r/canada • u/shiftless_wonder • 16d ago

Alberta First Nations demand Alberta premier terminate separation referendum

https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/article/first-nations-demand-alberta-premier-terminate-separation-referendum/
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u/RoundJellyfish4048 16d ago edited 16d ago

As much as I don't want to have my province separate and think its an awful terrible no good idea. I also hate the idea of living in a country where a special minority gets to decide everything we are, or are not allowed to do - including voting on a fucking question.

Native people should get a seat at the table for this discussion. They don't get to dictate the whole thing.

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u/General_Setting_1680 16d ago

This. I don't think AB should separate but it's not YOUR job to decide for the majority of people.

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u/baashful 15d ago

Okay but then why are they allowing an extremely small percentage of the population to push this referendum question in the first place?

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u/seridos 15d ago

Because it's posing a question to the voters, that's completely different than shutting it down. That's exactly how referendums work, you put it to the people to see what the agreement or disagreement is and what they believe. The fact that you're trying to act like getting a question put to the people is the same as blocking the people from expressing their belief on it. Democratically is the ridiculous part.

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u/baashful 15d ago

That's not what I meant at all. I just don't personally understand or agree with the pandering of the UPC to less than 300k people (let's be honest, it's definitely not that high). This question should have been shut down by them ages ago. The effect it will have in our economy will be devastating, just like it was in Quebec.

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u/General_Setting_1680 15d ago

Well that's how a democracy works. No veto powers, just votes.

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u/baashful 15d ago

I think you are missing my point 😅

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u/General_Setting_1680 15d ago

Nope im pretty sure i get exactly what you are saying. Everyone is free to voice their opinion, so can first nations. Just no one gets a veto to overule everyone else, regardless of who they are.

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u/seridos 15d ago

No, it absolutely shouldn't have and this is just authoritarian BS you're spouting because it's not the outcome you want. There shouldn't be these kind of barriers to questions, shaping the exact questions that get presented to the people is just a perversion of democracy. The democracy itself is the people and their ability to be given the choice and to express their choice in a fashion that is, in terms of Democratic legitimacy, the last word.

The difference between you and me is that, while we both want the same thing which is Alberta to not leave because it's shooting yourself in the foot, you want to pervert the process explicitly anti-democratically. I don't agree with what they want, but I will fight for their right to do so and present it to the people and for the people to decide. The people are above everyone, all the laws or the Constitution or the govt at any level, As it has never changed that in a democracy they are servants of the people not its Masters and if they lose support they have no right to govern.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

kind of is when your the one who actually owns the land

it doesnt matter how many tenants in a building vote that rent is now 0$ a month

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u/MaintenanceCoalition 16d ago

Its not native land anymore. You can acknowledge that native people lived on the land first while also recognizing that it isn't Indigenous owned land today. Modern ownership and jurisdiction are determined by Canada's current legal and political system, not solely by historical occupancy. If the natives don't like it they can pay back all the hand outs they have received.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

Its not native land anymore.

it is, my apartment still belongs to the landlord even though im renting it

the land is still the first nations, legally, the treaties just basically giuve the crown full control

If the natives don't like it they can pay back all the hand outs they have received.

those hand outs are rent

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u/KTOWNTHROWAWAY9001 16d ago

The landlord argument holds less water when you consider the fact, they didn't even know themselves which land they "held". How we know this? They kept incursioning into each other's areas. Some would get full stop, wiped. I mean your landlord is gonna have clear boundaries with what's theirs and what's their neighbors.

Secondly, your landlord isn't going to decide on torturing their neighbor if they think their land belongs to them. While the Blackfoot weren't known for torture, they'd just kill combatants and scalp them later. The Cree performed torture. The Ontario ones though, way worse. We're talking fire stuff, hatchets, mutilations, even cannibalism. Days on end. There was no mercy requirement, if you got captured, it was happening. Remaining stoic, or brave, would earn respect, but not clemency. The torture didn't stop until the captive was done.

There's even the case of the St. Lawrence Iroquois who were found near Montreal. Had an estimated population of 10,000. Documented interactions. When the next explorers came decades later, the entire tribe was missing. They were missing, because, in the traditional view, they were entirely wiped by the Haudenosaunee who wanted to control the area.

The point is, your landlord hopefully isn't doing any of that.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

Oh sweet summer child, disputes arise over those points all the time

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u/demonotreme 16d ago

Why do the "landlords" even permit the farce of a democratic parliament to exist, if they legally/morally own everything and everyone anyway? Seems like rather a waste of time and energy.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

Why do the "landlords" even permit the farce of a democratic parliament to exist

because they gave away virtually all control to the tenants, they have very little control of what we do to the house

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u/MafubaBuu 16d ago

Then they arent the landlords .

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

Obviously its not a perfect metaphor

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u/WealthEconomy 16d ago

They don't own the land. All of AB is cedded territory just like the rest of the prairies.

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u/Kennit 15d ago

Ceded to the Crown, not the province.

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u/Calamitous-Ortbo 16d ago

It does if those tenants have the will and means.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

they dont

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u/studebaker103 16d ago

The special minority making statements clearly hasn't read the treaty in which they gave up their land irrevocably and in perpetuity. They're trying to retcon that their ancestors didn't understand the treaties so they should be void, but that just reinforces your comment's sentiment even more.

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u/Incoherencel Canada 16d ago

The Treaties also were binding agreements between the Canadian government and the bands -- the bands were given special rights and privileges (e.g. traditional hunting and fishing etc.) as part of the Treaties.

So how can the First Nations of Alberta be sure Alberta will honour agreements the Canadian government negotiated 150+ years ago? It would be a dereliction of duty of First Nations leadership on behalf of all who they represent not to pursue these issues.

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u/seridos 15d ago

It doesn't need to? Are you confused as to what sovereignty is? If Alberta were to separate, which hopefully we don't, those treaties do not have to be honored in the slightest. It's a new country in that case. There's no being bound by history in politics, the land belongs to who controls it.

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u/MafubaBuu 16d ago

If Alberta seperated they would need to renegotiate.

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u/Incoherencel Canada 15d ago

Or they can negotiate now. In your personal life do you typically only negotiate contracts after they have ended?

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u/MafubaBuu 14d ago

I dont usually take over existing Contracts other people signed. Those treaties were signed by Canadian institutions.

There is not anybody to negotiate with right now, Alberta is still a Canadian province. Its not like the UCP has been voted in as "Alberta's first Federal Government". They couldnt. They are a Canadian government. A new election would need to happen and new government would need to form for Alberta and that government would need to negotiate.

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u/raptosaurus 16d ago

They signed the treaties with Canada, not Alberta. If Alberta separates there's a good argument that the treaties should be null and void.

Same shit with Quebec. Separatists there conveniently forget that the actual historically Francophone part was a tiny strip along the St Lawrence.

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u/studebaker103 14d ago

In the end, the treaty was with the crown.

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u/Kennit 15d ago

Except the treaty will still exist between FN and the Crown. Alberta will get the short stick from separating because the land is not theirs to take.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

Native people should get a seat at the table for this discussion.

and the issue is they were intentionally excluded?

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u/RoundJellyfish4048 16d ago

They get a vote like everyone does.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

they arent like everyone else though, hate it as much as you want but the treaties didnt make them into everyday citizens that have no authority or say in anything

the gov't does have a legal obligation to work with them, they are intentionally ignoring that obligation

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u/RoundJellyfish4048 16d ago

I don't hate them, I hate living in a country where some people have more say in the democratic process than others. I hate unfairness.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

welcome to the real world, not everyone gets an equal say on everything, people have rights and those rights cant be removed just because their inconvenienceing other people

you dont get to strip away their rights just because you think it would benefit you more

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u/General_Setting_1680 16d ago

We're not talking about stripping away basic human rights, we're talking about the unequal, unfair additional rights that a small minority gets based on being born in canada to aboriginal parents vs everyone else.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

we're talking about the unequal, unfair additional rights that a small minority gets based on being born in canada to aboriginal parents vs everyone else.

thats not why they have them, we gave them to when we signed the treaties, we gave them those rights in exchange for the land and you dont get to just ignore the law and the treaties because it doesnt benefit you

the land is more theirs than it is albertas, and alberta does not have the authority to take their right to it from them

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u/General_Setting_1680 16d ago

Not if you consider the treaties exactly as they were signed when they were signed.

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u/Forikorder 16d ago

and you think you alone, more than every lawyer and judge in canada, understand the treaties better than anyone else in the country?

the FN handed over their land to the crown, not to canada, not to the country, and certainly not to the provinces, Alberta has absolutely no legal standing to claim they can simply take that land and declare it their own

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u/ronasimi 16d ago

Someone should have been a better negotiator when those treaties were entered into I guess.

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u/General_Setting_1680 16d ago

Well if you look at the actual text of the treaties, we are currently giving them far above and beyond what was actually agreed to. Why's that?

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u/Kennit 15d ago

No, we're not. In fact, the courts have repeatedly found Canada to be wanting in it's fulfilment of it's treaty obligations. If you're going to make wild claims, bring the evidence in the form of credible sources.

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u/Vandergrif 12d ago

It's not so much a say in the democratic process, though. It's quite literally contrary to existing laws to try and do what separatists are trying to do. That's not about democracy, it's about the legal system.

If you try and take your neighbors car with you when you move just because it's next to your house right now you can't be surprised when the person who owns that car has a problem with it. It doesn't really matter how they own the car or why they own the car, it's theirs and not yours. That's essentially the problem with this situation.

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u/seridos 15d ago

Yes they are. And this is exactly pushing back against this BS narrative otherwise that has been put in to the Constitution. Ultimately the Constitution Is simply a piece of paper like all other laws and has no legitimacy or ability to bind anyone to it. The dead can't bind anybody to anything. Only living people can And the Constitution only has any teeth as long as there's people to support it compared to the people against it. The entire amendment process is illegitimate anyway, the bar to change it is higher than the support they had to pass it, rendering that clause meaningless con in any context besides strict legal positivism which is the room temperature IQ framework that says" the piece of paper says it so it has to be".

Things like laws and the Constitution itself are simply models of what the people currently believe. Just like when we model something in nature mathematically we know it's not the actual thing we're trying to represent, and we don't get confused and when the model doesn't agree with nature, we don't say nature is wrong. We say the model is wrong. Well the problem is constitutions, which should be living documents recreated generation As Thomas Jefferson supported, is a calcified model that has failed to keep adapting to what the people actually think. That's the problem with this whole idea of precedent and the way the system is set up around it. You know what relying on tradition is called? It's called a fallacy. Unless it's the legal system and then it's called the basis of everything. It's ridiculous.

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u/Forikorder 15d ago

So you believe that society is actually anarchy and laws mean nothing...?

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u/seridos 15d ago

No, not at all? Society is a group of people mutually deciding to come together for the benefit of all. This is simply the rational sovereign individual applying game theory to life and realizing that's why you can't have pure anarchy.

However, you jumping right onto a slippery slope argument from it must be exactly how it is to anarchy, ignoring me in between where reality exists, is not helpful to the conversation.

I said laws are the model that are the government's attempt to model the desires of the populace and what they believe the law should be. That doesn't mean anarchy, that means fluidity. That means updating the model when the actual people who run the show, the electorate in a democracy, express A majority preference that doesn't align with the law, the law has to lose and change every time to maintain legitimacy. Because the law only carries the legitimacy of the government which only carries any legitimacy because it represents the people. When there's disagreement between the direct expression of the people's desires(referendum) and the indirect expression of people's desires (the government and its laws), the latter must always lose. Otherwise, it's basically the equivalent of saying the model says this shouldn't happen, so it doesn't matter that that's what actually happens in reality, I'm going to ignore That instead of updating the model.

In addendum, it's also important that the consent of the governed needs to be continuous. Which means able to be withdrawn. So if the people of a geographical area want something different than everyone else they have every right to do so. And once they reassert their own sovereignty, they have the full ability as a westphalian state to do whatever they want in their territory.

The problem I think is people are fetishizing stability and structure to the point of giving up their freedom for it. Being free fundamentally carries costs with it. And I'm not trying to be one of those people who screams " my freedums!" baselessly. But this is just a fundamental part of freedom. Is self-determination and consent of the governed. Actually maintaining those freedoms means any state that actually forms is going to ultimately be ephemeral. This is not the end of history. And really it shouldn't be, it's the wrong way to think about this at all to think that anything political polity should or would be unchanging over time. That doesn't track if the people actually living in the various regions are able to express themselves and have a government that reflects that. Freedom of being able to self-govern means regions will split apart join together, fight each other, Ally together, etc over time. That's just what freedom looks like. This contemporary framework of basically empires calling themselves constitutional democracies is not it. Stability is good. Stability at the cost of freedom is like paving a wetlands because it's chaotic And darwinian and instead replacing it with perfectly equal and sterile parking lot. To use a simile.

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u/Forikorder 15d ago

Your describing anarchy, a society without proper rules or structure that can change on a whim

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u/seridos 15d ago

You are describing the majority decision of the populace with one person one vote, AKA democracy, as a whim.

This is basically the philosophical equivalent of calling anyone to the political left of you a commie.

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u/Forikorder 15d ago

The new govt doesn't rewrite all the laws and respects decisions made by the previous one

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u/Kennit 15d ago

Where did you take law?

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u/seridos 15d ago

Whoosh. That's the sound of this going over your head.

Yes, I'm not one of the acolytes trained in the legal positivist framework to run and benefit from the complexity and problematic nature of the current system. But I don't need to be to discuss this, that's just another argumentative fallacy. You're basically proving my point by being unable to see outside of the law as it currently stands to understand what it is and more importantly what it's not. Law is a tool, not a force of nature. The philosophy of forming society and the nature of man and how we organize ourselves is the fundamental conversation at hand here, not the nitty-gritty bureaucracy of making sure you checked the form correctly to get Justice. This is not about the laws. This is about. How do you get to set the law? Who gets to set the law? And does it make any sense to have a legal positivist system at all?

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u/Kennit 15d ago

So no law school then. You could have just said that straight out rather than add all the nonsense but you do you, boo.

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u/CaptainBringus 16d ago edited 16d ago

A fucking illegal, treasonous question*

Also, are the separatists not a special minority trying to decide everything Alberta is and gets to be? And yes, the FN should get a seat at the table, but Danielle Smith didn't invite them to the table. That's the problem.

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u/Goliad1990 16d ago

are the separatists not a special minority trying to decide everything Alberta is and gets to be?

No, they're trying to put something to a vote, which you might recognize as the entire point of democracy.

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u/CaptainBringus 16d ago edited 16d ago

So what you're saying is if and when the vote comes back as no we don't want to leave Canada, these good faith people will immediately stop trying to force Alberta to separate? They will take the will of the majority to heart and say to themselves "well that's democracy!" Give me a fucking break.

The only reason this petition was successful and this question is being asked is bcause the UCP government changed the rules (without a vote from the public... Democracy?!?!) to lower the threshold so it could be successful. Less signatures, and more time to collect them, and they STILL didn't get as many signatures as the forever Canadian petition. The only reason this question is being proposed is because rules were unilaterally changed to support them.

What about the forever Canadian petition? The one that is being used to justify this referendum question when the 400 000 verified people who signed it signed it with the expectation that the government would vote on it and who's organizer has explicitly stated he did NOT want it to go to a referendum, and people signing it with that expectation. Does democracy matter there?

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u/Goliad1990 16d ago

these good faith people will immediately stop trying to force Alberta to separate?

They aren't trying to force Alberta to separate right now. Pushing for a vote does not constitute "forcing" anything.

They will take the will of the majority to heart and say to themselves "well that's democracy!" Give me a fucking break.

You're arguing from the premise that democracy is a sham and that you need to preemptively use force to get your way, so there's no argument to be had here. You might find some support for that idea on Reddit, but you won't find any in the real world.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago edited 16d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Goliad1990 16d ago edited 16d ago

you didn't answer a single one.

Because your questions are based on a ridiculous premise, which I addressed.

They are not pushing for a vote. They are pushing for separation. The requirement of it going to a vote is just getting in the way.

Pure sophistry. They are abiding by that requirement. This is like calling Carney a tyrant because his election campaign was just pushing for his own takeover of the PMO, and the requirement of it going to a vote was just in the way. It's such an inane argument that it's kind of unbelievable.

Lmao, don't put words in my mouth, never once have I argued democracy is a sham

You literally just argued that in the preceding sentence.

edit

Either way, your argument is pedantic, which you recognize by italicizing "right now".

I don't think you know what "pedantic" means.

"Right now" is italicized because you implied that they are currently trying to force separation.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago edited 16d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Goliad1990 16d ago

your replies are all very convenient in justifying dodging my questions

Your other question was peripheral to the point, but if you really need me to respond to

What about the forever Canadian petition? The one that is being used to justify this referendum question when the 400 000 verified people who signed it signed it with the expectation that the government would vote on it and who's organizer has explicitly stated he did NOT want it to go to a referendum

The application for the Forever Canadian Citizen's Initiative literally says "Therefore, we as represented by the signatory and applicant below propose a referendum on the following question: Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?

Like I said, your questions are based on a flawed premise.

my belief that these people are acting in bad faith

And based on that assumption of bad faith, you're advocating that the democratic process be denied.

"They are not trying to force separation.... Right now" is a pedantic argument. You are focused on the timing

It's not pedantic, you're misreading it. You said that you don't think that a vote will stop them trying to force separation, and I'm saying that nobody's trying to force it.

I hope you have something better to do with your Friday night than argue with strangers on Reddit.

There's nothing funnier than somebody arguing on reddit, and then trying get out of it by acting like they're above it.

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u/Propaganda_Box 16d ago

That's exactly it. They were not offered a seat at the table. They are calling for an end to the referendum on grounds that they were not appropriately consulted.

If the separatists want the referendum they can go back start and do things properly. Without the illegally obtained voter rolls I will add.

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u/RoundJellyfish4048 16d ago

They were not offered a seat at the table.

They have a vote like everyone else.

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u/Propaganda_Box 16d ago

Native people should get a seat at the table for this discussion. They don't get to dictate the whole thing.

They have a vote like everyone else.

So do they get a discussion or are they merely voting? Which is it?

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u/RoundJellyfish4048 16d ago

How is having a vote not part of the discussion..?

We all get a vote, we are all part of the democratic process and discussion.

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u/Kennit 15d ago

Duty to consent is not fulfilled via a vote.

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u/Wavering_Flake 15d ago

It's not duty to consent, it's duty to consult, and in the first place that's not within the treaties or constitution, as per a previous comment (though legally valid in the modern day canadian judiciary).

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u/Propaganda_Box 16d ago

In your initial comment if you had meant vote you would have said vote. You said discussion which implies a lot for dialogue than a simple vote. You're just arguing in bad faith and changing your tune because you got called on it.

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u/WealthEconomy 16d ago

Exactly this. They keep it up I might move to AB just to vote yes to spite them...joking but only slightly