Is anyone else fed up with all the vitriolic rants on social media?
I remember a time when you could have a rational discussion with people you disagreed with without descending into insults and trotting out talking points that you heard from other people.
In my field of expertise, which is geophysics, the cold hard facts of mathematics, physics, and geology can still be used to persuade the person you are discussing an idea with. However, when it comes to politics, we have descended into a war of words, where only the people who can shout the loudest and use words starting with f seem to be able to “win”.
Aside from my love of geophysics, mathematics, and music, where I can derive a certain amount of peace and tranquility amid the turmoil of the times, I have always had a love of history. It has been said that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. So, as millions of people debate whether the province of Alberta (possibly with Saskatchewan) should break away from Canada, I want to take a (relatively) unbiased look at Canadian history and put everything we are arguing about into perspective.
The problem with history is deciding how far back to go. For Canada, I could go back to the founding of New France, or to the settlement of the United Empire Loyalists in eastern Canada after the American Revolution, both of which had a huge impact on our country.
But I have chosen to start in 1867, when Canada was created through a process called Confederation. As most of us know, Confederation involved the unification of several British colonies in North America; initially Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia as provinces in a single country called Canada. The legal document that allowed this to happen was the British North American (BNA) Act, now called the Constitution Act.
To appease the colonies, especially Quebec, the BNA act included two very important sections, 91 and 92, which clearly separated the federal and provincial powers. In particular, Section 92 ensured that the provinces got control of health care, education, municipal governments, property and civil rights, and natural resources. It is the last of these issues that has led to much of the current acrimony. Over the years since Confederation, more and more freedom has been given to the provinces, especially Quebec, over linguistic and cultural independence, which is another source of friction today.
Of course, Canada did not stay as a four-province country for long, with Manitoba, British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island joining in the early 1870s, Alberta and Saskatchewan joining in 1905, and finally Newfoundland in 1949. Each province has its own interesting story, but, since I am an Albertan and the province of Alberta seems to be at the centre of the war of words these days, I am going to focus on that province.
When Alberta became a province in 2005 out of several former districts of the Northwest Territories, little did the politicians who drew the boundaries realize that its residents were eventually going to win the resource lottery. Those boundaries circled some of the richest subsurface (and surface) reserves of gaseous, liquid, and solid petroleum reserves in the world. But nobody knew that in 1905. In fact, Alberta in 1905 had only 78,000 people, almost no infrastructure apart from the CPR, and lacked even the most basic medical facilities and schools.
Alberta was almost totally dependent on farming. And, despite the provisions in the BNA act, Ottawa retained control of Alberta’s natural resources until 1930. But that changed on February 13, 1947, with the Leduc No. 1 oil discovery by Imperial Oil. Although the first oil discovery in Alberta had been at Turner Valley in 1914, it was the Leduc discovery that catapulted Alberta onto the world stage. Within a decade, Canada had become self-sufficient in oil (even though we still do not have an adequate pipeline system to distribute throughout the whole country) and was becoming a major exporter of petroleum and natural gas.
This also spurred the development of Calgary and Edmonton as the major cities they are today. The combination of Alberta getting the rights to its natural resources and the gradual understanding that we were sitting on some of the biggest reserves of petroleum and natural gas have led to the conversation we are having today. More recently, our technological developments in the unlocking of the oil sands have created even more petroleum wealth, as well as a host of other issues as we debate the environmental impact of this mining operation. These issues have created no end of acrimony between Alberta and Ottawa, from the National Energy Program of the Pierre Trudeau government in 1980 to the current disagreement over the expansion of pipelines.
Another source of bitter discussion is the system of equalization payments, in which federal tax revenue is re-distributed based on how “wealthy” a province is deemed to be. We can trace the origins of equalization payments back to the Constitution Act of 1867, in which Section 91gave the federal government more power over taxation than the provincial governments.
But the modern version of equalization payments came into being in 1957. It had the goal of giving each province the same per-capita revenue as the two wealthiest provinces at the time, Ontario and British Columbia, in three tax bases: personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, and inheritance taxes. With the inclusion of energy into the mix in the 1960s and with the rapid rise in energy income, this has led to major imbalances in the system, with Ontario becoming a have-not province, and Alberta being seen by many in the province as the “cash cow” for the rest of the country.
So, where am I going with all this? There is no doubt that Alberta has its grievances, and rightly so. But I wanted to put it in historical context to reveal the roots of current controversies. First and foremost, the granting of more powers to the provinces at federation than is customary in most countries (for example, in Britain and Norway the central governments have control over natural resources) has had a huge impact. This is coupled with the fact that those who determined boundaries in1905 unwittingly gave Alberta rights to most of the oil. Regardless of how we got here, this is the dilemma we are stuck with now, and there are very strong opinions on where we go from here. What I am pleading for is in this article is a more reasoned debate, where we all treat each other with respect and try to look at both historical facts and the other person’s point of view.
On a personal level, as someone who has worked in the Calgary oil patch for 50 years, I am in favour of more pipelines and LNG terminals. But not to the point where I will yell insults at people who disagree with me or at our democratically elected representatives.
In fact, I have more respect and admiration for people who are opposed to pipelines and LNG plants and are prepared to debate me in a reasoned and adult way than those who agree with my position on pipelines and LNG but feel it is ok to put up signs that say F@#$ Carney, or to write even more crude social media posts.
Not that I think this article will have any effect on those people. It seems their minds are made up, and no amount of rational debate will change them. But I hope I will spur at least of few readers to look at their long-held beliefs and decide whether it is worth breaking up our country just because your perspective on these issues clashes with others.
Now, I am NOT saying that you should change your viewpoint. I am in favour of vigorous debate, in which you use your best fact-based arguments in attempting to convince others that your opinions have merit. That is what needs be done in a healthy democracy.
We need to get away from this silo-based mentality where we assume that the “others” are wrong on everything, and realize that compromise is the only path to practical solutions.
In the past, I would have said that this is “the Canadian way” of solving our problems. However, recent communication patterns have me questioning our collective civility and our capacity to engage in constructive debate.
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