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US and Russia fuelling separatist debate in Canada, new report says (www.bbc.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/canadapolitics@lemmy.ca
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[–] 3 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

Lmfao. Legitimate grievances?

Harper was in power for 10 fucking years and gutted Ontario's manufacturing sector, yet do you see Ontario yelling to separate?

Albertans have long been manipulated by Canadian conservatives (i.e. oil companies) into wrongly thinking that they are uniquely picked on and punished.

They're now also being manipulated by outside actors.

For the province of personal responsibility, Albertans really don't seem capable of acknowledging that their insistence on only electing Progressive Conservatives for decades, even in the face of gross fiscal mismanagement, is what got them stuck in the boat they're in. Why is it Canada's problem that Alberta didn't even bother to make oil and gas companies clean up their own wells?

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Refer to my other comment in this thread, but no, this is not "manipulation" any more than any form of capitalist and liberal reaffirmations are manipulative. They are in that this system socializes people to hold capitalistic values, and so these people make choices that are consistent with those values (which are always to their detriment, not only at this point), but to call this the result of "outside actors" is deeply dismissive of the fundamental elements in Canadian culture and its way of life. Carney has openly supported the expansion of fossil fuel industry in Canada, is he some Russian spy? I doubt any more than any neoliberal is.

    You're too focused on responsibility and punishment. Reality doesn't care, we have what we have to work with. Albertans are deeply influenced by the fossil fuel industry in the same way Canadians are not only deeply influenced, but dominated by the interests of capital and extractive settler-colonialism. Nothing is different here from Canadians wanting to seperate from US imperialism only now that there is a perception that they are "uniquely picked on and punished," despite this state's complicity in that brutal violence. Our entire standard of living and way of life is built through that violence, and guess what, it was to everyone's detriment and that itself is only acknowledged now that we deal with the inevitable decay of that system and the environmental/economic turmoil that it has wrought. It's not like Canadians have responded to this threat by acting in solidarity with colonized people in the global south or demanding systemic change. Instead, they have strengthened ties with other imperialistic and capitalistic powers. Go figure.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Refer to my other comment in this thread, but no, this is not "manipulation" any more than any form of capitalist and liberal reaffirmations are manipulative.

    Bruh, the oil industry has literally paid for multi hundred million dollar lobbying groups to push their message. And no, not every capitalist does that.

    Your point is an interesting structural argument, but it doesn't need to paper over the real world differences and history to do so.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago*

    I'd love for you to explain the substantive difference between the real and unreal manipulation. In what way is the specific lobbying campaign by fossil fuels in Alberta distinct from any lobbying for extraction in Canada? There is no disentangling fossil fuel lobbying in Alberta from settler-colonialism within the federal state of Canada or Canadian culture because these are all elements in a commonly imperialistic, capitalistic, and colonial system. You have misunderstood my criticism of capitalism as something oriented around individual capitalists as though I am talking about some especially naughty people and not recognizing that property-owners share fundamental interests because of what this system is and how it reproduces. In what way are Albertans "fooled" but Canadians who defend property ownership for mining corporations, tech corporations, food distributors, and landlords are not? Neoliberalism was dominant in Canada for decades before Trump even ran the first time (no, before 2016). Even further, why is this presumption made that the literal wealth that these companies have at their disposal is itself unrelated to the Canadian state or its interests? Quite literally, the wealth that it controls is both dependent on and contributive to the resources that these companies have access to in the first place when it is widely invested in this among every other extractive industry. Canada harbours half of the world's mining corporations, and you think that's what, unrelated to the separatist movement? Not in the interest of US hegemony? Why?

    It has been intensely frustrating to have Canadians realize for the first time in their lives that they're in an empire, and to have their response be reactionary nationalism rooted in neoliberal politics. You have any idea how many Canadians who did not give a shit about how they related to US imperialism until Trump was reelected have mansplained my own country to me in the past year? Tell me about the "real world differences and history," then.

    (This is also, btw, not my argument. I'm applying basic understandings of feminist, structuralist and decolonial scholarship on capitalism and settler-colonialism that you'd see in other work that is derived from arguments formed by scholars like Patrick Wolfe and Ann Laura Stoler. This is how people who analyze this system with the desire for change make sense of developments like Albertan seperatism.)

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