With an election soon to be called in Alberta, we’re going to start seeing all manner of ludicrous stories related to it, and lo, Maclean’s brings us an imagining of the future history of the “Republic of the Northwest,” which is apparently what a would become of a future Alberta-Saskatchewan-Manitoba-parts-of-BC-and-the-North seccession from Canada. The piece should have instead come with a mature content warning, as it’s basically the two authors jerking one another off to the masturbatory fantasy of a “more prosperous, freer, and more patriotic” future that is never going to be. Why? Because they simply glossed over all of the hard things that such a future would entail, the biggest and most obvious obstacle being the fate of the Indigenous populations. Sure, all of their environmental concerns are just “Laurentian Canadian” bureaucratic meddling. Apparently once Ottawa was out of the way, this new Republic (and curious that such a “patriotic” imagined country would not retain the Crown, if this is supposed to be some kind of small-c conservative fantasy that doesn’t involve being immediately swallowed up by the US), all kinds of pipelines could get built in mere months, with no obstacles whatsoever! Sure, the tidewater is all in Northern BC because the southern coast wouldn’t separate with them, but that won’t affect things! There weren’t any domestic environmentalists in this new country – they were apparently either all figments of Ottawa that were rained upon them, or they were all subject to mass arrest in this “freer” country. There were no Indigenous protests. There were no concerns about actual economic viability of these pipelines with relation to future capacity, or the fact that there is an ongoing global supply glut of oil and dumping more Alberta crude into the world economy wouldn’t be subject to yet more price declines because of basic laws of supply and demand. Nope – it’s all just freedom and prosperity!

And that’s not even to talk about how much they glossed over in terms of what separation would actually mean for the country, from fiscal arrangements, armed forces (do you think they’d just let them take half of the fighter fleet and a chunk of the Navy for their strip of Northern BC Coast line?), and again, the reality of treaties with Indigenous peoples with the Crown of Canada. Honest to Hermes, my eyes could not stop rolling the entirety of this piece. And the worst part is that there is a cohort of Albertans who think this is a plausible vision of the future. They all need to give their heads a shake, and the pair who wrote this piece need to wake up to reality.

On a related note, Jen Gerson digs into the looming problem of Alberta not really preparing for a future with a decreased oil demand, as they prefer instead to keep waiting on the next oil boom. (As the bumper sticker says, “Please God, give us another boom, and I promise not to piss it away this time.”) Yes, the province’s economy has diversified somewhat, but it’s still very dependent on oil revenues. That said, the Bank of Canada did note that the share of GDP that the oil sector is responsible for has diminished a fair amount since the 2015 oil shock, and it’s now less than IT services. The big problem the province is going to have is what to do with all of its under-educated young men, who either quit school or barely got their high school diploma while counting on lucrative oil sector employment. Those days are dwindling, and there will need to be plans to help them transition, sooner than later.

The link that Jen makes between oil demand growth and climate change actions is crucial. If you're betting on a world of long term oil demand growth, a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for that is, at most, tepid global action on climate change. #ableg #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/m5HtrxY4xf

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) March 12, 2019

Good reads:

• Marc Garneau cancelled all his meetings yesterday to focus on the issue of those Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft – but still won’t ground them in Canada.
• Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion is going on extended medical leave…but doesn’t expect it to impact any investigation into the Double-Hyphen Affair. (More here).
• The government has come to a settlement with survivors of Indian Day Schools (which were excluded from the residential school process).
• Carolyn Bennett is downplaying the talk of a rift between her and Jody Wilson-Raybould over the Indigenous rights framework legislation.
• The US trade representative says that they’re working on a solution to those steel and aluminium tariffs…finally.
• More business community demands of the federal budget include measures to deal with labour shortages, both with targeted immigration and training.
• The federal government briefly considered fitness trackers for employees, in part as a way to help reduce insurance premiums. Then they realised it was a bad idea.
• The Commons justice committee meets today to discuss next steps and witnesses in the Double-Hyphen Affair.
• Conservative and NDP MPs on the agriculture committee have called for an emergency meeting to discuss the issue of China holding up canola shipments.
• The Senate starts televising its proceedings next week.
• Two Conservative MPs are holding an event with a British baroness known for supporting Assad and promoting anti-Islamic rhetoric.
• Randy Boswell offers a reminder of the ways in which the Conservatives attacked the judiciary and rule of law, amidst Andrew Scheer’s bouts of sanctimony.
• Susan Delacourt counsels the Liberals on the justice committee to let Jody Wilson-Raybould return, if they know what’s good for them.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at tools the opposition has at its disposal if the Liberals opt to shut down the justice committee process.
• Chris Selley declares the NDP’s dream of recapturing Quebec to be dead, given how far the province’s politics has shifted since the Sherbrooke Declaration.
• Matt Gurney worries about the Liberal propensity to spend in good times and bad.
• My column takes a few educated guesses as to what might be in the coming budget with an eye to what economic data we’ve seen recently.

Odds and ends:

One of the members of the prime minister’s RCMP protection detail is Inuk, and he’s only one of a handful of Inuk members of the Force.

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