Quebec’s election is mercifully behind us, Alberta’s referendum is on the 19th, BC’s election is on the 24th, and the US midterms are just over a week later on November 3rd, so buckle up, because each is going to be its own shock.
None of the five parties spent the Quebec election calling for the unity we need to fight a significant outside threat. The only explicitly federalist party among them made Canadian unity a tepid 64th commitment on their list of 93, lacking any courage of their convictions.
The CAQ, in government for the past eight years, lost so much support that they collapsed completely, with the nascent Conservative Party of Quebec picking up where they left off, suggesting what was already widely suspected — that the CAQ was the Conservative Party.
The progressive separatist party Québec Solidaire has the next best thing to an election win — they hold the balance of power in the minority parliament. Quebec has, once again, fallen into the trap of ‘no to a referendum, yes to the PQ,’ voting on identity and values rather than on the pragmatism the times call for.
Unfortunately for Canada, it means that overtly separatist parties hold a majority in the National Assembly, and pursuing that separatist agenda is the one policy on which those parties will consistently agree. For those poo-pooing the possibility of a referendum, just watch them. Quebec, in spite of collectively hating Trump more than any other part of Canada, has handed him the gift of instability through an informal coalition intent on destroying our country at a time when his administration is looking for exactly that type of weakness. Congratulations, Quebec, you sure showed them!
Now, then, we must brace for Alberta’s referendum on a referendum. The Brexit referendum took place in June of 2016 and Trump was first elected a little over four months later. That referendum was brought in to settle an issue and get it off the table.
Many soft nationalists in Quebec think of a referendum in Quebec in the same terms, and Alberta’s premier claims to be treating their referendum in that same way. They’d do well to remember that it did, in fact, settle the issue and get it off the table — by succeeding, and removing the United Kingdom from the European Union, causing a massive exodus of capital and skill, and lowering the country’s standing within the world in just about every measurable category.
British Columbia’s NDP premier David Eby decided now would be a good time to hold an election, too, a full year before it was expected, in the hopes of catching the opposition Conservatives in disarray after their caucus revolt dumped their short-lived leader, former federal MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay. The result is likely to bring in a largely unknown MLA, Lorne Doerkson, as the premier. You can bet that if he wins the election, he will drop any pretence of being the interim leader. Leaked information this morning also suggests his party is promising the private insurance industry that he will get rid of BC’s no-fault auto insurance. To whose benefit?
In spite of being a relative unknown, he brings his party’s baggage with him, people like homophobic Conservative MLA Heather Maahs who immediately called on the BC government to fold to Trump at the first sign of trouble.
All of these votes share a common thread: they lend toward instability at a time when that is the last thing Canada needs. The American administration wants to annex Canada and steal our resources. They are a sufficient threat that the Canadian military has had to prepare scenarios for an American invasion of Canada, as acknowledged by the Prime Minister.
These are not idle threats. This is not speculation. It is not political theory. We learned last week that Alberta and Quebec separatists have been working with the Trump administration to undermine Canada. With this full knowledge, we are continuing to empower these traitorous groups who would sell us out for their own personal benefit and glory.
The American mid-terms will take place just over a week after the BC election. We will learn very quickly whether or not American democracy is still functional, or, if in the face of an electoral rout, the MAGAs will undermine their own elections, refuse to seat the victors, challenge results, or cheat their way into holding onto power in ways we cannot imagine, likely turning toward violence as they did on January 6th, 2021, the last time they lost.
Just this week, we learned that, for the first time since the 2000 election — and we know how that election turned out — foreign observers will not be invited to watch the mid-term elections. One wonders what they intend to hide? Recounting hanging chads will seem like child’s play to an administration that says that, were it to happen tomorrow, “Watergate would have been a 12 hour story.”
Quebec having a separatist coalition and a minority that will lead to another election sooner rather than later while Alberta holds a non-binding referendum on whether or not to hold a binding referendum to break up Canada from the other side while American democracy collapses on its face is not a recipe for the long term sustainability of our sovereignty or our country.
Canadian voters need to repudiate those who seek to divide our country and offer it up to the Americans. We need to do it at the provincial level, not only at the federal level, and we need to do it visibly and forcibly.
It is now up to Alberta and BC to succeed where Quebec has failed, and keep the country together in the face of an aggressive and imploding United States.