In soliciting signatures for the independence referendum, I was challenged more than once to explain why I was not just being selfish. The question did not include any reference to “fairness” or “justice.” But is this not the basic rationale for why independence is so important — so that we can recover an adherence to the objective nature of fairness and justice. Justice and fairness are in disrepute in an age of artificial equity. The personal ethics of Plato’s justice and the objective fairness of Aristotle’s political natural laws are no longer studied nor observed. Much less do we observe the universal nature of the Biblical notions of fairness and justice based on character rather than immutable traits like skin colour. But while we might not articulate our desire for traditional fairness, and however much we mouth the false platitudes of today’s twisted notions of justice, we all have an inherent understanding and desire for both. My family and I once lived in a remote mining camp, and I worked with other expatriates to train local engineers in the modern art of large-scale mining. My job was to teach them how to blow stuff up. During those three years, expatriates were subject to a thousand minor inequities and then asked to be generous and not selfish in our responses to the unfairness. We were well paid, and the weather was equatorial, so we put up with them..On one occasion, we got our children out of bed at 3 o’clock in the morning to go to the transportation office to ensure that we would get boarding passes to fly to the nearest international airport for our annual trip home. Unless you have had the experience of an overseas assignment living in a Neolithic environment, it is difficult to understand the anxiety and anticipation of the “annual trip home.” When the office was opened at 7 am, we were at the head of the queue. Company policy gave priority to expatriates returning home, but the agent who handed out the boarding passes handed the coveted passes to domestic workers only. No amount of remonstration and argument about policy and fairness had an impact. Another expatriate worker approached to understand the problem, and before I finished explaining, he reached into the window, snatched the boarding passes from the startled ticket agent, and handed them out to the other expatriates who were waiting in line. He then returned the remaining passes to the agent, and we headed to the airport for our annual leave. Were we being selfish? Or had one inequity too many brought us to a tipping point?Alberta independence is not about selfishness; it is about being human and exercising agency. There are times when further argumentation is futile, and you must man up, grab the boarding passes, and do what is objectively right, fair, and just. If we ignore such fundamental concepts and pretend that it is noble to be co-dependent with the desire of other provinces to eschew fossil fuel development, then we are well advanced in our docile return to Laurentia’s cage of authoritarian feudalism..Demanding rights to confirm basic humanity is not selfish, but it can be expensive. Patrick Henry declared to his Virginia audience, “Give me liberty or give me death!” (And please… referencing events from the American War of Independence is not a dog whistle for becoming the fifty-first state. Make the debate more nuanced than that.) We are surely not at that point, but Albertans must refuse to be cowed by those who think that positive views about Alberta independence are based on selfishness. If Albertans were selfish, other provinces would not have received a dime of Albertans’ money. As it is, they have received billions from our taxes, offering benefits to their citizens that are not available to us who pay their bills — all while telling us how selfish we are.Perhaps the issue is less one of the selfishness of the “Leavers,” and more of a Stockholm Syndrome that exists among those Albertans who are determined to stay within Canada come what may. Faced with increasing financial burdens, increasing barriers to economic development, control of firearms, increasing restrictions of speech and thought, and overt attempts to reduce populations through ghoulish, “bring out your dead” medically assisted dying provisions, such as Albertans turn to central Canada and meekly beseech, “Please sir, may I have another one.” This response is irrational, and it is time to wake up from the fake ambrosia of peace, order, and good government. A British politician in the last century wrote that tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society. Perhaps it is time for some intolerance.Sorry, Laurentia. Feel free to make feudal slaves of other Canadians. Albertans will trust in objective fairness as defined through the ages and issue our own boarding passes, Emergencies Act or not.
