Canadian Separatism and the United States

Canadian Separatism and the United States

Photo by Praveen Kumar Nandagiri on Unsplash

There is something new come up around here. Alberta Separatists who want independence from Canada. It’s been talked about for a while but recently has been getting more support from the Alberta (conservative) government.

It’s not clear whether the goal is actual independence or joining the United States. Think of it as our version of Brexit. We all know how that worked out for the U.K.

If I was paranoid I would look for the U.S. to fund Alberta’s separatist movement in Canada the way the Russians did the separatist movement in Ukraine. We know Trump sees us as the fifty-first state and would love to see Canada collapse so he can pick up the pieces and besides, it’s typical superpower behaviour.

In Ukraine there was a small separatist movement in Donbas near the Russian border. Russia sent money and agents and the separatists took over the government declaring independence in Donetsk and Luhansk. Then there were votes under the watchful eye of Russian troops declaring they wanted to be part of Russia.

”The U.S. has declared a form of information warfare against us. They’re going to use everything that they can to destabilize our country, to disrupt us, potentially to break us apart in order to execute on their national security strategy,” Patrick Lennox, a former RCMP intelligence manager said.

”You can see artificial intelligence being used to drive narratives about Alberta being almost like Texas,” he said, “Memes and other AI-generated nonsense that suggests there’s a large Texan immigrant population in Alberta that’s yearning to be free.”

“Separatist social media messaging aims not only at an Albertan or Canadian audience, but also at persuading a U.S. audience that Albertans are oppressed and really do want out. If conflict ever did arise, outside audiences might be more likely to see it as a dispute between Canadians, rather than a reaction to foreign interference,” said Maria Popova, a political science professor at McGill university.

I got these quotes from an online CBC news article and they worry me. Superpowers are always ready to interfere in other people’s countries because, hey, there’s no point in being a superpower if you can’t run the world.

We still don’t trust the U.S. and it would be so easy for them to do. Pierre Trudeau (elder) used to warn that the U.S. would treat Canada just like it treated Guatemala if it was in their interests.

We feel like the U.S. looks at us the way Epstein looked at a twelve year old. Easy prey.

I think of Brexit and how easily a simple vote can ruin things. In the new age of colonialism called for by the United States there are no places left untouched by old colonialism so obviously it must involve taking over existing countries. Trump has claimed that North and South America are his sphere of influence, which is to say, his control. America has a veto over who forms government or what the government’s policies are in the Americas. That means Canada too.

The bottom line is that we can’t trust the U.S. Europe can’t trust the U.S. Central and South America can’t trust the U.S. We are all dependent on the great powers feeling benevolent, deciding that today they’ll not go after your country because they will be too busy taking over someone else’s.