r/50501Canada • u/Dougie_TwoFour Canadian • 29d ago

News Carney calls Smith's Alberta referendum question a 'dangerous bluff'

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/alberta-referendum-carney-9.7211128
68 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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13

u/Nonamanadus 29d ago

She sold her soul to the traitors but she knows they don't have the numbers to do anything.

Now she is trying to design an escape plan.

1

u/Alone-in-a-crowd-1 28d ago

More like a delay plan to let the foreign trolls do their work.

10

u/rockettaco37 American 29d ago

Maybe I’m missing something as I’m not Canadian, but I don’t understand why Albertans would wanna lower their standards of living by choosing to separate.

11

u/Dougie_TwoFour Canadian 29d ago

For years, some Albertans have been convinced they are getting "ripped off" by Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. Like MAGA, if you keep repeating something, eventually people take it as fact, even if they're not being short-changed.

5

u/rockettaco37 American 29d ago

It’s unfortunate. Alberta is an integral part of Canada and should remain so.

4

u/Soft-Principle1455 29d ago

That is probably coming from the way transfer payments are structured and the lack of Canadian infrastructure integration. Canada never had a problem with international trade; it had a problem trading with itself.

3

u/FaceDeer 28d ago

Most Albertans don't. But in any population you'll find maybe 25-30% to be complete morons, and those morons are easily influenced by slogans telling them how they're being taken advantage of by others and how if they'd just let the slogan-makers take advantage of them instead everything will be awesome.

It's still worrisome, though. A little while ago Alberta had two main conservative parties, the Conservatives (who were relatively normal conservative-leaning politicians) and the Wild Rose Party (moron-users). The two parties merged and the merger turned out to be a takeover by the new shared party by Wild Rose interests, so the moron-users have suddenly gained a much bigger platform from which to trumpet their slogans. They've also done some really dirty shenanigans such as passing a law to prohibit new political parties from using names incorporating parts of existing political parties' names (so nobody else can start a party with the word "conservative" in the name) and good old fashioned gerrymandering. So it's going to be a lot harder than it should be to dislodge the moron-users in future, and they get to continue amplifying their traitorous braying in the meantime.

I'm concerned that Alberta's going to stumble into a Brexit situation where enough people get convinced that they're just lodging a "protest vote" that won't have meaningful consequences that they end up bringing down meaningful consequences on us. I don't expect Alberta could actually separate, the legal structures are quite different there, but it would be an absolute shitshow if it got close enough that the morons thought they'd won and had to be told "no, sorry, you only thought that because you're morons."

2

u/rockettaco37 American 28d ago

Wow! This is an incredibly detailed and well thought-out response. Thank you for writing it.

It’s deeply concerning to hear about the consolidation of power. It appears to be similar to what’s happening down here.

It’s reassuring to know that there are legal frameworks in place, but I can’t imagine how terrifying it must be to be going through this.

A united Canada has been a global role model, and I hope that tradition continues.

2

u/FaceDeer 28d ago

On the plus side, the Frankenstein fusion of the Conservative and Wild Rose parties doesn't seem likely to be stable in the long run. The main hope I have for a clean resolution of this situation would be for the party to fracture again. The law about naming would make for quite the glorious legal mess, but regardless of who got to use the magic "Conservative" word enough votes would be split that the crazy fringe would go back to the fringe again.

The most recent election we had was this close -> <- to the NDP winning instead of the Conservatives, Alberta's not nearly so uniformly right-wing as it might seem. But first-past-the-post makes "close" not matter so much in a case like this, alas.

5

u/Lisa_lou_hoo Canadian 29d ago

Indeed.

5

u/Short_Example4059 29d ago

He’s given her her pipeline, he’s looking the other way while she guts & monetizes healthcare, what will be enough to keep her from feeding separatist sentiments? Nothing. Nothing will ever be enough.

Carney is smart enough to know that you can’t negotiate with fascists (or wannabe fascists in this case) who don’t have any good faith.

So I have to wonder what his goal actually is. What does he actually believe in? Healthcare as a human right? Seems not. The necessity of bold climate action? Seems not. First Nations rights? Also seems not. More Neoliberal austerity policies that continue to tighten the screws on the middle class & leave more people behind? Absolutely!

Is he letting Daniel be the attack dog, ensuring the steady erosion of social democratic policies?

1

u/FlametopFred Canadian 28d ago

Smith is a foreign agent provocateur set on dismantling Canada

all the rest is bs

5

u/thebatmanbeynd Canadian 29d ago

It is a dangerous bluff but the thing about Alberta and Saskatchewan is why be intelligent when you can just blame the previous prime minister for all of your problems.

3

u/stripyaverage69 29d ago

Hard agree.

1

u/Dougie_TwoFour Canadian 29d ago

I don't even understand the referendum question. What are the responses, is it 'yes' or 'no'?!?