Picopium The 69th

@jkenney In the event of an UDI, the Canadian government has an obligation to protect the rights and dignities of millions of loyal Canadians in Alberta from their rogue and seditious government.

One of my all time favourite separatist arguments. 👌 The UN will come to Alberta’s defence! UN blue helmets will be dispatched to BC to force the construction of pipelines! And this comes from folks who believe the UN is irredeemably corrupt, and see a “globalist” plot hiding behind every tree. 🤯

Brilliant! 🤯 We block everything that we import from the Pacific, creating a huge supply chain crisis in Alberta, while also inviting a blockade of all Alberta exports to the West, including grain, lumber, minerals, etc. Our friends in Saskatchewan will be delighted when they become collateral damage in your economic war, ending their potash & ag exports. Just endless three dimensional strategic genius coming from you separatists!

Of course it would not be in the commercial interests of the federal government to suspend shipments on Trans Mountain (TM.) But that’s not the point. The point is that in a worse case scenario, such as an Alberta unilateral declaration of independence (UDI,) Canada would have enormous leverage, including the ability to block Alberta energy exports. This is most obviously the case re: federally-owned TM. Apart from their ability to reduce or stop shipments, do you really think the federal or BC governments would continue to advance Trans Mountain optimization, which is currently the best bet that we have for increased egress? Do you really think the federal government would maintain its MOU commitment to support the construction of a de novo West Coast pipeline? Even if it wanted to, federal paramountcy over interprovincial pipelines, grounded in 92(10)(a) would cease to exist following secession, so BC governments could find ways to block operation or construction of pipelines going through their territory, with Alberta having no recourse to Ottawa. Currently all of our pipelines exports to the US pass through other Canadian provinces first. That includes the incomplete KXL route, which passes through Saskatchewan. Since the Republic of Alberta would be starting without an equivalent to the 1977 Canada-U.S. Transit Pipelines Treaty, Ottawa could also suspend the operation of those other pipelines, e.g. the Enbridge Mainline. Canada and BC could also extract further concessions (eg tolls or tariffs) in order to allow Alberta natural gas to feed into the growing number of West Coast LNG terminals. Separatists respond to these realities by saying “don’t worry - we’ll build pipelines to the US and export from there!” First of all, who is “we?” What companies are going to risk tens of $ billions to spend years building a new system of pipelines in the midst of such massive political and legal uncertainty, including the risk of a Biden style abrogation of pipeline permits by the US? Secondly, the separatists seem completely unaware that the left wing US West Coast governments have effectively blocked the export of carbon intensive fuels from their ports. That’s why US produced thermal coal is exported from the Port of Vancouver, BC. Strange but true: Canada’s West Coast ports are far friendlier to hydro carbon exports than West Coast US ports! All of this (and much more) effectively gives Ottawa the clear upper hand in prospective negotiations over everything, e.g.: -debt allocation; - valuation & sale of federal assets (such as military bases, RCMP facilities, federal lands, including airports, etc.;) - allocation of CPP assets; - continuation of OAS / GIS benefits; - termination of citizenship; - visa and work permit exemptions for Albertans travelling to Canada; - export access to the Canadian market; - partition of Alberta per the predictable demands of democratic majorities in Edmonton, Calgary, Indian Reserves & elsewhere;) - support for or blockage of Alberta’s accession to critical international bodies & treaties, like CUSMA, or IATA to allow for international flights, etc.; and - countless other issues. I agree that exercising its massive leverage in such a scenario would be damaging to Canada. But it would be far more damaging to Alberta. Whatever grievances Albertans have with Ottawa cannot be remedied by becoming a landlocked statelet. The vast majority of Albertans know this. It is beyond absurd that we are going to spend the next several months, and possibly years to come, arguing endlessly over this.

@comedicanadian The Tory party is there I guess

Alberta needs a new centrist party, badly. Alberta Party, where you at?

@Pretty__G Edmonton should separate from Alberta

It’s almost like YEG is continually punished for being the smartest in the room ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@yfcherries Do you really want the government to be talking about climate change right now? I’m not sure that will help come October 19.

i do not like this man

This entire social media platform only exists to destabilize and destroy western countries, lol. It’s become so plainly transparent it’s pathetic.

Democracy also requires that all Canadians have a say when a fraction of the electorate in one part of the country tries to break Confederation. And democracy requires that in the event of an actual attempted separation, the parts of the province that don’t want to leave Canada, such as, oh, say, the cities of Calgary and Edmonton, remain part of Canada. If Canada is divisible, then Alberta is divisible. But none of this is about democracy. Democracy is not a free floating concept. It operates within existing institutions and social constructs. Separatists aren’t engaged in a democratic project, they are proposing a revolutionary act of constituent power. Democracy is the wrong lens through which to view attempts to break up a country in the absence of genuinely inhumane conditions or systemic oppression. And as much as I agree enthusiastically with many separatists’ grievances with Ottawa (and other provincial governments), this is not that.

“he’s using Trump’s threat to annex Canada as a cover to increase military spending to 5% of GDP, not because of Trump’s actual real repeated threat to us, but because he wants to wage war with Russia”

Farmers are far more evil than people who build data centres.

I'm sorry is the raping and murdering too heckin far for you, mister "Be a barbarian"?

It’s the reason we can’t have private clinics work alongside our free healthcare system (they do this in Australia and Europe and it works great) it’s the reason we can’t build data centres. So many people have American politics shoved down their throats it makes me cry.

People still think AI data centres are just “big server buildings.” They’re actually necessary foundational economic infrastructure. AI, automation, research, logistics, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and government services will all increasingly depend on compute power. The regions with abundant energy, land, fibre connectivity, and AI infrastructure will have a major advantage in the next economy. A lot of people will oppose this simply because they don’t yet understand what’s coming. We can’t afford to screw this up because of ideological opposition to growth, industry, or infrastructure that typically permeates out of the DTES grifters. The future economy will reward regions that build, adapt, and compete. BC and Vancouver should be at the forefront.

@TheChaosWeeber Maybe we should allow our largest export, oil to be exported to countries other than the United States. Perhaps by a pipeline to the pacific coast🤔

You’re on a roll Avi

No one should take this claim by Lewis at face value. Journalists must ask him what evidence he has that streamlining project permitting processes as proposed by the Carney government will result in “ecological disaster”. He will not have a rational answer.

“We got raped”

@futbolnoob No it isn’t when there’s going to be an independence referendum in ab this fall.

A windfall tax is a pretty reasonable proposal in our current environment, why are they acting like he’s quoting Marx lol

@TheChaosWeeber He was not better at policy. He massively fucked up immigration, at the same time as letting the housing crisis get worse.

Trudeau was better on policy but he was horrible at advertising it and terrible at being a people person

This level of third worldism should get you kicked out of the OECD.