Analyst warns Eby’s language could push some ‘separatist-curious’ Albertans to become fully separatist
B.C. Premier David Eby is not backing down after calling the Alberta separatist movement seeking foreign assistance an act of treason — but one analyst is warning against using such serious language during a time where Canada needs to stand united.
Eby’s comments last week came amid meetings with fellow Canadian leaders in Ottawa, in response to reports that members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration have met with members of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group pushing for Alberta to become independent.
The group is seeking a $500-billion US line of credit from the U.S. Treasury to help bankroll the new country if they are successful in a referendum. An official with the U.S. State Department confirmed the meetings, but said “no commitments were made.”
“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is treason,” Eby said last Thursday.
In an interview on CBC’s The Early Edition on Monday, the premier doubled down on his comments.
Very well put. I wonder if our government will ever consider foreign media ownership in Canada as a national security problem, because I think it’s high time they do. The media in the United States has been a huge contributor to the slide into the current shit show down there, and similar corporations own most of our outlets. I hope routing out foreign ownership is something that happens sooner than later, but I won’t hold my breath.
This also has me thinking what motivation conservatives actually have for defunding the CBC. Is it their love of the free market, or some greater plot to follow in the foot steps of the US?
If they’re as committed to the same brand of ‘conservative’ ideology as US republicans, and it seems they increasingly are, it’s entirely the second goal. Every love they profess is just a prop they have selected as a stepping stone toward acquisition of more power. This is how they treated religion, core to their existence while electing a clear anti-Christian to office; This is how they viewed abortion rights, as sacred until they decided they weren’t; The constitution, which was sacred until it became too binding for their tastes… their base is more and more comfortable abandoning any declared commitment to any institution the moment it conflicts in any way with their goal of power acquisition. This is how we end up with a Republican president openly insisting that guns aren’t a right because the wrong people (in its eyes) might have them, and use them to stop having their rights and lives menaced, you know, the way their constitution explicitly demands.
What I have learned in the last 10 years of observing their politics and the import of their extreme ideology here, is that you do not give them any grace at all. The moment you take for granted their good will is the moment they come out from behind it to stab you in the ribs, it’s always performative and it’s always strategic. They believe in nothing but what they see as hard power, it’s frankly like negotiating with terrorists, which presents a greater issue of how do you continue to conduct politics with a group completely dedicated to your eventual destruction? They talk openly about executing trans people in that country these days, this is not new for a party founded on bigotry, but the explicit openness and pride in putting a voice to their hate is a sign. and as history shows, there is always another ‘other’.
This time it seems to be escalating to ‘criminal immigrants’ in a land made up of migrants, which is just code for non-whites. They send their private army out to abuse and disappear anyone brown, legally settled or naturalized Americans included. Next it will be any ‘liberal-minded’ Americans and anyone who would contradict this new state, if it’s not already. It never stops at one ‘other’, and with their paramilitary arm ICE, it really seems they are fast-tracking this push with the open and unaccounted murder of white ‘liberal’ Americans in the street. There are at least some in the Canadian conservative tent that are inviting this reality here because they see it as a path to power for themselves. I truly wish this were hyperbole and I could be justly painted as raving mad with exaggerations, but anyone who isn’t criminally ignorant or acting in bad faith in defense of this ideology can’t deny what is happening before our eyes every day.