Transcript: Tyler Dawson
My interview with the author of The Republic of Alberta
On October 19, citizens in the province of Alberta will vote on whether they want to proceed with a referendum on separating from the rest of Canada. My guest on the program today has written a new book about the history of these tensions — and why they have now come to a head.
Tyler Dawson is an opinion editor at The Globe and Mail. His new book is The Republic of Alberta: An Idea That Won’t Go Away.
This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview here.
TH: It’s great to have you on. The book is incredibly well timed, with a national conversation about separatist sentiment in Alberta now in full swing. October 19th, Albertans will vote about whether or not to hold a referendum on leaving Canada. Your book traces the history of these tensions, which in fact go back to before Alberta even became a province. You’ve covered Alberta politics for years. You are based in Edmonton. What made you decide to tackle this subject at book length?
TD: The simple answer is that nobody else had done it. At least not for a really long time. There had been a couple of books written about Western alienation in general, which is the precursor sentiment to separatism. This idea that the West in general and Alberta specifically are treated poorly or taken for granted by Central Canada. That was a really powerful sentiment in the 1980s in Alberta and other parts of the West. There had been some scholarly work done around that time, and in the early ‘90s, some more journalistic book-length work had been done on that. But there was really only one book that I could find that had been done in the last 20 years, a self-published book written by someone quite sympathetic to the separatist movement. I thought, why not be the one to do it? Why not be the first out of the gate? Someone is going to do it. It might as well be me.
TH: As I say, the timing is incredible for this. I want to begin where you begin the book: two decades before Alberta became a province. Writing in the Edmonton Bulletin, newspaper owner Frank Oliver complained that the region was, “Allowed but a degree more control of their affairs than the serfs in Siberia.” Tease that out for us. What did that mean?
TD: It means, fairly simply, that Western Canada did not have control over its own affairs. Their affairs were controlled basically by politicians in Ottawa. In 1885, Alberta and Saskatchewan were not yet provinces. They were part of the larger Northwest Territories, which was a bigger version of the Northwest Territories that exist today. As a territory at the time, they did not have very much control over their own governance, basically. A lot of those powers resided with Ottawa, with the Minister of the Interior. And so there was a real sense that you had this government that was a long way away, that was controlling the fortunes of people who lived in Western Canada, and many people were upset by that. That’s the sentiment that Oliver is getting at there. This is one of the consistent themes that we see throughout the history of Western Canada, this sense that there is this far away government that is out of touch with the people in the West, that is making decisions for the people in the West, and ultimately they’re making these decisions in a way that’s harmful to the West. I started [the book] in 1885 because I had to start somewhere. I probably could have gone back another 20, 30, 40 years and found similar sentiments. I’m sure they existed. But 1885 felt like as good a place to start as any.
TH: Alberta has always had a unique political climate. It is more conservative than the rest of the country. I come from British Columbia and the sentiment that we see in Alberta is not in evidence in B.C. in the same way. One of the threads you pull in the book is an influx of early immigrants from the United States to Alberta. How much stock should we put in that piece of the puzzle?
TD: Yeah, this one is actually really controversial. There was a seminal paper written by a political scientist named Nelson Wiseman, who was out of the University of Toronto, I think, who expounded upon this theory. [He] basically said you have this unique political culture in the West and Alberta because you have so many American immigrants who bring their own Republican ideas about politics and government to what is otherwise a country built on the British tradition and a slightly different complexion on things. So, it’s one theory. But it also discounts a lot of the other things that were happening in Alberta.
Yes, you did have an influx of American immigrants. You did have a pretty significant chunk of the Alberta population that were from America. But you also have later waves of immigration that were really heavily coming from Eastern Europe, for example, Ukrainians, Poles, places like that. And so that has an impact on the political culture here too. I mean, you have farmers unions that form the government in the early part of the 20th Century that are not particularly conservative — in fact, are sort of socialist at that point. So it is an explanation to say that there is this real American influence in the West. I do think there’s a little bit of that frontier sensibility in the West that is perhaps slightly American-tinged, but I don’t think it tells the whole story. I think there’s other groups that contributed to the political culture of Alberta and the West in general. I think it’s a little reductionist at the end of the day to say, “Look, it’s all just Americans coming up here and importing their own political beliefs.”
TH: What do you see as the main currents that have shaped the culture and the political culture in Alberta?
TD: That’s a good question. That’s a hard one; I asked a bunch of people this question and no one was able to really come up with a persuasive answer on it. Part of it, I think, has to do with the frontier spirit that I mentioned. There were people coming here from a long way away and having to build new lives and build new communities. That created, I think, a sense of interdependence and community that is not unique in Canada, but I think is more prevalent in the West than it was and perhaps is in other parts of the country. It’s a little old-fashioned in that way, I think. Communities coming together, stuff like that. We really saw that in 2016 after the Fort McMurray wildfires — when Fort McMurray, this town in Northern Alberta, the heart of the oil and gas sector in the province, was hit with a wildfire. The province really came together to support this mass evacuation of people. I actually wasn’t living here at the time, but I thought that was an expression of this community-minded spirit that Western Canada has. And that Alberta has in particular. So, I think that’s part of it.
I think the weather is part of it too. I talked to Senator Paula Simons, who’s a liberal — well, I guess technically she’s an independent senator. She’s a “small l” liberal at any rate. She’s not a “big L” politically-aligned liberal. So, not a conservative, I guess, is what I’m saying. She said that she thinks the weather has had an effect on the culture and therefore the political culture in Alberta, that there has to be a certain degree of toughness in you if you’re going to make a go of life out here. I think that’s probably true.
I think the other thing that has really shaped the political culture in Alberta is it has had a really long run of conservative government. There’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing going on there, I think. Are Albertans electing conservative governments because they are more conservative? Or are they electing politically conservative governments because they’ve always elected politically conservative governments? Something like that. The first really conservative government in Alberta is elected in the 1930s with the Social Credit Party and then the Progressive Conservatives take over from them and then they’re finally booted from power after like 44 years, I think, by the New Democrats, a left wing quasi-socialist party, then the conservatives are back in power again. Like I said, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. But also, a self-reinforcing prophecy a little bit in that it creates a more conservative political culture. Because the polling doesn’t show that Albertans are wildly more conservative than other parts of the country. But for some reason we do seem to elect more conservatives than other parts of the country. I think that is partly just a self-fulfilling prophecy, where we’ve always done it so we’re going to keep doing it.
TH: Alberta politics is much bigger than grievances, but there are grievances.
TD: There are.
TH: I’m talking about equalization payments, the pension plan, the Senate, energy policy, tanker bans, pipelines. Can you walk us through some of these key complaints — with a bit of explainer for people who may be listening outside the country?
