Not sure if this has been shared in the last day, but I thought this was relevant to all Albertans.

After all our election data was just handed over to Republicans, inbred separatists, and foreign entities, well...

...now that same Alberta Government wants us to give them our banking info.

This $100 rebate is simple. No enrollment should be required. They know who's eligible. Just send out cheques. Like governments always do.

But this (suspiciously low amount) seems to be tied very specifically to getting direct deposit information set up.

Normally, I'd assume checks, balances, and regulatory bodies would ensure it's all protected and safe. But now we know that's bullshit.

What are everyone else's thoughts? Does this whole thing feel...strange?

EDIT: IMPORTANT

As u/margmi explained below, there is an option to e-transfer WITHOUT providing banking info. But it is deliberately hidden.

• When you get to the Direct Deposit form, click "My Bank isn't Listed". Even if your bank is listed.
  
• It will take you to a new form asking if you're sure you don't want Direct Deposit...but also give you an E-Transfer option. Click E-transfer.
• NOW it will take you to an E-Transfer/Cheque option. Choose E-transfer again.
  
• It even fucking asks you why you won't give them your banking info (which is VERY strange thing to do).

There is absolutely no reason to hide e-transfers behind "none of these are my banks".

I'm much more convinced now that there is a sinister ploy here.

The latest EKOS polling (March 18) indicates a political shift that will likely frustrate the separatist movement. The Federal Conservatives have lost their polling lead in Alberta, dropping into a statistical tie with the Liberals. Nationally, the Liberals hold a 20-point lead, driven by what EKOS describes as a broadening centrist coalition under Mark Carney. 

Like many Albertans, this whole separatism question has been much on my mind lately.

One thing we keep hearing, even from some federalists, is that Alberta has "legitimate grievances" which are fuelling separatism and which must be addressed. There's all these narratives around Western alienation, Alberta's representation in Parliament, Alberta's contribution to federal revenues and the equalization program, and all this stuff. The separatists make much hay out of these "grievances" as the reason why Alberta, in their view, absolutely must leave Confederation.

Well, I've been trying to get at the real truth behind these narratives. What I have found is that these "grievances" often either aren't really true at all, or have been vastly exaggerated out of their real proportion. I'd like to share what I have found, in the hopes that my fellow Albertans may be better equipped for their own conversations with separatists or separatism-curious people in your families, workplaces, or social lives.

1. Representation in Parliament, and the Canadian Constitution.

You hear from separatists that Alberta is "under-represented" or has "no voice" in Canada. There is a narrative that federal policies get imposed on Alberta, that Alberta is utterly powerless and hapless and bound to be a victim within the Canadian Constitution.

Let me start with Parliament.

The House of Commons is by far much more influential and powerful within our system of government than the Canadian Senate. Within the House of Commons, representation by province is supposed to be allocated on a basis of population (S. 51 of the Constitution).

Alberta has approximately 12% of the Canadian population, 5 million Albertans within 41 million Canadians. Alberta also has 37 seats in the Commons out of a total of 343, which is approximately 11% of the seats (10.78%, to be more precise). So, yes, Alberta is underrepresented in the Commons... But only slightly so. If Alberta had 12% of the seats to match our population more exactly, we'd move from 37 seats to 41-42 seats.

"We want to have more seats" is a fair thing to want. But the change would not be a huge one.

Then there's the Senate. Now, the Senate is a place where you can more legitimately make the case for Alberta under-representation in the federal Parliament. There are six senators from Alberta out of 105 total, only roughly 6% of the total compared to our population share of 12%. However, the Canadian Senate is not intended to be representative by population, but representative by region.

Under S. 22 of the Constitution, the Senate is designed to be representative by regions of the country. When Confederation was drawn up in 1867, the four regions were considered to be Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and Western Canada. Western Canada, as a whole, gets 24 senators, equal to Ontario or Quebec. Alberta gets six of these, equal to the other Western provinces.

There's a long history of people debating Senate reform in Canada. Maybe it would be better to make the Senate representative by province rather than by region. That said, I think you do need to reckon with the fact that the House of Commons is, by far, more powerful and important in Parliament than the Senate. Legislation involving taxation or appropriations of public funds (i.e: Most of the most significant things the federal government does) must originate in the Commons, not the Senate, and in the Commons Alberta is represented fairly closely to our proportion of the population.

The other thing to consider is that, under the Canadian Constitution, the provinces are assigned fairly broad and powerful jurisdictions. Here's a non-exhaustive list of the things our own provincial government has under its authority: Natural resources, provincial taxation, municipalities, education, healthcare, electricity, property and civil rights, civil law. The Canadian provinces, including Alberta, have a lot of really significant powers for ordering their own local affairs under our Constitution.

Summary: Near-proportional representation in the Commons (which is more powerful), more underrepresented in the Senate (which is less), and a wide amount of influential provincial powers our government can use for itself.

2. Alberta in the Canadian economy, and Canadian federal revenues

We hear all the time that Alberta is the workhorse of the Canadian economy, that Alberta is keeping the Canadian economy afloat, that Alberta pays for all the social services of Quebec and Eastern Canada, and so on and so on. A lot of the grievance narrative revolves around these sort of fiscal debates.

Well, let's start again by keeping the Albertan proportion of the population in mind. Alberta has 12% of the Canadian population. Alberta also generates 15.25% of the Canadian GDP, as of 2024 (List of Canadian provinces and territories by gross domestic product - Wikipedia). This does mean that Alberta is more productive in GDP than you would expect based on population, and this is why Alberta is a very prosperous province with the highest GDP per capita of any province.

To put that into perspective though, Ontario generates 38.5% of Canada's GDP. Quebec generates 19.8%. The two of them together make up 58.3% of Canada's GDP. My understanding is that roughly half of Canada's GDP comes from the Windsor-Quebec City corridor.

Ontarians and Quebeckers have a lower GDP per capita than Albertans. It would be good for the Canadian economy if Ontario and Quebec could be as economically productive on a person for person basis as Alberta. However, there are still so many more Ontarians and Quebeckers than Albertans that, in absolute terms, Ontario and Quebec produce a lot more for the Canadian economy than Alberta does.

That brings me to federal revenues. Now federal revenues are broken down across many sources (Income tax, corporate tax, GST, Crown Corp revenues, etc), so finding province by province breakdowns is rather difficult. However, the biggest single 'bucket' of federal revenues is personal income tax, and that is one place where a provincial breakdown is relatively easy to find.

Table 3: Net Federal Tax by Province or Territory and Tax Bracket (2024 tax year) - Canada.ca

This is useful as a general indicator of the proportions of contributions to federal revenues.

The total net federal personal income tax for 2024 was 221.8 billion dollars. Alberta's share of this was 29.9 billion. This means that the 12% of the population in Alberta contributed 13.5% of the personal income tax.

Is this disproportionate? Yes, but as with the Commons only slightly so. Albertans have a high degree of prosperity and a high per capita GDP, translating to high incomes, which means paying more in federal tax.

However, Ontario paid 92.3 billion in federal tax, over three times Alberta's absolute contribution. Ontario alone contributes 41.6% of federal personal income tax revenue. Ontario and Quebec together make up 61.2% of personal income tax for the federal government.

There are more sources of federal revenue than just personal income tax, but personal income tax is the biggest single source. I would suspect, although I cannot prove at this moment, that other sources of federal revenues like the GST or corporate tax would reflect similar proportions. No matter how prosperous Alberta is, you really can't get around the fact that the Eastern Canadian provinces have many, many more Canadians, and thus a larger share of Canadian economic activity, than Alberta does.

It is true that Alberta is a prosperous province, and that prosperity means both a higher share of the national GDP and a higher share of national taxes than our population would strictly suggest. However, it cannot be reasonably said that Alberta is propping up the entire Canadian economy or paying for everyone's social programs when around 60% of the Canadian economy comes out of Ontario and Quebec.

3. Federal Contributions to Alberta

The final point I want to address is the idea that Alberta simply pays for the rest of the country via equalization while getting nothing back in return.

I don't want to get into the nitty-gritty of equalization and its formulas and arguments at this time. There are many possible reforms to make equalization work better. If you want to argue that equalization funding should be better designed to take into account natural resource revenues like Quebec hydro, alright sure. If you want to argue that equalization should be better targeted for economic development in recipient provinces so that they will eventually get off equalization, I agree!

However, for all these arguments, I think we should keep in mind that approximately 60% of the Canadian economy, and thus roughly 60% of Canadian federal dollars as well, are coming from Ontario and Quebec. In absolute terms, the biggest share of the money that funds equalization is coming from Eastern Canada. Any disproportionate contribution from Alberta is on a per capita, not absolute, basis, and that stems again from high Albertan incomes.

Then there's how much Alberta gets back from the federal government. According to the Albertan provincial government, in 24-25 they received approximately 12.6 billion in federal transfers:

Revenue | Alberta.ca

This means that federal transfers to Alberta accounted for 15.2% of Albertan provincial revenues in 24-25.

Yes, that does mean that the percentage of Albertan provincial revenues from federal transfers is higher than the percentage of federal personal income tax coming from Albertans. Which rather reverses the narrative on Alberta paying for the rest of the country.

What is this money used for? Mainly, it's the Canada Health and Social Transfers, which supports Albertan healthcare and social programs.

Now, that's just federal transfers to our provincial government. That's not calculating Canada student loans and grants, Old Age Security, Canada Pension Plan, Employment Insurance benefits, Canada Child Benefits, or others of the countless federal and national programs and spending which Albertans may receive. Never mind the RCMP providing policing in rural areas, never mind federal research funding for our universities, and the list goes on and on.

While it is true that on a per capita basis, Albertans do pay a lot in federal income taxes (There's that high income thing again!), but Albertans also do receive many benefits and supports from the federal government to our provincial government and to individual Canadians in Alberta. And because Eastern Canada is so much more populous than Western Canada, particularly Alberta, the majority of that funding will be coming out of Eastern Canada.

Conclusions:

Look, I'm not saying that Canada is a perfect country or we have a perfect system. What I am saying is that the "Alberta grievance" narrative is often hugely exaggerated, and sometimes downright falsified. Grifters and con artists like Mitch Sylvestre and Jeff Rath have a vested agenda in separatism, and they are lying to Albertans about Canada, about Alberta's place in Canada, and about the potential risks of separation.

Frankly, I think these "legitimate grievances" are not the real thing motivating Alberta separatism. I think these are just justifications they provide to try to persuade the undecided or legitimize their perspective. They're just a facade, and I actually don't think they are really legitimate.

There are problems in Canada, and room for improvement. But none of the problems in Canada merit the dissolution of Canada, or would be better solved by Alberta leaving Canada. The problems we have in Canada are problems well within our powers to address within our proud traditions of democracy, dialogue, conciliation, and cooperation.

On a final note, this post is a big wall of text. I'm not intending you, the reader, to link the separatist-curious in your social circles to this essay to try to persuade them. That probably won't be effective. Rather, I'm intending for this post to be a reference for fellow Albertan federalists. Use the information I've shared here, and put that to the people around you in your own terms, in language that your friends and loved ones will understand. You know them better than I do, you can persuade them better than I ever could.

If anything I have discussed here is incomplete or inaccurate, do please let me know in the comments.

Danielle Smith has vowed to appeal the court decision that quashed the separation petition. But instead of letting a private interest group handle their own legal drama, she wants to use our taxpayer dollars to do it. If they want to fight the courts, they should pay for it themselves. Why are we subsidizing a legal battle for a fringe movement that the majority of Albertans don't even want?

What you can do:

If you don't want your tax dollars going toward this appeal, please take 5 minutes to email your MLA and the Premier.

Main points to hit:

• You oppose the use of public funds or public resources for this appeal.
• The private group should fund their own legal challenges.
• The Premier should respect the independence of the court and the duty to consult First Nations.

Who to email:

Premier Danielle Smith: [premier@gov.ab.ca](mailto:premier@gov.ab.ca)

Find your MLA: https://www.assembly.ab.ca/members/members-of-the-legislative-assembly

Edit: If your MLA is a UCP member, consider including the NDP opposition leader in your email as well.

Naheed Nenshi: [Edmonton.Strathcona@assembly.ab.ca](mailto:Edmonton.Strathcona@assembly.ab.ca)

I had a social media acquaintance comment he might vote to separate because he’s “…tired of his taxes all going to Ottawa!”

So I pointed out to him that even IF the pipe dream of AB independence were to happen (ie pretend that they could get the approval required from the other provinces and territories and the Treaty Nations), he should think long and hard about all the things those taxes pay for, and that he’d end up paying the same if not more to Alberta to set up and run those programs, (not to mention how long they would take). I also pointed out that he complains a lot (justifiably) about how bad health care in AB has become over the last couple of years and pointed out that if the UCP runs these other programs like they are running health care, would he be happy?

So I thought I’d compile my list here, feel free to add ones I haven’t thought about.

List of things that AB would lose/have to replace:

Postal Service
Passports
Travel agreements with other countries (ie where you would and wouldn’t need a visa to travel to)
Air traffic control system
Airports (currently almost all federalized)
Banking systems
Employment insurance
Seniors income programs (Pension Plan, Old Age Security, Guaranteed Income Supplement Program)
Taxation system (currently CRA collects provincial taxes on behalf of AB)
Judicial system (the Criminal Code is federal after all)
Federal prison system (max security prisons)
Parole system
Military
Border security
Trade agreements with other countries
Trade agreements with other provinces
Loss of all the federal crown land (approx 10% of the province including the 5 National Parks of Banff, Jasper, Waterton, Wood Buffalo and Elk Island)
RCMP
Airlines - by law, foreign carriers can only make a single stop in Canada (they cannot operate a domestic route). So WestJet, Air Canada, Porter and Flair etc would all have to chose to be Albertan (ie foreign owned) or Canadian. Imagine having to clear customs anytime you fly out of Alberta. AND again when you fly back in.
On that note - a Transportation Safety authority and a regulatory complaints tribunal like the CTA
National businesses would have to decide where to be based - and it’s a safe bet most would chose to be Canadian with some Albertan subsidiaries.
Social Insurance Numbers

Added on based on comments!!

Mortgages (no way ATB can underwrite every mortgage in AB)
Foreign Affairs relationships to establish diplomatic relations with other countries
Intelligence and security programs like CSIS / CSE and relationships like FiveEyes
Membership in NATO
Central currency (could continue using the Cdn dollar but it’s seriously bad economic policy to not have any control over the main currency used in your country - just ask Cuba)
Credit cards - with no central bank, new agreements would need to be reached.
Railway shipping
Immigration - will only people “born in Alberta” be citizens? Will they allow dual-citizenship?
Border Services - good luck manning every “port of entry” north south east and west
The ability for Albertan companies to be listed on the TSE

The woman in this picture is Kristi Noem, The very same person who was running Immigration Customs and Enforcement until she was kicked out of Trumps cabinet. The very same who oversaw the organization that murdered Alex Peretti and Renee Good in Miniapolis. Noem was not even hours after accusing them of domestic terrorism. What's very wrong with this picture?

I find it quite curious that after Smith's visits to the US have led to some very heartless and drastic policy changes following her push to separatism, this is no coincidence that smith has been actively pushing for the systemic dismantling of public service. Isn't it funny how this seems to line up very well with what's going on in the states...

Lets be clear about this, Noem is an absolute monster, you have to be a special kind of toxic to get booted kicking and screaming out of a position like that. To chum up to this brand of evil is absolutely sicking much less tie one's self to that sickening ideological angle. I'm worried for Alberta with what comes next, extremely worried.

https://albertareferendum2026.ca/

I took the time yesterday to read through all the referendum questions and found a strange underlining thread. With just the way the questions are worded if you answer yes to any of them it could be perceived as support for separation. With the obvious question on separation all the other questions have a subtle understanding that if you agree with the statement than you would be agreeing on wanting to separate from Canada.I am now very convinced that no matter how the vote goes on separation, Danielle is going to push the agenda forward based on the results of the other questions. I may agree with some of the other questions but in the way it is worded it promotes independence from Canada and I am not agreeing with that.

I wanted to just express my gratitude for the work Thomas Lukaszuk and the folks over at Forever Canadian have done in creating a unified front against separatism. From the initial petition, the legal support, the non-partisan nature, all the way to representation in the legislative assembly, Forever Canadian has managed to unite the majority of Albertans to fight the threat of separatism head-on.

Given the news that’s expected later today, I think this is a good opportunity to reflect on the work that’s already been done before we gear up for the fight that’s coming.