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Look at me, I am surprised! /s
Friendly reminder from a yank.. Don't let them manipulate your country too, these people are the same people that caused interference in our elections and want to annex Greenland. There's a reason elons grandfather's "technocracy limited" was banned in Canada around ww2..
Of course youtube wilñ not remove that or remove the idf chsnnel but they are removing iranian lego videos
Im with a lot of Albertans who are (rightly) ticked off at how much our province has been taken advantage of by the east for decades now. We DO want to voice our displeasure (thus the Convoy) and Im uncomfortable but see the necessity of the sabre rattling as a tool for negotiating a fairer deal for Alberta in Ottawa. It's worked for Quebec for years, we're just copying their strategy.
But will separation actually happen? Nope. The clear majority don't support it. Would some in America like it? Sure, they already buy our oil at a huge discount, they would love it if they just owned it all. But you gotta be a whole lot of wingnut to believe that jumping into bed with the shitshow that is the US administration would be in any way better than what we have now. There are definitely some separatists here, but they are a small but loud minority.
If you're Canadian and you don't wonder why this isnt the richest society on earth..and that doesn't make you angry..
And then albertans realize most of that wealth is in their back yard... It makes sense why they want to separate. I'd probably want to aswell
This is so stupid. Maybe we should create a bunch of independent little Vatican-like countries around each oil well. What a bunch of money and power clowns. The world is moving past all of that and they still haven't figured it out yet.
I think the West is just fed up with sending billions back to Ottawa in exchange for nothing.
For example... Ottawa has given away $25.5 billion to Ukraine. Think how many hospitals or walk in clinics that could build nationwide
This is the train of thought of westerners right now
Medical care is a provincial issue, blame your province not the federal government
Also as a Ukrainian Canadian, I don't think you have any idea about how close the two nations are and essentially how many Ukrainians are your neighbours if you live in the west.
Yes medial care is provincial - but Alberta's beef is that we send billions out east and dont get any of it back. If we didn't have to send it, we could have billions to spend on our own services. Meanwhile other provinces (not mentioning any names, eh, Quebec?) take billions every year while playing the 'have not' province game because they dont count their rich hydro electric as a resource in the equalization formula. We're being gamed and everyone, including Ottawa, knows it but they dont want to piss off Quebecers and lose their votes so they keep this unfair system going.
but Alberta's beef is that we send billions out east and dont get any of it back.
Except that pipeline that Trudeau built for Alberta.
Or the health transfers that Trudeau was trying to send to the provinces, but every conservative provincial government rejected it because the feds wanted guarantees that the money would be specifically used for Healthcare and nothing else.
And those are only 2 of the biggest ones in recent years.
Ok, the use of "any" isn't accurate. We dont get MOST of it back. We send about 20 billion a year more to Ottawa than we get back. Compared to what Ottawa takes, the "gift" of a pipeline isn't exactly altruistic of Ottawa considering the billions in tax revenue it generates.
'The world is moving past all that' is highly inaccurate. The world still runs on diesel and gas - if it didn't the Strait of Hormuz being blocked wouldn't matter, but it obviously does and the whole world is feeling the pinch right now. We're using and going to use oil for decades to come.
US submission is why. They set it up to steal all our wealth. We ship oil from Alberta to Houston then buy it back after all the value is added.
Exactly, just look at Norway where they nationalized oil. This could've been us.
But the government of Alberta fucked it up. Not Canada.
I mean there was a fuck up at a national level as well. Canada gutted its publicly owned oil assets and handed the whole show over to private capital. This is a textbook case of neoliberalism doing exactly what it says on the tin.
Back in the 70s and early 80s, there was actually a wave of state intervention. The feds were terrified of American control of our resources, so in 1975 Trudeau created Petro-Canada as a federal Crown corporation. Out west, provinces followed suit with Saskatchewan starting SaskOil in 1973.
But then Mulroney’s PC swept into power in 1984. Mulroney immediately began gutting the nationalist energy policies at the federal level. The process of killing Petro-Canada as a public entity began in 1990 when they sold the first shares to the public. This was an ideologically driven decision.
Alberta absolutely loved the whole privatization wave and by the time Ralph Klein was Premier in the 90s, the province was already deep into deregulation. Alberta had successfully argued that Ottawa should get out of the business entirely and leave it to the free market i.e., the multinationals, and the feds finally sold their last shares in Petro-Canada in 2004.
The federal Liberals under Chretien and Martin finished the job Mulroney started because they had fully adopted Third Way politics . They didn't want to own oil companies and they wanted tax revenue. Meanwhile, Alberta uses the memory of the hated National Energy Program from 1980 as a cudgel to this day. Any time Ottawa tries to regulate emissions or climate change, Alberta screams separation and Ottawa is killing us.
And now the profits are privatized to shareholders and CEOs, while the environmental destruction is socialized onto the public and the planet. Alberta continues to act like a victim of federal overreach while simultaneously demanding that Ottawa build pipelines and bail out the industry whenever prices crash. It's capitalism all the way down. The public built the infrastructure and took the risk and the private sector took the winnings.
I was tracking with you til that last paragraph. Alberta does NOT want Ottawa to build pipelines, we want Ottawa to get out of the way and stop blocking them with so many regulations that no company wants to invest here. Billions in investment has fled the province. And if they did build one, they wouldnt be allowed to ship it out because there's a tanker ban on the west coast (which there isn't on the east coast, go figure).
Alberta doesnt ask for bailouts, we just want Ottawa to stop blocking our main resource. We could be supplying the world with tons of LNG if Trudeau hadn't said there's 'no business case' for selling when countries came knocking. Look at where we'd be now if he hadn't been so myopic.
Alberta absolutely does ask for bail outs and cries every time the price of oil drops. Meanwhile, Alberta demanding that we just throw regulations out of the window and destroy the environment to build pipelines on the cheap is the real myopia. If Alberta wasn't just giving oil away to Americans, then Alberta could be rich beyond belief along with the rest of Canada. Instead, Alberta hasn't even bothered investing in domestic refining infrastructure allowing American companies to plunder national resources in Canada.
You are correct that in 2018, Ottawa gave a $1.6-billion aid package aimed at assisting the oil and gas sector through loan guarantees and investments. Meanwhile, in 2024, Alberta's GDP was approximately 474 billion, a major net contributor to federal finances, providing over 20 billion more in taxes than it receives back in federal spending.
So, if that little 1.6 billion loan/investment was your version of a "bailout every time prices crash" have at 'er, but its obviously not true. We don't need bailouts, we're providing 15% of Canada's overall economic health and we give FAR more to Ottawa than Ottawa gives to us.
First off, you are seriously downplaying the bailout history. That $1.6 billion in 2018 was pocket change compared to the COVID era blank check. In 2020, Ottawa bought the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion. Then they spent another $9 billion on construction. That is the federal government becoming a pipeline operator because private capital refused to touch it. Then came the $1.7 billion abandonment fund for orphan wells. Then the $15 billion in loan guarantees and tax deferrals. Then the $2.2 billion for methane cleanup. The list goes on and on. The fossil fuel sector has received over $70 billion in public money since 2020 by some estimates. So spare me the little 1.6 billion routine.
Second, the whole net contributor argument is a trick. Yes, Alberta sends more tax revenue to Ottawa than it gets back in transfers. That is literally how a federation works. Ontario also does that. British Columbia also does that. The entire point of equalization is to pool resources so people in PEI and Manitoba can have hospitals and schools. However, Alberta itself benefits massively from that system. The banks, the RCMP, the EI system, and the border security that keeps your exports flowing are all paid for by federal tax dollars that Alberta businesses and workers also use. You think the oil would just magically float to tankers without coast guard icebreakers paid for by everyone?
Third, the oil industry itself is not the net contributor you think it is. Most of those corporate profits leave the country going to Suncor, Cenovus, and Imperial. Their shareholders are in New York, London, and Toronto. The royalty regime in Alberta has always been a joke. Norway saved a trillion dollars from its oil while Alberta saved a big fat nothing. So when you say Alberta provides 15% of Canada's GDP, what you really mean is a handful of multinational corporations extract a non renewable resource, ship the raw bitumen out, keep most of the profit, wreck the land, and then Alberta points to the tax withholding and says look how generous we are.
To sum up, Alberta blew the windfall on tax cuts for the wealthy, and now demands a gold star for paying its bills like every other province.
In 2020, Ottawa bought the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion. Then they spent another $9 billion on construction. That is the federal government becoming a pipeline operator because private capital refused to touch it.
You were lamenting bailouts. BUYING a pipeline and paying Canadians to build it is how construction of a valuable asset works. They didnt lose money on it, and it wasnt a giveaway (A bailout is when Ottawa gives a Bombardier money over and over again because it never stays profitable but they need to keep buying those Quebec votes)
Your second point is weak. Every province benefits from those same federally paid services. But only three provinces pay equalization and get none of it back
2024-2025 Equalization Payments Received (Estimated)
Quebec: ~$13.316 billion ($1,545 per capita)
Manitoba: ~$4.352 billion (approx. $3,000+ per capita)
Nova Scotia: ~$3.284 billion ($3,252 per capita)
New Brunswick: ~$2.897 billion ($3,629 per capita)
Ontario: ~$576 million (or $0 in some formulas)
Newfoundland & Labrador: ~$336 million
Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan: $0
Your third point has some validity, except for the part about not saving any money for the province. Our Heritage Fund has risen from nearly empty to currently at 30 billion and likely to rise again this year with the oil price surge.
But the oil company shareholders are everywhere, including Canadians and in your CPP retirement fund too. (Its a bit ironic to complain about that when that when our new PM moved Brookfield headquarters to the US to better access American funds). Thats the way international investing works in this world and the way that MOST of the large corporations in Canada operate.
Let's peel back another layer of this neoliberal onion here. You're now moving the goalposts from we never get bailouts to actually buying a pipeline was a smart investment. Let me take these one by one.
You are correct that buying an asset is different from a grant. But here is the problem. The private sector refused to build TMX. Kinder Morgan wanted out because of environmental opposition and cost overruns. So Ottawa stepped in as buyer of last resort. That is a socialist rescue of a failing private project, and the asset is not even finished yet. Current cost estimates have ballooned to over $30 billion while the original estimate was $7 billion. The government will never see that money back. They will sell it at a massive loss to a private consortium years from now, likely one of the same oil companies that refused to build it in the first place. That's just a bailout with extra steps.
And your Bombardier jab is cute but irrelevant. We can criticize Quebec's corporate welfare while also criticizing Alberta's. Two things can be true. The difference is Bombardier builds trains and planes. The oil industry burns the planet. One is a bit more urgent than the other.
Your table is accurate. Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan pay in and get nothing back. Nobody disputes that. But you are confusing equalization payments with total federal spending. Equalization is just one program. It is not the whole picture.
What about federal infrastructure spending. What about defense contracts. What about the fact that the Canada Pension Plan invests heavily in Alberta oil. What about the massive tax breaks for oil companies embedded in the federal tax code. What about the fact that Ottawa spends billions on cleanup of abandoned wells, a liability that belongs to the provinces.
The equalization formula exists because resource revenues are volatile and uneven. Alberta benefited from that very formula when oil prices crashed in the 80s. Alberta received equalization payments as recently as the 1960s. The story of a perpetual donor province is a very recent invention.
More importantly, the per capita argument cuts against you. Quebec gets less per person than Manitoba or New Brunswick. And the formula is designed to account for provincial capacity to raise revenue. Alberta has the highest GDP per capita in the country by a massive margin. Of course you pay in, that's just mathematics.
You are right that the Heritage Fund is currently around $30 billion, but let's put that number in context. Norway's sovereign wealth fund is over $1.6 trillion and Alaska's Permanent Fund is over $80 billion. Alberta has been pumping oil for over 75 years, and a $30 billion savings account is an embarrassingly small amount of money to show for it. It's basically pocket change being less than a single year of current provincial revenue. If oil vanished tomorrow, that fund would cover about six months of health care spending.
And where did the rest of the money go. It went to tax cuts, corporate subsidies, and low royalty rates. The province chose to hand wealth directly to industry rather than save it.
You are absolutely right that CPP invests in oil. But pointing out that Canadian pensions are entangled with oil extraction is not a defense of the system. It is an indictment of it. The fact that workers' retirement savings depend on burning carbon is precisely the problem. It traps us in a fossil fuel economy even as the world burns.
And your dig about the new PM moving Brookfield to the US. Yes, that is also bad. Neoliberalism hurts everyone eventually. I oppose capital flight and corporate tax avoidance across the board. I do not defend Brookfield just because it is headquartered in Toronto.
Your original claim was that Alberta does not need bailouts because it is a net contributor. But every single downturn proves otherwise. The industry is structurally unstable relying on high prices, export markets, and constant government intervention. The TMX purchase, the orphan well cleanup, the wage subsidies, the loan guarantees. These are all bailouts. They just wear different clothes.
I forgot this was lemmy.ml lol now your comment makes much more sense. 💯 agree they both sold our soul to the devil.
A few trillion dollar fund is what we could have had.
sigh...
Don't worry, the Yanks hate each other so much, they will turn on each other long before Canada ever does
We actually like each other and know how good we have it
Stay strong hosers
Well . . . Yeah. Youtube and everywhere else is swimming with russian bots.
Sees something American happening in America... RUZZIAN BOTS! Peak intellect on display. 🤌
[Redneck in Alabama does something racist]
Liberals: "See Russia did this, all bad things in America aren't our fault!"
I imagine the whole thing comes down to libs thinking that the western system is the peak of human development. So when they see it failing visibly, they can't accept that there might be structural problems within liberalism itself that are the cause. And thus it must be nefarious foreign actors and their collaborators trying to tear down their perfect society. This was perfectly summed up in the whole garden and jungle slip by Borrell.
Here, Bruges is a good example of the European garden. Yes, Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build - the three things together. And here, Bruges is maybe a good representation of beautiful things, intellectual life, wellbeing.
The rest of the world – and you know this very well, Federica – is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners should take care of it, but they will not protect the garden by building walls. A nice small garden surrounded by high walls in order to prevent the jungle from coming in is not going to be a solution. Because the jungle has a strong growth capacity, and the wall will never be high enough in order to protect the garden.
The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.
Alberta is in Canada.
And propaganda is coming from south of the border. Perhaps you failed geography at school and think that's Russia?
It is very likely an overlap of both.
Many of the things Trump has been doing are the sorts of things that are more beneficial for Putin's interests than they are for the interests of US citizens.
Nah, what Trump is doing is beneficial to the interests of the oligarchs who own the US. He works in the interests Thiel, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Koch brothers, and so on. Meanwhile, the whole conspiracy theory that Russia controls Trump is absolutely hilarious when you look at the fact that he's surrounded by zionists and that Israel literally brags how Americans report to them on everything they do.
Oh it’s imported propaganda eh. Hm. I guess there really is only one place that could be from then. /s
Again, watches Americans trying to annex part of Canada and keeps braying about Russia. Really should check yourself for brainworms asap.
Man, America isn’t “trying to annex” Alberta. No one in America, who isn’t a sociopathic demented rapist, wants to “annex” any part of Canada.
There is a . . . “school of thought” for lack of a better word, that supports multiple divisioning efforts such as Brexit, Texit, Calexit, and yes Albexit or wtfe they end up calling it (See also: Germany). And that school is very much in league with the FSB both financially and politically.
You need to know this because this russian-puppet fascist mountain of shit we’re under down here, the MAGA politics, is coming for you. Cambridge Analytica tactics haven’t changed. It works the same way every time.
Its not impossible. The states took over Venezuela, an oil rich country, and shortly after declared a war that disrupted oil supply and production in the middle east. I highly doubt these two actions are not connected in some way. Alberta could be one of the next targets as America tries to secure energy and mineral dominance in the west aas well as secure more food and water.
Well, nothing is impossible, but some things are improbable. The US invading Alberta to steal the oil is, to put it mildly, highly improbable. That anyone would feel the need to talk about it with any credence is already too much to give the idea.
To reiterate my point, had certain people opted to vote for progress instead of doing everything to prevent it, there would have been no Venezuela, no middle east oil crisis. But they hate what they don’t understand too much, so here we are. Just as putin preferred. But they want to pretend that’s coincidence.
Trump should have never won a first term, let alone a second, thats the timeline we are in. Fringe as it may be, there is a strong vocal minority of Alberta that wants to seperate and the Trump administration will jump on that opportunity if it gains enough wind.
Trump administration is as incompetent as the day is long. It will never happen. And separatist movements online aren’t coming from America, unless from russia by way of MAGA.
November will tell what the next two years will be like.
America is literally funding a separatist movement in Canada and their rapist in charge has openly talked about making Canada the 51st state. Also, big news to me that Koch brothers, Thiel, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos are Russian. Or maybe Tim Cook, who donated a million to Trump's inauguration and gifted him a gold plaque, is Russian. Sure fooled me.
The US is a fascist state that's a menace to the world, and that's been raping and pillaging this planet since its inception. This travesty of a nation was literally built on genocide that inspired German nazis.
You keep on braying about Russia though there being the useful idiot that you are. Fuck the Burger Reich and the scum who carry water for it. You are all complicit.
America is literally funding a separatist movement in Canada
I thought maybe I missed something in the article so I checked again but no. There’s nothing in there about that and there’s nothing anywhere about that. Make it up for yourself I guess?
Stupid fuck. Do you think this has never happened before? Do you think maybe it was crystal clear 10 years ago? Do you think maybe some people know more about it than you? No. No you don’t.
Look at this:
Joe Trotz, who lives in the Crowsnest Pass and supports Alberta independence, also rejected the messaging in the videos.
“I totally think that’s wrong. I mean, facts are facts. Let them speak for themselves, good or bad, you know, and then let people make up their own mind.”
Jeffrey Rath, general counsel for Stay Free Alberta, also distanced the Alberta independence movement from annexation messaging. . . . “As far as I’m concerned, those videos aren’t helping Alberta independence. We wish to be a free and independent country.”
you’re doing it to yourself you fucking moron. THAT’S HOW IT WORKS. That’s how it’s designed. Yeah, the genius trump is funding and directing this. The guy who can’t manage to put two sentences together. Idiot.
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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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