Here in the heartland of Alberta alienation, one 22-year-old sparked a WEXIT prairie fire
STRATHMORE, ALTA. — Here in Wheatland County, the very heartland of a troubled Alberta, when the clearest official marker on the province’s possible separation from Canada was finally thrown down, it came not from the hand of some cantankerous old sourpuss nursing ancient grievances.
Provincially, the policy plan was and still is called the “firewall” — a way for Alberta to, in part, emulate Quebec’s insistence on provincial autonomy by clawing back some of the powers Alberta has ceded over the years, for reasons of expediency, to the federal government in Ottawa. Recently the Alberta government announced a panel that would begin assessing ideas for greater Alberta autonomy, including the ones recommended in the firewall letter.
And with those words, this young rancher, curler, hockey player and proud member of the 4-H beef club, discovered what it is like to be inundated with media calls emanating from across the country, from CTV national news, CityTV in Toronto, the National Post, and several others. The words had been spoken, the resolution passed: the separation cat was out of its Alberta bag.
“They just aren’t there, which means they aren’t spending in our towns: the shallow-gas companies, the oil companies, they just aren’t there to support the community. It is an indirect effect, but it is really very hard when you have a federal government that is essentially attacking our communities,” he added.
“That was never the final intent and I hope to gosh that it doesn’t get that far — that we can fix Confederation before that would happen.” Since then he’s had a checkered career in provincial politics. As a Wildrose MLA for the region east of Calgary who once ran for that party’s leadership and helped lead the merger that created the United Conservative Party, he represented some of the same southern Alberta communities that Wilson now represents on a local level.
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