Matt Ridley recently argued that the defining political struggle of our age is no longer simply Left against Right. It is top-down control against bottom-up freedom. Government should protect rights, enforce contracts, and set fair rules. It should also possess enough humility to let people solve their own problems.That argument could have been written for Alberta.For generations, Alberta has been treated by Ottawa less as a political community than as a resource base to be managed. We are expected to produce, pay, and comply. Federal governments decide which projects qualify as being in the “national interest,” how energy developments will be assessed, how emissions will be priced, and how much of Alberta’s wealth will be transferred elsewhere.Alberta’s culture grew from the ground up. The West was built by farmers, ranchers, tradesmen, immigrants, and entrepreneurs who understood that survival depended on work, competence, neighbourliness, and personal responsibility. They built communities and businesses without waiting for an Ottawa strategy document.The ranching ethic is simple: mind your herd, mend your fence, keep your word, help your neighbour when trouble comes, but do not presume to run his ranch. It combines independence with voluntary community. Responsibility means little unless people retain the freedom to make decisions and live with the consequences.In Why Alberta’s Talking Independence and The Fight for Alberta Is Really a Fight for Its Values, I have argued that Alberta’s culture rests on hard work, property rights, self-reliance, community, and small, accountable government. These are the principles that built this province..Mark Carney represents a different model of governing.Carney is intelligent, disciplined, and serious. That makes his philosophy more consequential, not less. His worldview assumes that economic, environmental, and social outcomes should be identified in advance and pursued through governments, regulators, financial institutions, and large corporations. Markets may operate, but increasingly inside objectives designed by experts and enforced through regulation, subsidies, and public financing.His book Values argues that markets must serve broader purposes such as sustainability, fairness, and resilience. As Prime Minister, he has advanced national industrial and electricity strategies and a Major Projects Office empowered to accelerate projects deemed to be in the national interest. There is always another strategy, council, fund, or framework, and another group of credentialed bureaucrats deciding what everyone else should build.Carney’s 2026 Davos speech made the ambition explicit. He said the old international system was ending and that middle powers must help construct a “new world order” based on shared values. He promoted coordinated industrial development, international coalitions, and a government with the fiscal capacity to act decisively.National coordination is sometimes necessary. The issue is whether government remains the referee or becomes the owner, coach, financier, scorekeeper, and moral instructor of every player on the field. Carney’s Canada increasingly favours the latter.The irony is that Carney’s argument for Canadian sovereignty is also an argument for Alberta independence. At Davos, in his arguments against the US, he warned that economic integration could become a source of subordination and that weaker countries should stop pretending arrangements serving stronger powers are automatically fair..“This is not sovereignty,” Carney declared. “It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.” We Albertans should take him at his word on this.What is Alberta’s position within Canada if not deep integration without equal power? Or even a say? We supply the energy, accept the restrictions, absorb the hostility, and remain unable to determine federal policy. Ottawa defines the national interest, and Alberta is expected to adjust. We may protest, litigate, and negotiate, but the distribution of power does not change. That is not meaningful self-government. Independence does not mean dismantling government. As I argued in Independence Without Chaos, existing laws and institutions can continue while authority is transferred peacefully to Alberta. An independent Alberta would still regulate industry, protect the environment, honour treaty obligations, provide healthcare, and cooperate with Canada. The difference is that those decisions would be made here, by Albertan representatives who are accountable to the people who must live with the consequences.The question is simple: who is more likely to understand how Alberta can flourish: Albertans, or a Laurentian elite political class thousands of kilometres away?Canada is entitled to choose Carney’s model. Ontario, Quebec, the Atlantic provinces may prefer a larger central government and coordinated economic management. That is their democratic right. But it does not give them the right to compel Alberta to surrender its resources, culture, and future to that model indefinitely.A federation can survive deep differences only when it permits genuine decentralization. Canada has repeatedly refused. Reform has been fought for, promised, attempted, and abandoned for generations. Alberta remains useful enough to finance, important enough to regulate, but too politically weak to control its own direction..Independence is not a radical rejection of Canada. It is the practical recognition that two political cultures are moving toward incompatible futures.Carney wants a Canada directed by national strategies, institutional coordination, and centralized authority. Alberta was built by people who trusted families, communities, and entrepreneurs to get on with the job. One model asks citizens to wait for permission. The other expects them to take responsibility.Alberta should not spend another generation begging Ottawa for exemptions, pleading for pipelines, defending its industries, apologizing for its prosperity, or hoping the next federal government will finally understand the West. We have tried reform, accommodation, and cooperation, and even referendums. Ottawa has answered with more control.The conclusion is unavoidable: Alberta must govern itself.Not because independence will be easy. It will not be. Alberta should choose independence because a free people cannot permanently outsource their future to a government they cannot meaningfully influence and whose governing philosophy they reject.We should stop asking Ottawa to understand us, approve us, or spare us from its latest federal plan. We should take responsibility for our own future, accept the risks that accompany freedom, and build institutions answerable to Albertans.There comes a point when continuing to ask permission becomes an admission that we are not truly free. Alberta has reached that point.Carney may build his new order for Canada.Alberta should leave it — and build a country of its own.
