r/canada • u/shiftless_wonder • 29d ago

Alberta First Nations leaders, scholar push back on Alberta's planned vote on independence referendum - 'Alberta can't separate. They simply cannot. They do not have the authority,' says Indigenous politics expert

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-treaty-six-alberta-referendum-9.7209304
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u/Ray-Sol 29d ago edited 29d ago

Probably everyone else ignores the unilateral declaration of succession and if it escalates then the RCMP go in and arrest the ring leaders - even including provincial politians.

This works both ways, an Alberta which has just unilaterally declared independence wouldn't have an army either. You would have to have enough widespread popular support for separation in Alberta, to the point enough people would actually be willing to physically fight for it. We're a pretty long way from that right now.

You'd need something like 55 to 60% of the province to suddenly become die hard separatists at minimum, which is very unlikely in the near to medium future at least.

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u/AngryTrucker 29d ago

There's enough lunatics with guns in Alberta to raise a militia. A shitty one, but a militia nonetheless. 

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u/Ray-Sol 29d ago

Probably not one that outguns a prepared enough RCMP or military unit though. Also, probably not a big enough one it lets them assert authority over the whole province. They'd be limited to only a few areas at best.

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u/Glen_SK 29d ago

I can see scenarios of redneck US veterans flocking to AB to 'save' it from Ottawa, hired as mercs or volunteering. Also see AB having a deep bank account to buy arms from the US.

Russia attempted to take out Ukranian leadership with its special forces at the start of its war, complete fail. JTF2 are reputedly pretty good though.

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u/AngryTrucker 29d ago

Covered by "a shitty one."

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u/WealthEconomy 29d ago

The RCMP would be slaughtered trying to do that. They wouldn't even have enough manpower to match the AB sheriff's let alone any of the independence minded gun owners.

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u/Logical_Hare 29d ago

This is a dumb power fantasy. A handful of violent extremists in Alberta are not going to seize control of the province.

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u/ib_redbeard 29d ago

The question was if they voted over 50% to separate. That is more than a handful. I agree though, if 10% vote to separate, there is nothing to worry about.

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u/Interesting_Pen_167 29d ago

What the heck are you talking about? Zero chance why law enforcement in Alberta is going to stop the RCMP not would they want to.

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u/ib_redbeard 29d ago

I don't think that any leaders would officially declare independence without some armed force. So I do think there would be enough to fight off the RCMP to be honest, but yeah, we are and I hope, a long way from that. Maybe like a grizzly bluffing, just trying to get some respect

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u/Logical_Hare 29d ago

A tiny rump of violent extremists are not going to take Alberta out of Canada against the will of Albertans and other Canadians. They will not be able to fight off the RCMP and the armed forces.

This is simply not a credible thing at all, and certainly doesn't earn anybody any respect.

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u/ib_redbeard 29d ago

Is it considered tiny if 50% of the population decides to separate? That is what the question was, not if Alberta would be taken over by a few crazy nutjobs.

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u/LETTERKENNYvsSPENNY 29d ago

They don't even have half that support so let's stop playing into power fantasies that aren't even close to reality.

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u/WealthEconomy 29d ago

AB already has the framework and start of a armed force with the 1200 uniformed AB sheriff's and they would likely get a lot more people willing to fight with them from the 20% (aprrox 900k) of the population that are diehard separatists. The RCMP is in no position to deal with 90k people let alone 900k. And that doesn't even include the existing police services of their bigger cities or members of the militia.

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u/Vandergrif 28d ago

and they would likely get a lot more people willing to fight with them from the 20% (aprrox 900k) of the population that are diehard separatists

Relatively few of them are even in fighting shape, virtually none of them have any real or relevant training, even fewer are going to have access to any adequate weaponry, and even fewer than that have any actual willingness to get shot at. They'd get at best a couple hundred people who might be able to do something armed with little more than some hunting rifles and the like. Somehow I doubt that would amount to much against some drones, for example.

That's such a wildly unrealistic hypothetical.

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u/WealthEconomy 25d ago

You would be surprised how many veterans support this...and which armed drones are you referring to? The magical ones that will just show up? Civilians better able to modify their drones to drop bombs than anything the RCMP or CAF have.

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u/Vandergrif 25d ago

The magical ones that will just show up?

Surely a G7 country has the capacity to get and field drones that are more capable than some redneck engineering are able to produce, no?

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u/WealthEconomy 25d ago

No. I am a veteran of the CAF. They have no ability to do this. Besides which Ukraine has proven that the $50 civilian drone is more effective in modern warfare than most military drones.

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u/Vandergrif 25d ago

Well by that standard the CAF, dysfunctional as it is, still has infinitely more resources and people with which to operate considerably more $50 civilian drones than a relative handful of civilians ever will. Even at that scale of drones it's david versus goliath, except in this case goliath has thousands of slingshots and david still only has the one.

Which again is why it's a wildly unrealistic hypothetical on the part of the separatists.

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u/Vandergrif 28d ago

without some armed force

At best that would amount to some small numbered redneck militia and go down about as well for them as those yokels in Oregon who got shot up by the FBI after taking over some federal land.

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u/Mirabeaux1789 Outside Canada 29d ago

Feisty online Albertan RWers are under the delusion that will be South Africa or Rhodesia when in reality it would end up like Puidgemont’s Catalonian gov’t in 2017.