‘My Alberta is part of Canada,’ says Premier Notley in answer to separatism issue.

70% of those polled in province oppose break

Premier Rachel Notley knows exactly where she stands on this Alberta separatism thing.

“I say that my Canada includes Alberta, and my Alberta is part of Canada,” she says in a year-end interview.

“We have an obligation as political leaders to find a solution. We absolutely have to find a solution.

“Nobody wins in the (separatist) scenario ... what we need to do is continue to push the federal government to get the job done and we have to show leadership in Alberta to get the job done.”

Notley is on the right side of today’s polls. They show that nearly 70 per cent of Albertans oppose the idea of separation from Canada, and most say it vehemently.

It’s still remarkable, though, that nearly 25 per cent of those surveyed had a positive attitude toward separation.

Separatist feeling is a persistent theme in Alberta history when national conflict flares. A separatist party, Western Canada Concept, won a legislature seat and 12 per cent of the provincial vote in 1982.

But it’s often a fleeting fancy. After capturing the Olds-didsbury byelection that year, Gordon Kesler lost in the general election only months later.

No matter what the provocations — and they are wildly exasperating today — the separatist idea always founders on impracticality.

Alberta’s biggest modern frustration is lack of access to tidewater. There’s not much hope that separation would bring an ocean any closer. It would, however, make negotiations for ocean access a great deal more difficult.

As a province, Alberta now has legal and constitutional access to every coast, no matter how theoretical that seems at the moment.

As a country, however, Alberta would have no rights at all. They would need to be negotiated all over again — with Canada. Wouldn’t it be fun to beg British Columbia for access to a port, with no support from Ottawa?

The province best built for separation is not Alberta. It’s not even Quebec, which is welded into Confederation through an ancient mesh of programs, benefits, compromises and concessions.

Rather, it’s B.C. that has the real advantages for independence — ocean access to the world, proximity and friendship along the U.S. Northwest coast, abundant resources, a hammer lock on passage of resources to its ports, and a tough local nationalism born of early history as a Crown colony.

B.C. is already acting like a country-in-waiting as it seeks control of bitumen flow through its territory by pipeline, rail or truck, while planning to build a gigantic liquid natural gas terminal and pipeline with no national oversight.

The federal Liberals never like to see separatist feeling rise in Alberta. It always concerns them to the degree that they shake their heads, send some money and wait for it to fade.

But if B.C. ever started talking separation, Ottawa would freak out. You would see plane loads of federal ministers flying over Alberta, laden with cash and concessions beyond Quebec’s wildest dreams.

Despite all this, we should never imagine that Alberta is powerless in Confederation.

Every federal cabinet minister with a functioning brain recognizes that without Alberta’s resources, revenues and taxes, this whole country would suddenly face a massive deficit, rising debt, weakened services and lower standard of living.

But it’s also not clear how much those resources would help an independent Alberta, because the challenges of moving them to market would be far greater than they are today.

There’s also the fact that under the 1998 Supreme Court ruling on the federal Clarity Act, secession of any province is possible but extremely complicated, far more than a simple matter of passing a referendum.

For all those reasons, even public figures who foment separatist feelings don’t actually advocate separation.

“I do not believe independence is the answer today, but the status quo is unacceptable and merely complaining about it not enough,” says Derek Fildebrandt of the Freedom Conservative Party, which plans rallies on the theme “Equality or Independence.”

Similarly, celebrity investor W. Brett Wilson says: “My first choice is to renegotiate Confederation. My second choice is to leave Confederation.”

The difficult challenge for any Alberta premier is to change the national environment so that Alberta’s resources are welcomed rather than shunned.

Notley says: “We have to make sure there is no federal leader no matter what party they’re in ... that actually believes there is a path to leading this country that is in any way ambivalent or hostile to supporting a sustainable oil and gas industry.”

To those who talk of independence, Notley says, “I get the frustration and anger, trust me.

“I also get the worry and the anxiety, because for a lot of folks who are frustrated and angry, it’s paired with the fact that they’re unemployed or underemployed.

“All I’m saying is that as gratifying as it might be to make the threat (of separation), it is not actually the path to the solution.”

There’s certainly plenty of frustration yet to come.

Notley does not expect the Trans Mountain pipeline to be under construction before Alberta’s 2019 spring election.

“It’s more likely to be the fall, in terms of the decisionmaking process and the time it will actually take.”

She says there’s still a great deal that Ottawa isn’t able to do until the National Energy Board issues another certificate for the pipeline.

After that, “my ask of the federal government is that they put absolutely every single one of their best people on it, that there is one desk with nothing else on it except that file, and that they put every single resource into that file that it needs to have, and they put more in to make sure they get it right — and then right again, and then more right.”

Popular anger and even separatist pressure can help a premier with an argument like that. When a quarter of the provincial population is ready to consider independence, there is a genuine problem.

But is independence a real prospect? We’re a long way from that day.

NOBODY WINS IN THE (SEPARATIST) SCENARIO.

GAVIN YOUNG / POSTMEDIA NEWS “All I’m saying is that as gratifying as it might be to make the threat (of separation), it is not actually the path to the solution,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley told Postmedia in a year-end interview.