[A note to American readers: Alberta is Canada's energy province; Danielle Smith is the premier of Alberta and leader of the United Conservative Party [UCP]; Mark Carney is the Trump hating progressive prime minister of Canada; Ottawa is the capital of Canada and the people there act as if they think Alberta is a colony of rich rural yokels to be exploited at will.]

The Alberta provincial government just passed "Bill 2: The Back to School Act" to end a three week strike by Alberta's teachers. The act itself is draconian: orders the teachers back to work, establishes significant penalties for arguing with the government on it, and imposes a contract rejected by about 90% of those teachers who voted on it nearly a month ago.

My view, last year, was that the ATA [the teacher’s union] and the UCP [Conservative Alberta government] technical advisors all wanted the nastiest and longest possible strike to be followed by a poor settlement specifically and only because that would provide the maximum electoral benefit to the NDP [Canada’s leftist party].

Dear Premier Smith et al:

Let's start with the elephant: referenda on independence.

In my opinion:

Western Canadian Separatism

Western Canadian separatism in Alberta and Saskatchewan is a political hot potato in Canada right now with the federal liberal party, whose owners have absolutely no interest in meeting the needs of either province, making soothing sounds while they get their trade deal with the United States squared away and put the legislative and regulatory changes they need to implement their policies in place.

Those changes seem to include:

Abhorrent Solutions II

I have a number of "ignorant and abhorrent" ideas about how to do things - and I'm comfortable calling them that because I know first how little I know, and second that no expert would ever consider any of them. With that in mind, here are three of them - with rational comments very much requested.

A recent substack essay by Rod Martin: Should Alberta Become the 51st State?" makes what I think is a largely irrefutable socio-economic case for having voters in Alberta and Saskatchewan break out of the Canadian confederation to join the American one instead. Making the change would give us:

What happened in the recent Canadian election is that liberal leader Mark Carney ran against Trump rather than for anything - and the media, which are largely controlled by the liberals, applauded everything he did or said while denigrating the conservatives.

Prior to Carney's ascension to the liberal leadership a week before the election was called, the conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, had a 30 point lead in the polls - which he'd gained by attacking the then current liberal leader: Justin Trudeau, rather than by being for anything.

A recent piece by Hadley Arkas on Stevehayward.substack.com included the bit below:

But the real test of citizenship is whether one could give a moral defense of that regime that commands his loyalty as a citizen.

I'm Canadian, but I couldn't do that - and I've never met, heard of, or read anything by, a Canadian who could - although Conrad Black, in his History of Canada (Rise to Greatness) tries for something over 1200 pages, I read it as demonstrating the

This is an extract from (and revision of) something I put on this site last November - with a minor addition. The reason I'm doing this is that the current Russia/Ukraine peace process doesn't seem likely to produce a long term solution.