LYTLE: Half in, half out... is that what Albertans really want?

Link Byfield famously told a joke about Canadians to answer the greatest enigma of all time. What does it mean to be Canadian? As I remember, it went like this:“How do you get the Canadians out of a swimming pool filled with people of different nationalities? Hey Canadians! Get out of the pool!”Note that in Link’s telling, getting out of the pool is acquiescence to authority and staying in the pool is a flipping of the bird to those who presume to be our authorities.Are we really so obsequious to authority? Would all Canadians fail the Milgram experiment by obeying the lab coated experimenter and electrocuting the person “behind the door?” Maybe exigencies of the moment made his response necessary, but Mr. Carney’s fawning adoration of Donald Trump last Tuesday would suggest that we are. .But wait a minute. Canada is the home of the truckers — one of the rare groups in the world to defy authority during the COVID-19 crisis. They stayed in the pool. Albertans are on the brink of making a rational choice about their willingness to keep pulling the wagon called Canada. Do we want to plod on under the lash of Laurentia? Or do we dare stay in the pool whatever eastern harpies might say?Ironically, before going to war to stop the Southern secession, Abraham Lincoln argued in 1858 that the issue of slavery had to be resolved without resorting to more compromises and half steps. He made a famous argument on constitutional grounds in his 'house divided' speech."A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.".Can the Canadian 'family' endure when one child is obviously spoiled at the expense of the others? Does our constitution not also make Canada a house divided?Individual decisions by Albertans to remain or not in Canada will be made based on economic self-interest, because that is how such decisions are always made. But the underlying motivation for the decision must be the problems of the constitution and not the lack of a pipeline to this or that ocean. If Mr. Carney acquiesces to the four conditions of our premier and Albertans decide to remain in Canada, a reprieve will have been won but not a victory. In another twenty years we will face the same issues based on different conditions. .HANNAFORD: Smith emerges as the unofficial opposition to Mark Carney.David Knight-Legg, in his interesting interview with Nigel Hannaford, said that Mr. Carney has “now seen the books” and so will be inclined to yield to Premier Smith’s requirements. It was his view that Mr. Carney would have to acknowledge that Alberta, as the only healthy part of the Canadian economy, requires federal support or Canada will be lost in any event. .As much as I enjoyed the interview, I suspect that Mr. Carney’s commitment to globalist, environmental ideologies will not be swept away by Canada’s impoverished balance sheet. I hope Mr. Knight-Legg is right and I am wrong. But whoever is right, the argument misses the point about root causes — these being the problems of the Canadian constitution. We need a Senate that has power, has equal provincial representation and whose members are elected by the provinces they represent. The House of Commons must have representation by population and not by some negotiating tactic dreamed up by Sir John A. Macdonald in 1867. Our Supreme Court justices must be appointed by the members of an elected institution rather than the unelected employees of the Prime Minister’s Office. .This list is incomplete, but the point is that structural changes to the constitution are required for Alberta to become a full partner in the Dominion of Canada.So yes, let’s make our decision based on our economic self-interest but let us not fall victim to the immense pressure that we will feel to accept a reprieve rather than a victory. Even if Mr. Carney caves on all four issues, this won’t be enough to prevent a recurrence of the problems. The issues that are driving unhappiness with the status quo result from the inadequacy of the constitution and not the economic woe of the day. We need to stay in the pool until both our constitutional and our economic conditions are met — and not because the CBC or other Canadian politicians tell us to get out.

LYTLE: Half in, half out... is that what Albertans really want?

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