Today I was reading some comments from an influential person who wants Alberta to stay part of Canada. His argument was a series of statistics, explaining to me that there are people across Canada who are worse off than I am, that there are other places in the world with lower GDP per capita, and the amount of tax breaks the government of Canada gave the oilsands in the 90s. He told us that as the richer members of the federation we owe it to the rest of Canada to quietly surrender our equalization payments, regardless of the clearly expressed will of the province that we want change. It never does to be selfish, after all. 

There were some impressive numbers for sure, and it is nice to know that if we average out everyone in the province it looks not so bad. I know many who are even willing to look after the people in the rest of the country who are struggling. There was only one problem: Our lives are not a statistic. The battle for independence is not a competing cage match of spread sheets. No one decides to take the hard decision of leaving a broken federation and striking out into a new future because someone quoted some numbers. Rather, the issue is the reality of life in a broken Canada today. 

We can certainly look back at times when things in Canada were not so bad, when the country recognized that there was a give and take, when we were able to make our views heard. But today is not that day. When a family cannot afford to live on their income, when a hard working person who has done the right thing their whole life cannot afford a house, when the national government pushes insane ideology with every new pronouncement from Ottawa, when the actual building blocks of wealth are deliberately blocked, it is no longer an issue of spread sheets and the need to support others in the country. It is not warm fuzzy feelings as we think of shared hockey victories of that first cup of Timmie’s hot chocolate. It is about the future of our children, the ability to survive, and the need to live in a country where we are free and unafraid of what our government intends to do to us. 

Your life matters. Your needs are important. Your desires and values should be heard. But instead your voice is silenced, and when people dare to raise objections they are told by wealthy members of the comfortable class to sit down and shut up. When people say that something has to change they are called traitors or extremists. 

It is not extremist to care for your province and country. It is not traitorous to want a better life. The worker in Fort Mac who worries how he will pay his bills, the waitress in Brooks who has to work two jobs to keep her children clothed, the father of four in Fairview who has to go hungry so that his kids can eat do not care that we are statistically better off. All they know is that they are struggling, and it shouldn’t be like this. 

Your life is not a statistic. You matter. You need a country that cares for you, not one that will shove a spread sheet in your face and tell you that you are fine. Let’s make that kind of country in Alberta, where no one feels left behind and all have the opportunity to truly thrive.