Globe: Why we should stop taking Alberta separatism seriously

[border_humper]

https://archive.is/2026.09.21-111429/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-we-should-stop-taking-alberta-separatism-seriously/

Canada’s leaders need to stop dignifying Alberta separatism by taking it seriously. Alberta is not the kind of thing that has a right to secede, and it won’t.
Under international law, secession is an act of self-determination, which in turn is a right enjoyed by “peoples.” Peoples are groups of individuals with a common identity grounded in culture, tradition or sense of kinship who share an origin story, a collective historical narrative and typically a language, a value set and a belief system.
In seeking to exercise a right of self-determination, peoples have variously sought a state of their own (Palestinians), detachment from one state and attachment to another (Sudeten Germans), a greater degree of autonomy within an existing state (Scots) or deeper integration with an existing state (Falkland Islanders). Secession applies when the people in question is already under the jurisdiction of an existing sovereign state from which it seeks to separate for the first or second purpose. Because international law strongly favours stability and the territorial integrity of states, it limits the right of secession to extraordinary circumstances: namely, decolonization, alien subjugation and (arguably) apartheid.
Albertans are not a “people,” because Alberta is not an ethnographic construct. It is an administrative unit, created in 1905 by an act of Parliament for the purpose of providing effective governance over a more or less arbitrarily delimited space within an evolving Dominion of Canada. Administrative units have no right of self-determination. If they did, Calgary and Edmonton would have one, too.
Even if Albertans did qualify as a “people,” international law would still deny Alberta a right to secede. Albertans aren’t colonized, subjugated or victims of apartheid. (Alberta’s First Nations, in contrast, are peoples who enjoy a right to self-determination and could probably mount a pretty good claim to a right to secede if they wanted to.)

Despite the fact that Quebec has no right to secede unilaterally, it is at least plausible to say that French-Canadians have a right to self-determination, because they certainly qualify as a people.

Shut up, Albertans, globalists have made you no longer a people.

 

[brutana_dilewski]

I detect some passive-aggressive dehumanism in that article.

 

[Nuremburger]

Shut the fuck up, cunt. More than 100 new countries have been created since Alberta was formed.

By these smooth brained standards how could a new country EVER come in to being? A people can be identified by common characteristics and shared beliefs and culture. And nearly 50% of feather Indians hate the federal government enough to leave it behind forever. You don’t speak for them.

The level of vitriol and hate I feel for these pretentious government scrote-suckers is completely reciprocal.

 

[Trudeaus coke dealer]

When they say you are not a people it's because they are trying to erase you. Every people deemed not a people by the state should seek freedom by any means necessary, they intend to kill you and their words betray that fact.

 

[Nuremburger]

Indeed. Merge with the borg or die.

 

[dagthegnome]

First they ignore you.

Then they laugh at you.

Then they fight you.

Then you win.

 

[Koba]

If you guys read the tabloid journalists who represent the canadian intelligentsia, you'll see their vision of canada is very out of touch with what people think. It's all soundbites and smoothbrained thinking average people don't believe in

 

[border_humper]

It’s laugh out loud funny and immensely frightening at the same time. I didn’t read article comments, but I bet 2/3rds are supportive of such a cracked thesis.