Democracy is not who yells the loudest

Sherbrooke Record · 20 hours ago

by Matthew Mccully · Commentary

Tim Belford

So, a very noisy minority of Albertans are sticking with their drive for ‘independence.’ Frankly, the idea seems to me about four bricks short of a load.

I’ve never lived in Alberta but I’ve been there several times and been struck with the startling beauty of Banff and the majesty of the mountains. Both Edmonton and Calgary are cities that I could see myself living in and I always felt quite at home. This, then, is the first problem with the separation idea. I think of Alberta as part of MY country.

The malcontents that think they’d be better off with their own land-locked nation, or, heaven forbid, as a state in Donald Trump’s empire to the south, are frankly out of their mind.

Why do they want this in the first place? We’ve heard the complaints about Alberta being ignored by central Canadian elites while their own industries and social concerns go un-heeded. We’ve seen the protests against the lack of control Albertans have over their own lives and how deaf Liberal governments have been over the years.

On the other hand, poor, ‘ignored’ Alberta has somehow managed to rise above the totally unfair strictures of federalism to become probably the richest province, per capita, in the nation. Albertans have the lowest taxes, a decent healthcare system and the right to complain. What they don’t have is the right to pack up and walk away.

Unfortunately, this noisy minority also appears to be quite Trump-like in its black or white, good or bad, Christian or not, set of rules. To them the Canadian Constitution is nothing more than a mere irritant to creating a society that would be free of offending books, sex education for the young, gay marriage, foreigners and anyone who wasn’t happy with the sex into which they were born.

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