Canada is now confronting a crisis that makes Brexit look straightforward – and one Australian state will be watching closely.
“It is not reassuring to have two provinces at the same time considering the merits of separation,” Royal Society of Canada political scientist Professor David Cameron said.
“The best answer to the question of whether the Confederation bargain is still holding is: We’ll see.”
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All the while, Western Australia’s small but vocal separatist movement is watching. And learning.
Quebec elected a separatist government this week. Alberta goes to the polls next week to decide if it wants an independence referendum. And US President Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to turn his dream of a new northern “51st State” into reality.
Alberta goes to the polls on October 19 to decide whether or not it wants to decide to declare itself an independent nation.
Influential forces are keen on the idea.
The separatist group Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) has met with the Trump Administration at least three times. It reportedly came bearing gifts, including promises of access rights to the province’s rich oil deposits, freshwater supplies, and a rail link to Alaska.
“The US is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta,” APP organiser Jeff Rath told media in January, adding that he had a “much stronger relationship” with Mr Trump than the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
But Albertans appear unconvinced. Recent polls show 72 per cent think it’s a waste of time and money, 23 per cent demand a binding referendum, and just 4 per cent are undecided.
Quebec is also toying with the idea.
But its new Premier, 49-year-old Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, failed to win a clear majority in the province’s parliament on Monday. That means he can’t automatically initiate the independence referendum he promised.
And Mr Plamondon also seems to understand how difficult the process could be.
He has told voters a referendum “requires conditions that allow for an informed and calm debate”. This means one won’t be initiated for “as long as Trump is President of the United States”, adding it would be “hijacked by the theatrics of an unpredictable president”.
Recent polls revealed 70 per cent of Quebeckers weren’t keen on the idea anyway.
Prof Cameron, however, doesn’t trust the numbers: “The prudent observer is haunted by the 2016 Brexit vote, which most analysts at the time – including the unlamented UK Prime Minister of the day, David Cameron (no relation) – thought would not succeed”.
Money – it’s a thing
“Western Australia has a rational, enduring and evidence-based grievance,” argues WA lawyer and secession advocate Julian Gillespie.
“It produces at world scale. It transfers at national scale. It receives comparatively little control over the use of its own wealth.”
It’s the same argument being pitched at Canada’s Albertans.
The oil-rich economic powerhouse feels aggrieved, neglected, isolated …
“If your material wellbeing is reliant on a resource that is in principle finite, that consciousness will shape your outlook,” Prof Cameron argued.
“[It will] generate anger and frustration if you believe that national policy and the terms of the Confederation bargain are framed to obstruct your economic aspirations.”
Some Albertan political and commercial lobbyists see this as an opportunity.
“We have to be willing to follow through with our threats if Ottawa is not working with us and are destroying our way of life,” states United Conservative Party executive Helen Holder.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith also wants a better deal. Just not secession.
“If you’re mad or you want to give leverage, let’s vote to continue working on this relationship,” she said in a recent speech.
“Things have not been perfect, but we recognise the effort that Canada is making.”
Some Albertans, however, may be getting ahead of themselves.
APP co-founder Dennis Modry says his group has given the Trump Administration a document detailing “the potential benefits of Alberta sovereignty to the United States of America”. In return for exclusive access to resources, he wants funding for his political movement.
That’s upset Conservative Alberta MP Dane Lloyd: “Nobody has the right to promise away Alberta’s birthright”.
Democratic Party MP Heather McPherson agrees: “Canadian sovereignty is at stake, and the people trying to trade it away for foreign political support should understand how seriously Canadians take this threat”.
WA’s nascent separatist movement shares the APP’s economic ambitions. If not the desire to become Mr Trump’s 51st State.
Mr Gillespie says a 20 per cent royalty imposed upon all resource sales would generate about $48 billion annually. He argues this was “more than Western Australia’s present general government revenue and well above present State expenses”. It would, he adds, all but eliminate the need for income tax from its independent citizens.
Tyrannies of distance
“All of this and more has taken place within the constitutional framework a group of Victorian politicians put together in the middle of the 19th century,” Prof Cameron pointed out.
“So far, that framework has served us well. Today, it is being tested, perhaps as never before. The seismic forces within Canada are working themselves out in a highly volatile world.”
Alberta feels different from the rest of Canada because of its resource-based economy. It feels misunderstood. Underappreciated.
“Other Canadians may take the view that this is the alienation of the privileged, coming from a province that has the highest per capita income level among provinces, but it is real for all that,” Prof Cameron stated.
Quebec feels different because of its distinctly French heritage.
“There seems to be a widespread acceptance of the fact that there are somewhat different worldviews within the French- and English-language communities in Canada,” Prof Cameron explained.
“The idea that Quebec is a distinct society … is now accepted as the result of a kind of ‘natural’ evolution.”
WA also feels isolated. Misunderstood. Underappreciated. Different.
And it has done so from the outset.
“Western Australia was pressured into a constitutional settlement written principally elsewhere for interests concentrated elsewhere,” Mr Gillespie argued.
WA parliament declared in 1906 that Federation – just five years earlier – had been a mistake. Then, in 1933, some 68 per cent of WA voted “yes” to an independence referendum.
“Yet the democratic decision was not implemented,” Mr Gillespie stated.
“In plain terms, Western Australians voted to leave; the constitutional machinery of empire and federation provided no practical path.”
A climate of change
The Canadian Supreme Court was recently forced to address the prospect of secession. Its constitution contains no such provisions.
It found that a province’s “clear majority” vote on a “clear question” of independence would legitimise the process. And this must be accepted, and negotiated, in good faith with the rest of the nation.
“The case is not binding in Australia, but its central insight is powerful,” argued Mr Gillespie. “A federation cannot invoke constitutional form to remain indifferent to a constituent people’s clear decision that they no longer wish to remain within it.”
But, with the good news comes the bad.
Canada’s parliament has since formulated a Secession Act.
“The act … illuminated the stakes of secession,” explained University of British Columbia political scientist Dr Stewart Prest.
“The preamble of the legislation, for instance, spells out that provincial sovereignty would mean the end of guaranteed Canadian citizenship for departing provincial residents.”
Everything would have to change.
“Simply put, if Alberta were to leave Canada, it would lose all enforceable rights and protections offered by the Canadian Constitution and enforced by the institutions and courts. In their place, Alberta would get exactly — and only — what it can bargain for.”
Alberta would have to negotiate its position on the world stage. Alone.
Currency. Trade. Defence. Sovereign rights. Citizen rights. Indigenous rights. Passports. Law. And that’s on top of an asset split with a divorced Ottawa federal government.
“Once borders were settled, [landlocked] Alberta would have little leverage and would need a lot of help as a country of about 4.5 million negotiating with neighbours of 35 million in Canada and 350 million in the US,” Dr Prest added.
“Who would be its allies?”
Divided we fall
“We are living in a dangerous neighbourhood now,” stated the University of Toronto’s Professor Cameron.
“The once-friendly superpower to our south has become unpredictable and malign. The assumptions that shaped the post-war world are crumbling. Climate change is altering Canada’s geopolitical realities.”
The Trump Administration is facing similar issues.
California. Texas. Alaska. New Hampshire. Hawaii.
All have active political movements and commercial interests pushing the idea. And the 47th President of the United States isn’t helping.
“You want to see trauma? You want to see problems? As I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way,” he told a San Antonio rally this week.
Mr Trump was urging voters to choose his Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republican Party.
“You want to see a horror show?” You want to see some bad things happen? You want to see a country in free fall? We’re not going to let that happen,” he added.
The upcoming midterm elections in November are seen as a major test for the US Constitution and the relative powers of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Presidency.
All this is happening as United Nations influence wanes, Chinese ambitions grow, and war warnings in Europe and the Western Pacific mount.
“With the world we knew disappearing, Canada faces a tangle of existential issues,” Prof Cameron warned.
“How Canadians respond will depend decisively on the quality of our leadership and our unflagging capacity to act with common purpose.”
How would WA and Australia react to a similar challenge?
“Western Australia is better endowed than any other State to show a different path,” Mr Gillespie argued.
“It has the resources, the people, the ports, the energy, the trading relationships and the civic confidence to govern itself. The question is whether it still has the self-respect to test that proposition democratically.”