Jeffrey Simpson writes how annoying Quebecers better think twice about “putting a knife to Canada’s throat” because the “Rest of Canada” is fed up with it.
This kind of rhetoric is something angry white conservatives can’t get enough of. But which group of people welcomes it even more? The “country-wrecking” separatists! Clearly this is the most boneheaded way possible of attempting to meddle in the upcoming Quebec election in which a potential referendum hangs in the balance.
But if conservatives want to get divisive and exclusive, I think Alberta is really the odd man out in Canada. The province has two political parties: conservative and ultra conservative. Their small-government, anti-environment, social-con creed is much more in tune with Republican America than the Canada I grew up in.
The real ROC
The real rest of Canada includes Quebec whose values helped shape it. The Canada I’m talking about is the one built up by Liberals and New Democrats in the post-war era. It’s a bilingual, multicultural “just society” which has a healthy social safety net and affords Canadians equal opportunity.
This is the Canada Albertans like Harper call a “second-rate socialist welfare state.” This is the Canada Albertans want to destroy beyond all recognition.
Frankly I’d rather see Alberta go than Quebec. Just imagine how many of Canada’s problems would disappear if Albertans took their ball and went home…
Do you think you could do that without Canada losing British Columbia and the Yukon? There are plenty of British Columbians who see your ROC as perfectly willing to sell us out on bitumen pipelines for a cut of the royalties. To some of us, everyone the other side of the Rockies is an Easterner.
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