Some topics justify more coverage, and Canada’s constitutional crisis is one of them. Perhaps because the Canadian media are so bought off, with notable exceptions, Ottawa’s critics have received precious little attention. Hence, my recent video, “Three Reasons Why Canada’s Days Are Numbered,” proved our most popular ever.
While the Impunity Observer covers the broader Americas, there is a craving for better coverage of Canada’s neglected regions. That explains why the Western Standard has thrived in recent years. It serves a frustrated and alienated Prairie audience.
Here I will provide responses to three recurring themes in the more than 600 comments, which I appreciate. One comment is now a letter on the Impunity Observer website under the title of “Why I Am an Ex-Canadian.”
For more detail, consider picking up a copy of my book, Financial Sovereignty for Canadians: Untether Yourself from the Ottawa Leviathan. I released it less than a year ago, and it addresses three broad themes: challenges, solutions, and paradigm shifts.
Financial Sovereignty for Canadians
For those interested in Alberta specifically, listen to my substack interview with Michael Wagner: “The Path to Alberta Independence.” I also recommend The Sovereigntist’s Handbook (2023) by Cory Morgan and No Other Option (2021) by Wagner.
1. Who am I?
Plenty of people have sought to discredit me because of my Kiwi accent. This rebuke is known as an ad hominem fallacy. It targets the entity presenting an assertion rather than the assertion and its merits or lack thereof. The ad hominem is a fallacy, but that does not stop people from resorting to it in a knee-jerk fashion.
For those eager to know, I was born in New Zealand to a mother from Calgary, Alberta. I speak only for myself, but many relatives remain in Alberta, along with a few elsewhere in Canada.
I am a Canadian citizen who went there looking for work in 2008. Eventually, I landed a role with the now defunct Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax, Nova Scotia. However, employment in Canada proved difficult, and I moved on to fruitful opportunities stateside.
I never lost the connection—given roles with Canadian think tanks and a kinship with my godfather back in Nova Scotia—and my intent was to return to Canada after graduate school in Texas. However, the COVID-19 mandates and the suppression of the Trucker Convoy made me less optimistic about the idea. The United States offered me permanent residence, so I settled in Colorado.
2. Why am I reluctant to endorse US statehood?
Many Canadian provinces would be better off in the United States than in Canada: lower taxes, lower costs, better market access, more capital availability, etc. Prairie residents also tend to jibe better culturally with Mountain State Americans than with Laurentian Canadians. Similarly, Atlantic Canadians jibe better with New Englanders.
However, subservience to Ottawa or Washington, DC, is a false dichotomy. There are other options, such as regional blocs or provincial independence.
Many Canadian separatists appear to underestimate discontent among Americans. Washington, DC, has become an anti-US city with no interest in constitutional government (see the Tenth Amendment). Despite President Donald Trump’s strong desire to rein in the permanent bureaucracy (AKA the deep state), anyone can see how they are resisting him. Further, corruption within the Republican Party means no spending respite in sight, as the national debt mounts to ungodly levels.
There are many rising secessionist movements in the United States, and Texas is my favorite for independence. An economist I respect, Robert Murphy, has written a primer on this: Common Sense: The Case for an Independent Texas (2021).
Alberta as a US state would not even be 2 percent of the population, while it is 12 percent of Canada’s population. Alberta would be another flyover state, in terms of presidential politics. Meanwhile, the United States is going through changing demographics and voter preferences, away from traditional US values such as gun rights.
Further, there is broad acknowledgement that provinces have the legal right to peacefully secede from Canada. That is not necessarily the case for US states.
Alberta as a state would be taking on another indebted, faraway, and unaccountable ruling class. To rub salt into the wound, exiting the arrangement would be even more difficult than exiting Canada.
3. What about voting out the Liberal Party and restoring Canada’s greatness?
This is a common refrain: the problem is Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney—except it is not. I have no love for Trudeau, but we should ask how this nitwit got elected. He is one of the select few Canadians who grew up in the bilingual, politically connected environment around Ottawa and Montreal. He had no spine to resist progressive lunacy and was amenable to crony patrons.
The Conservative Party of Canada has tried and failed to have its cake and eat it too: retain support from Canada’s heartland population while appeasing the disproportionate voting power of Ontario and Quebec. Despite an unpopular and incompetent Trudeau, both Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole failed to oust him.
Stephen Harper, a shrewd Alberta politician, was twice reelected as Canada’s prime minister. Despite being one of the authors of the famous Firewall Letter, which advocated assertiveness from Alberta, he understood his constraints and achieved reelection by bending the knee to the Laurentian political class. Tragically, he insulted our intelligence (and his own) by defending crony supply management. This props up Quebec farms at the expense of Canadian consumers.
Canada’s problems are structural rather than of personnel. If you doubt this, consider Time to Leave: Canada Cannot be Fixed (2024) by Wagner. He responds to this question better than I can.
There remains a need for sustained, bottom-up groundwork to galvanize support: education, advocacy, and networking. However, like the Brexit campaign, alternative jurisdictions and better options for Canadians will prevail. Their merits stand regardless of any one person or political party.
