By Donald Lee

Everyone is talking about Alberta separation, but no one is talking about the most important issues. Yes, Alberta needs to secede from Canada. No, secession will not solve the problems. Let me explain.

The Empire of the St. Lawrence

Most Canadians think their region is constantly left out of any real political decision-making or political influence in our country. That’s not surprising. Although we call it such, Canada has never been a confederation—a political union of sovereign states for purposes of common action, where the federal government has limited power and the individual states retain significant sovereignty and autonomy. 

In practice, Canada has always been an Empire of the St. Lawrence. People often refer to the “Laurentian Elites,” but these people don’t come from the hills. They come from the plains; from that geographical region of Canada that we learned in junior high school to call the St. Lawrence Lowlands. It is the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal axis, lying along the St. Lawrence River. 

Canada has always been ruled from this axis. Power has always been tightly held and has become increasingly centralized over the years. There never has been any equality in Canada. Every other part of Canada is functionally a colony of the Empire of the St. Lawrence. And even today, it is really a branch-plant of the British crown.

Thirty years ago, the Reform Party arose in Alberta with the slogan, “The West Wants In.” That was true. Alberta wanted to become a full partner in a real confederation, no longer a colony of the Empire. A decade later that hope was crushed. It was the old totalitarian tactic of “rule or ruin.” The Empire of the St. Lawrence couldn’t ruin the Reform Party, so they ruled it. They merged it with the Progressive Conservative Party and reform ideas ceased to exist. The West didn’t get in; it got crushed into subservience again. 

What the West wants today is the same equal treatment it has wanted for my whole life, from Peter Lougheed to Ralf Klein to Danielle Smith. In fact, what the West wants hasn’t changed since the days of Louis Riel. 

The empire’s response hasn’t changed either. We are always crushed. 

Gradually, people in the West are realizing that equal treatment is impossible. We cannot get “in.” Our only alternative is to “get out.” 

Exactly how, and in what form, shall we get out? And will that really solve our problems? To answer those questions, one must understand the real problem. This is where the greatest confusion lies.

This Is Not Politics; It Is War

This sounds absurd. Yet it’s true. Readers of this newspaper understand that we have been fighting a war at least since the Covid Operation began five years ago. Most Albertans think they are looking for a political solution to a political problem, but the real problem is more fundamental. The real problem is totalitarianism. Until we are willing to understand and admit that, we will never solve our problems. We are in a war of democracy against totalitarianism.

It’s confusing because nobody is dropping bombs on us. The Chinese call this Unrestricted Warfare. The Americans call it Fifth Generation Warfare. I call it war is everything; everything is war. 

Nobody is using guns, but everything else has been weaponized. That’s what unrestricted warfare is all about. That’s what China is doing. That’s what the Deep State is doing. We are experiencing a war of totalitarianism against all of humanity. What we see happening in Alberta today is happening everywhere in the world. We have an opportunity to not only create something beautiful in Alberta, but to be a beacon of light to the whole world.

We must also understand that we are not really fighting Ottawa. The Covid Campaign proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that policies are being made at some level above the level of national governments. It’s not Justin Trudeau who is behind this. It’s not Mark Carney. These people are just fronts for people or forces behind them. We are, in fact, not fighting against people at all. Our battle is against ideas, and by extension, against ideologies. 

How the War is Being Fought

All the structures in our society have been weaponized against us. This war is being conducted through the very structures of government (and all social structures) that we thought were democratic. But they have all been corrupted and turned into tools of dictatorship.

That’s part of why I say that in this war, we win not by attacking anything or anyone, but by creating. We need to create a new form and structure of government. When we do this, the war will be over. Our adversary will have lost all its power. The solution to dictatorial power is not to change the dictator, but to remove the power. Decentralization must replace the centralization of power.

We cannot win this war by simply separating Alberta into a new country with the same form and structure of government. Our provincial government is already captured and controlled—just like all the other provincial and municipal governments. These are already acting as dictatorships. If we separate Alberta into a new country with the same provincial government, we will simply replace the Ottawa tyranny with an Edmonton tyranny. This is the same issue faced by the American colonies in 1776.

1776 Thinking

We need to go back to the drawing board and rethink how we organize ourselves in society. I say we need 1776 thinking. At that time, the American colonists wanted out from under their tyrannical king. But they realized that they couldn’t just set up a new monarchy in America to replace the old monarchy in England. That wouldn’t solve the problem. They needed to create a new form and structure of government that would guarantee liberty and that could not be corrupted. They did a very good job. The founding documents of the United States of America created a form and structure of government that was new and unique in history.

But now we find that even this has been corrupted, as has every other government structure in the Western world. We must begin again. We must learn from the past and once again create a form and structure of government that will be immune to corruption and tyranny—one that is not “top-down.” We need “bottom-up” structures where power and responsibility are pushed down to the lowest levels possible. That means personal freedom and responsibility. This begins with the sovereign individual, then the sovereign family, then the sovereign community. Communities can then join together into provinces (if we wish to retain that name). And provinces can join together into nations (if we wish to retain that name and concept). 

Canadians Do Not Want Responsibility

This is where most people will rebel at the very idea. The majority of Canadians want to be taken care of by the government. This was succinctly captured in a recent message from David Parker. “Because here is the dark truth: most Canadians would rather be comfortable than free. They would rather feel safe than be sovereign.”

Just look at how people scream at the thought of losing their government pension, their government Medicare, their welfare, or unemployment insurance. None of these programs are actually the responsibility of any level of government. These are all individual responsibilities. 

This is exactly why I have written about transforming ourselves as individuals, before we can transform our communities and nation. I’m reminded of the prophetic words of Ludwig von Mises, the greatest economist of the 20^th century. He wrote, “The fate of civilization rests upon the ideas that motivate the masses. If we fail to win the battle of ideas, we will see the horrors of history repeated.”

Today, almost everyone holds socialist ideas without knowing it. This is exactly what Cultural Marxism is all about. We have been infiltrated. Canadians will never willingly accept responsibility, and thus freedom. This is what will prevent our ultimate victory in this war. We will be defeated, and most of us massacred, unless we are able to convince our brothers and sisters that our choice is between responsibility and death. Choose poorly, and we will have death by default.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to start a real and serious discussion about the form and structure of government—not simply about Alberta independence. If Alberta secedes and retains its present structure of government, it will be a Deep State victory. Divide and conquer. Clearly, the Deep State wants Canada to tear itself apart. To bring in the one-world totalitarian government they are planning, they must destroy nation-states.

Alberta must secede, yes. But at the same time, we must restructure government—in fact all of society—to become truly democratic. The Deep State does not fear any of the existing nation-states because they have already infiltrated and controlled them. But the Deep State does fear true democracy. Only democracy will defeat their totalitarianism. Once power is not centralized, it cannot be monopolized, and the people cannot be controlled.

Our future lies in the decentralization of all power. If we fail to do that, we have no future.

 Donald Lee is an author and speaker from Alberta. His recent books “What the Hell Is Going On?” and “The Way Forward” explain what is really going on in our world and what we can sensibly do about it. You can check out his writings at www.cominghomespirit.com.