Yah boo sucks

The front page of the Globe and Mail recently asked this question: “What about Alberta?” The accompanying article detailed how pissed off Alberta is with the rest of Canada, which for some reason fails to see Alberta’s demands as the highest priority for the country.

We won’t fast track building pipelines for the benefit of their fossilised fuel industry. Two words: boo, hoo.

We won’t give them money to bail them out now that the price of oil has dropped and their tar sands-dependent economy has tanked. Four words, Alberta: Get a sales tax. Every other province in Canada has both a federal and a provincial sales tax on virtually every purchase its citizens make. Not Alberta, that Texas of the north that hates all forms of government taxation. If it’s good enough for the rest of the country, it’s good enough for you, Alberta. Get a fucking sales tax and then come to us cap in hand.

That article was peppered with two words that are starting to make me feel as if my head might explode: western alienation. Apparently there is a small but increasingly vocal element in Alberta who think the province should separate from the rest of Canada. They’ve got their own hashtag: #wexit. How original. Good riddance. And stop whining about western alienation.

It is almost impossible to believe the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was born in Alberta. As this Wikipedia article details, the goal of the CCF was “the federation [joining together] of organizations whose purpose is the establishment in Canada of a co-operative commonwealth, in which the basic principle of regulating production, distribution and exchange will be the supplying of human needs instead of the making of profit.”

What the hell happened?

Oh, wait a minute. I know what happened. Oil. Oil in Alberta. Oil in Saskatchewan, the province that gave us Tommy Douglas and the first CCF government. Oil – that great polluter of the planet and, it seems, the human (or at least political) soul. Oil sands, oil sands uber alles and to hell with anyone who disagrees.

Hello, Alberta! Over here! To the west of you. You know: left of you on both the physical and political maps. Yes, it’s us: British Columbia. Remember us? That annoying land mass between your toxic tar sands and Asian markets? Those annoying people who think protecting a small pod of orcas (and the rest of the coastal ecosystem) from an increased threat of oil spills is more important than your bottom line?

I have a newsflash for you, Alberta: most of the population of British Columbia is very happy to be part of Canada. (I’m sure there are some grumblers who live close to your border.) We don’t feel alienated. We like our country.

So, yah boo sucks to you, Alberchewan. And get a new hashtag. How about #oilywhiners?