One of the common attacks that sovereigntists in Alberta hear is that we are undertaking to destroy Canada. This is a fascinating argument when we look around at the Canada that these suddenly loyal, elbows up, flag waving people would have us preserve.

A serious question must be asked: Is there a Canada to save still? Can we do something in Alberta to preserve and protect our history while looking forward with hope into the future?

In the last ten years we have been resolutely bombarded with the fact that Canada is a racist, genocidal, white supremacist, colonial settler state that does not deserve to exist and that must spend its time apologizing for its very existence. 

Pressure groups speak of “so-called Canada” with disdain, encouraging the complete removal of Canadian history from all public spaces. The founders of Canada? Racists. The people who settled here? Thieves. There is no one good in the history of Canada, if we listen to the general voice that bombards us from every side. The Prime Minister of Canada himself told us that Canada was a post-national state and chose to put the flags at half mast for half a year because someone did some ground penetrating radar and there were unmarked graves. 

The overall message is that the Canada of the post-Pierre Trudeau establishment is not a place worth keeping alive. People tear down statues left and right, and the orgy of renaming things has only just begun as people work to wipe out Canada as it was known. 

And then we get into traditional Canadian values! Out of the national life goes Peace, Order, and Good Government, to be replaced with Protests, Lawlessness, and Performative Grievance. Those who chose to fly the flag of Canada and sing the anthem were called racist, extremist, and various “phobes,” while those who attack the fabric of the country are lauded as “boundary breakers” and “barrier shatterers.” A country that was once considered sober and serious on the international stage has been replaced with a performative mockery with nice socks and smooth platitudes, but no actual action.

Our military is a thing of farce, where hard warfighters are replaced with self-expression and tampons in the rest room. Our police are reduced from the great Mounties, who always get their man, to the instruments of a repressive government, bent on riding down any peaceful citizen who does not agree with the government point of view. Our courts have gone from enforcing the law to criminalizing dissent while freeing rapists and murderers because they had a difficult childhood.

Canada has been shattered, it is already a broken husk. The name may be there, the flag may still fly, but all that the name and the flag stood for in the past has been hollowed out to the point where to be Canadian means maple syrup and “I am not American.”

So how do we fix this? Can there be any hope of turning it around? The principles of Canada still exist in some parts of the country, and it is those areas that must consider what they will do. If they wish to be loyal to the spirit of MacDonald and Cartier, Laurier and King; if they want to be faithful to the men of Vimy Ridge and Juno Beach; if they choose to stand on the historic and rich tradition of Peace, Order, and Good Government that built this country, then they must be willing to separate from those who have routinely voted for the other version of Canada. They must leave behind a country that chooses to abandon the foundation it was built upon. They must go their own way. The great legacy of Canada cannot be preserved from within Confederation, because the will to preserve it has been lost. The new, Trudeaupian vision of Canada as a post national, centralized, sterilized state that caters to the Laurentian elite is the vision that seems to prevail in other parts of the country. In Alberta, though, we can take our history back. WE can remind ourselves of our great heritage. We can build, we can be free, we can have the greatness that was supposed to be the guaranteed Canadian heritage. 

In an independent Alberta we have the tools to preserve the legacy of Canada into the future, shining a light on all the great values that used to guide the whole country. It will not be easy, but it is necessary. Let’s go to work!