Sorry, I was being a bit cheeky. I hear your points and they are valid.
Literally every single thing Danielle Smith and the UCP espouse to care about is made worse by Alberta becoming a sovereign nation:
- Taxes
- Coastal access
- Pipelines and transfer taxes
- Tanker access and global markets
- Trade sanctions as a function of per capita CO2 emissions
- Infrastructure access
- Energy markets
- Codified projects and say in what they detail
- Comprehensive national strategy cost averaged down against 40 million instead of 4 million (aka costs 10x).
Think about what happens to Albertan property values on separation - literally no one is moving here, and many will leave. The "Alberta Edge" becomes even less tenable, and quality of life rapidly erodes.
But maybe they can empty everyone's pensions before they fuck off into the sunset, once the last drop of blood is squeezed out.
They're really talking about becoming the most taxed 51st state, or an erosion of living standards so sharp they'll get whiplash. Ghoulish politics.
Trouble with measuring crossings is it picks up an aggregate of things; Canadians crossing for leisure, for business, Americans crossing for leisure and work, medical tourism (Americans coming for insulin, my uncle driving to Mexico for dental care, etc.), foreigners on a road trip, people driving between Canada and Mexico, etc. Most of these are round trips too; you're going to be measured coming in and then out (so you're part of both statistics).
This sets aside people who already had non-refundable bookings from a year ago; Disney essentially let us cancel our Florida trip once they confirmed our French reservation at Disney there; sure, it's still money going to Disney, but at least a lot of that money is being divested into the French market instead.
My friends who weren't able to cancel made a point of limiting their spending while they were there still. And then there were a couple who just didn't care as well.
Ultimately, the metrics (and their sustained impacts) will be an aggregate of many things, and eventually Canadian fatigue as well.
Updoot for the sorted list archival.
A) American Republican owned Chatham shouldn't own essentially all of our domestic news (I'd say this if it were the Democrats too, although I don't see anything even remotely this magnitude from them).
B) These companies should have to super impose PostMedia on all their logos in double the size. And don't stop there - do it to all structured ownership in every industry.
Only if their base actually cares (and on the aggregate over time).
The NDP, despite being tiny in the last two governments, enacted some of the biggest (incremental) changes this country has seen in recent decades. Dental care, pharma care, small rental and housing affordability improvements, universal sick leave protections, etc.
They clearly were the policy "winners" in the last 4 years, whether you agree with the initiatives themselves or not.
They were completely ineffective in the rhetoric and self-advocacy space, where the Conservatives clearly won (whether we find this agreeable or not). This is in part due to the fact the NDP can only get soundbytes on mainstream media access when it's subjectively on things no one else is talking about, making it look like their priority, and in part due to the fact Canada has a major American Republican media arm reaching into Canada (and the slow pivot to inexpensive influencers who hammer the same speaking points effectively as "common sense").
Nothing short of the spectrum of corporatocracy (at best) to executive authoritarianism will do.
An even better answer frankly
While true, there is economy to the least awful option - by virtue of the USA making itself less reliable, they've increased China's standing automatically, especially in the soft-power vacuum the US has left behind.
China is right to calculate this, even if they aren't really anyone's ally.
Imagine the majority of the constituents that only read the headlines and move on; it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, It's economizing on it, and it's a disservice for this to be the headline.
Especially since he's done entire interviews saying precisely the opposite.
Give the unmarked American owned media organizations with major Republican connections time to soft sell Albertans.
It only takes months to soft-pivot literally everything.
The slop image is less melted than her real images
End the war before even taking office. Kept moving the bar, then eventually just pivoted and pretended there was no bar.
We really should be turning an eye towards American owned media in Canada, especially since it's almost entirely owned by hard Republican interests (and that would be bad if I had said Democrat as well).
It's insane we can almost all collectively identify Trump as a threat and an enemy, but his disinformation arm isn't.
It would be regressive democratically; our MP system is far from perfect, but the electoral college is much, much worse.
Set aside all the things Albertans regularly enjoy and take for granted, and that there is absolutely no way back under the American Constitution, our taxes here would either skyrocket or massively erode our quality of life overnight.
A surface level awareness of things is telling of why it's very bad, but even that's asking a lot these days of the regular fellow who's exposure to politics is limited to what their favorite pundit says.
It's kind of interesting - O'Toole probably would have done better at preventing vote loss in this type of election, but I'm not sure he would have been as effective in whipping up the Conservative base on the front-end. It certainly would have been harder for Carney to enter though, and would have instead probably been a Trudeau or Freeland election instead.
What we should do now is turn our attention to American media organizations within Canada. They were the root cause to the attack on the CBC that walked a similar line as the Liberal party this election (read; the precipice of annihilation). The orange blimp (and his successor cronies) goofy missteps likely won't be repeated next time around.
It's the same hunting for narrative that usually happens.
He says something without meaningful context, and his base and others fill in the blanks in a race to make it profound. "He's actually playing 5D chess because..." And others ponder why he'd do something as reprehensible as trying to steal everything from an ally.
There's always boons to taking other people's shit; resources, access (NW Passage), infrastructure (energy), water, etc to give a couple examples.
Most of the time, it's because he's robbing someone else blind so needs another horror to enable and distract, and he got angry someone pointed out he's little more than a jerk.
Good information.
Given we live in a FPTP country, this is a worthwhile thing to consider as well: https://smartvoting.ca/ridings/federal-2025
You can look up your riding to see vote projections; you ultimately vote the system you have.
And make it everyone else's fault somehow.
Essentially want to be the only option - buy a Tesla and fill both the trunk and frunk with gasoline or get wrecked.
Nevermind they're pumping and dumping the entire stock market now, turning all the safeguards off, and extracting wealth at a rate that makes Congress look like child's play.