In terms of broad positioning and profile(as opposed to formal political office), it appears to me from a degree or so removed that Thomas Lukaszuk is shaping up to be the Claude Ryan of the 2026 Alberta referendum.
Given the social-conservatism predominating in the separatist movement, it seems unlikely that anyone in that camp will care if Stacey Brotzel is an Yvette. Though I'll put forth this bit of cautionary nostalgia for Lukaszuk or Nenshi or whoever is Alberta's Captain Canada right now...
A political cartoon published right after the 1980 referendum showed in its first panel Rene Levesque watching a television with a maple-leaf on the screen, and getting ready to turn it off with the remote.
In the second panel, Levesque himself has disappeared, with the standard cartoon zap-gone mini-explosion above the seat.
[For non-nerds: the cartoon turned out to be a Dewey Defeats Truman. Despite leading the pro-Canada forces to victory, Claude Ryan and his Liberals lost the next provincial election to the sovereigntist PQ.]
Jeffrey Rath, leader of the Alberta Prosperity Project, is attacking the Alberta-Ottawa pipeline thingamabob as some big sell-out by Smith, citing the 30 to 80 billion dollars apparently commited by Alberta to the project as part of the deal.
I agree with the Calgary PoliSci prof who said that this stance might not play all that well outside the separatists' subcamp of freedom-or-bust diehards, and likely alienate potential federalist-but-pissed-off protest-voters(*). Albertans can have a pretty high tolerance for economic interventionsm presented as great leaps into local prosperity.
(*) See "Brexit is daft, but I'm really pissed off about some of these stupid regulations about bananas coming out of Brussels, and since Remain is gooing to win anyway...".
Not that I think that particular bloc of voters will be as strong in Alberta Separatism 2026 as it was in UK BREXIT 2016, but it's the same type of thinking.
No, it's dreaming in technicolor and we begin, again, the slow slide towards everything Quebec said and did 1977 - 1995.
Fortunately, Alberta lacks the neccessary sense of cherished continuity and romantic humiliation that permeates Quebec nationalism, for the current eruption to continue unabated for a twenty-year period. IMO, anyway.
The more scholarly of the western-alienation ideologues(eg. the father and son who wrote that 1967 realignment manifesto) sometimes liked to list off the historical forebears of their movement, with the standard pantheon being...
- Riel and his rebels
- Progressives/Farmers
- Social Credit
- the CFF
And that's usually where it stopped, if it got that far. I can understand how those factions might all be classified as the same according to certain overarching geo-economic taxonomies(continentalist, reformist, albeit with a shift toward economic nationalism in the "long history" of the CCF), but you're not gonna get the admirers of Ernest...
"western Canadians in this party will never accept a French Catholic leader"
...Manning to sit around singing folk-guitar hymns to the man who dreamed of establishing a French-speaking indigenous ultramontane republic on the prairie, barked on by every dog in Quebec.
You can pretty much do the same thing with any two compared factions on that list. And with the partial exception of post-1948 Alberta Social Credit, they all had economic platforms that would in one way or another be viewed as horrific heresy by the neoliberal randoids who populate the successor movements today.
The front page of the site features a cartoon from a 1915 issue of Grain Growers' Guide portraying a giant cow straddling land labelled "Western Canada" and "Eastern Canada", while being fed by farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, so designated, and milked by top-hatted tycoons in the east, into buckets labeled "Ottawa", "Toronto", and "Montreal". The original caption for the cartoon identifies the villains as "The Bankers, the railways, and the manufacturers".
This links to a longer written history of the Alberta separatist movement, which starts in the mid-1970s with absolutely nothing prior, and identifies the current enemies of Alberta as, among other things, "socialistic", with no mention of bankers, railways, or manufacturers.
The historical essay is by a PhD, and is actually quite comprehensive and balanced. I'm speculating that he wrote a longer piece detailing the standard history back to the 19th Century, but the party bosses didn't like it so they compromised and just posted the cartoon, with the 1915 caption intact, thus rendering the whole section chronologically and ideologically incoherent.
(No helpful info this time, non-nerds. You'll have to hit google to get the joy of discovering "Grain Growers' Guide" all to yourself.)
Naheed Nenshi at the next Alberta Election: "We won't have any separation referendums! Lend us your vote!"
Full Disclosure: I hold my nose for Nenshi as an NDPer.
Me too. I always thought of him more as a casually progressive New Urbanist darling, and was actually surprised when he first announced he wanted to be NDP leader(*).
I assume part of the rationale for making him leader was that he'd have a base in Calgary, but, so far, his only electoral test at the provincial level has been winning an Edmonton seat in what is probably the most left-wing constituency in the province.
Nenshi has announced he will next stand in Calgary, with the constituency yet to be decided.
Comments
Played by accounting students articling in the oil patch, whose grandparents moved out from Ontario and the Maritmes during the boom.
Given the social-conservatism predominating in the separatist movement, it seems unlikely that anyone in that camp will care if Stacey Brotzel is an Yvette. Though I'll put forth this bit of cautionary nostalgia for Lukaszuk or Nenshi or whoever is Alberta's Captain Canada right now...
[For non-nerds: the cartoon turned out to be a Dewey Defeats Truman. Despite leading the pro-Canada forces to victory, Claude Ryan and his Liberals lost the next provincial election to the sovereigntist PQ.]
I agree with the Calgary PoliSci prof who said that this stance might not play all that well outside the separatists' subcamp of freedom-or-bust diehards, and likely alienate potential federalist-but-pissed-off protest-voters(*). Albertans can have a pretty high tolerance for economic interventionsm presented as great leaps into local prosperity.
(*) See "Brexit is daft, but I'm really pissed off about some of these stupid regulations about bananas coming out of Brussels, and since Remain is gooing to win anyway...".
Not that I think that particular bloc of voters will be as strong in Alberta Separatism 2026 as it was in UK BREXIT 2016, but it's the same type of thinking.
The front page of the site features a cartoon from a 1915 issue of Grain Growers' Guide portraying a giant cow straddling land labelled "Western Canada" and "Eastern Canada", while being fed by farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, so designated, and milked by top-hatted tycoons in the east, into buckets labeled "Ottawa", "Toronto", and "Montreal". The original caption for the cartoon identifies the villains as "The Bankers, the railways, and the manufacturers".
This links to a longer written history of the Alberta separatist movement, which starts in the mid-1970s with absolutely nothing prior, and identifies the current enemies of Alberta as, among other things, "socialistic", with no mention of bankers, railways, or manufacturers.
The historical essay is by a PhD, and is actually quite comprehensive and balanced. I'm speculating that he wrote a longer piece detailing the standard history back to the 19th Century, but the party bosses didn't like it so they compromised and just posted the cartoon, with the 1915 caption intact, thus rendering the whole section chronologically and ideologically incoherent.
(No helpful info this time, non-nerds. You'll have to hit google to get the joy of discovering "Grain Growers' Guide" all to yourself.)
Nenshi has announced he will next stand in Calgary, with the constituency yet to be decided.