Citizenship, And How To Fight Separatism

Lies Won’t Keep Alberta In Canada

It was the position of the Canadian left for much of the winter and summer that residency did not matter when it came to citizenship. It didn’t matter to Liberals that Mike Myers last lived in Canada in the 80s when he was helping us win an election, because a Canadian is a Canadian even if they choose to live outside the country. Justin Trudeau famously said that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian in a debate, arguing against making terrorists stateless, and was again cheered on by many. And now, it’s seemingly the position of many that Canadian citizenship could be stripped of people born and raised in Canada, if Alberta votes to secede. Because that’s fucking consistent.

Let’s take an entirely hypothetical example that is definitely not me ripping off my uncle’s lifepath. You moved to Alberta from Quebec in the 70s, you got a good job and made lots of money in resource extraction, you raised a family, you vote Conservative but don’t always love it, love the rest of Canada, and oppose separation. Your job is in Alberta, your family is in Alberta, and your home and your life and your friends are in Alberta. And then Alberta votes to secede. In what universe is he not a Canadian citizen any longer?

If the answer to whether he is a citizen or not after Alberta leaves isn’t an unambiguous yes you’re either a horrible person or a fucking idiot. I’m really sorry, but you are. You cannot expect us to tolerate the endless parade of celebrities who embrace their Canadiana when it’s useful but live in the US permanently and then argue to actively strip the citizenship of Albertans who voted to stay in Canada just because they’re not willing to move back to rump Canada. And once you accept that he has to remain a Canadian citizen you realize that you have to make both sides of the separation question citizens because we have a fucking secret ballot in this country and we cannot just trample that to see whether you qualify or not.

Now, this isn’t a perfect solution by any means - by the traditional method of allowing ex-pat Canadians to vote, the last address you lived in Canada is the electoral district you vote in, which literally wouldn’t apply to a born and raised Albertan. For my definitely-not-my-Uncle hypothetical earlier, I guess he’d be a resident in Anna Gainey’s riding, which is high comedy. But the idea that we’d make millions of Canadian cities move back to Canada or lose their citizenship is absolute absurdity.

The actual arguments that should be made against Alberta Independence aren’t that complicated, nor do they rely on lying to people. The economic arguments are simple and well worn at this point - you’d need Canadian cooperation despite telling Canada to go fuck itself, and you’d be ceding immense control over the oil sands to the whims of essentially perpetual Liberal government, given the Conservatives would lose 30 met seats and the last three Liberal minorities would have been majorities if Alberta didn’t exist.

The real arguments against Alberta secession, beyond the vagaries of oil prices and economic uncertainty, is that it’s going to be a lot more expensive to do a lot of the basic things that countries expect to be able to do. The cost of staffing embassies across the world, the cost of a National Defence, the cost of setting up and operating a pension plan and a tax agency and all of these things that are actually big undertakings. There’s a reason the proponents of independence are pitching keeping OAS and CPP and Canadian passports and the Canadian dollar - they know selling people on big disruptions doesn't play well.

Do Alberta want to take the Canadian dollar while not having any influence on what it trades at? Do they want to be tethered to an oil price that, when it has bad days, weeks, and months will have a significantly bigger impact on bond yields without the market presumption that if any of our provinces goes bust the Feds will bail them out? Even with what Albertans would get from CPP - and they’d get a fair entitlement - do they want to trust Danielle Smith or whatever right wing government that can’t manage the health service or basically do anything well in the slightest to run a pension plan or OAS or any government programs?

These are the arguments that will make clear that Alberta independence is a bad idea. But let’s also be clear - Albertans, while having their own unique grievances with the Federal government, also generally dislike Trudeau and the Liberals for the same reasons that York and Peel and Halton swung right. Fixing the dumbest parts of the Trudeau legacy will turn the temperature down too. It’s moronic that Danielle Smith has made plastic straws one of her dividing lines, but it’s also probably not the worst thing in the world for us to acknowledge that paper straws are not actually saving the world, and if repealing some of the more … performative bits of the last decade helps, we should do it.

Claiming that Canadians born as Canadians in Canada at the time of birth will become second class citizens or have to somehow prove themselves worthy as Canadians is not how you win a referendum. It’s also not how we treat Canadians. I definitely don’t have any love for the Albertan right or for most Conservatives in this country - I’m a Liberal and I’m an asshole who thinks that there are rights and wrongs and to me being on the wrong side of my dividing lines is unacceptable. I don’t really pretend otherwise, and I never will. But for fuck’s sake, Canadian citizens are Canadian citizens whether they hold “good” values or “bad” ones, and the way I know that is a lot of people think I’ve got wrong and bad values. We can’t litigate citizenship through emotions. Alberta independence is a batshit idea that can be fought against fine without lies and deception. Let’s do so.

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