, shortly after the 2000 election, former Clinton advisor, Democrat and CNN pundit, Paul Begala, talked about the inhabitants of flyover country as the kind of people who dragged a black man behind a truck in Texas or killed a homosexual in Wyoming. Republicans were about starving old people and throwing widows and orphans out of their homes.
Ann Coulter’s recent blockbuster “Slander” catalogues numerous slanderous attacks by the left on conservatives.She has the dates, individuals, and statements by leftists regarding conservatives, Christians, and libertarians. In Canada or the U.S., free speech is only politically correct and not hate speech, when it is spoken, written, or put into law by the left.
The last Canadian election indicated to Canada’s Western provinces as well as its conservatives, that the East would not accept a western political party. Talk of Canadian autonomy and separatism began anew. That was true especially after Chretien’s comments that Albertans could thank Ottawa for their prosperity. Albertans, according to Chretien, needed someone from Ottawa to correct their bad attitude.
Chretien Does His Impression of Lord North and George III
The left in Canada thinks federalism means never having to say you’re sorry. It also means never having to ask the provinces for permission when you agree to sign a major treaty which will have devastating and long lasting effects on the economy and freedoms of those provinces.
After promising the Western provinces he would consult with them before agreeing to signing the Kyoto Protocol, King “George” Chretien told the gathered Euro-socialists and third world caviar eating bureaucrats at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, that Canada would sign the European socialist wet dream known as the Kyoto Protocol. American wannabe world central planner and insipid earth worshipper, former Vice-President Al Gore, immediately endorsed this action.
However, the rubes in the Western Canadian provinces are more than upset at the betrayal by Chretien. Many of them are saying that if Chretien stayed up all night trying to think up ways to hurry autonomy and separation along, he couldn’t have done a better job. After the imposition of the NEP by Trudeau in 1980, Alberta is in no mood to take another economic or political hit. Stamp Act and Boston Tea Party anyone?
Alberta Premier Robert Klein said Chretien smashed a promise by committing to hold a ratification of the [Kyoto]treaty vote BEFORE a meeting with the provinces. In the United States, think of the senatorial midnight meeting of Democrats led by Nevada’s Harry Reid to get the CARA (Conservation and Relocation Act) passed. That is the way the left operates. Their despotic ways and ideas can not stand inquiry or the light of day. It always requires sneaky obfuscation and back stabbing.
Alberta gained the support of Newfoundland and Labrador in opposing ratification of the Kyoto treaty.
The Calgary Sun reports, “Premier Roger Grimes said his province, expected to produce one-third of Canada’s light crude oil by next year, will pay a high price in terms of jobs and economic opportunities if the pact is ratified as is.”
Stephen Harper and the Canadian Alliance lent its support to Alberta. Harper stated, “I certainly will support whatever Premier (Ralph) Klein does to stop the agreement because I think it is a bad agreement for the country.”
Clarity and Common Sense
If the Canadian Alliance party, headed by a strong individual like Stephen Harper, unites around autonomy or secession for Alberta, Canada will become a loose confederation of states. That will happen in 15 years or less. But if Canadian conservatives or Western politicians cling to the delusion that they can take over the government in Ottawa and make major changes, they are dreaming.
I hope Canadians will forgive advice from an American. I would like to see autonomy for Canadians succeed. Therefore, Canadian conservatives must unite around a single goal and forget their differences. That goal should be autonomy for the provinces using the 1999 Clarity Act as a legal tool. While the Clarity Act was written as an outline for Quebec Secession, it will work just as well for the Canadian Western provinces. It may also serve as a tool and legal guide for U.S. states or regions at some time in the future.
When we all finally get fed up being treated like colonies of the coastal and urban city-states and the power brokers in D.C., the Canadians may lead the way to freedom for the rest of us.
It is most unfortunate, but in Canada and the U.S., federalism has become feudalism and that is the sad truth.
(The Free State movement started by a Yale Ph.D. spreads its influence and joins other secession movements in the U.S.)
Check out my Web site at www.aldenchronicles.com. To get in touch with me, please contact me at alden@newsmax.com
