Why I don't believe Alberta is bullied by extractive industries such as Big Oil
Over the years I have read many articles discussing how people believe the province of Alberta has a cycle of abuse with Big Oil.
Until recently I agreed with this sentiment, that Alberta is the victim of an abusive relationship with extractive industries such as Big Oil.
Since my anti-racism learning lead me to a different understanding of the Dominion of Canada (as it was known when I was born), and a more unbiased understanding of its history, I now have a very different perspective.
Canada was created unilaterally by the passage in the British Parliament of the British North America Act 1867 to effectively be a corporate subsidiary of Britain, to be part of the British Empire, and to provide cheap resources to the empire (affirmative action for Whites and all that). It was never created to be a democracy, or to think independently. It retains pretty much all of the British systems which were unilaterally imposed on this homeland.
The British Parliament passed many laws called the "British North America Act" between 1867 and 1964 (only 4 years before I was born). Up until the passage of the Canada Act 1982, British law was automatically Canadian law, and the British Parliament could pass any laws it wanted to enforce in Canada. It was an Act of the British parliament in 1949 which added the Orwellian doublespeak titled "New Found Land" to "Canada". (George Orwell's 1984 was published in 1949).
Alberta was unilaterally created in 1905 by the Alberta Act out of a subset of what the British called the Northwest Territories in order to better administrate colonial expansion (meaning, free land, free resource extraction, affirmative action for whites, etc). It was created by the British corporate subsidiary, not by its existing inhabitants. Canada did not "buy" Rupert's Land, which Alberta was carved out of, from the Hudson's Bay Company. The Hudson's bay company only owned an exclusive patent from the British Crown to do business in a region, and didn't own land which they could sell.
See Territorial Evolution, as well as Maps: 1667-1999 (And ask yourself why LAC removed these pages in the summer of 2021).
This article on farming in the Prairies gives a hint to what has been happening since the unilateral creation of Alberta.
Undermined at every turn: the lie of the failed native farm on the Prairies.
Why believe that it is the oil and gas industry that are bullying "Alberta", when "Alberta" was created as a corporate subsidiary to do what it is doing?
Understood in this context, Alberta was created as a type of permanent foreign worker program, which is quite different than the more recent temporary foreign worker programs. This workforce was desired in part to replace the existing inhabitants, but largely to create a loyal workforce for extractive industries. Given the loyalty to British worldviews, laws, and extractive industries exhibited by a majority of the settler inhabitants in the prairies today, this program was obviously very successful.
People confusing Alberta with a government created by the inhabitants of the region which Alberta claims control over creates confusion as to who and what is really in control.
The core problem is that these corporate subsidiaries acting as "provinces" have existed for far too long, and it is time to fold them in a responsible manner (make them pay for the damage they have caused, and the debt they have accumulated) as they are replaced with domestic naturalized (meaning, Indigenous) governance.
From the article:
Industries pay royalties to places where they extract resources, but Alberta’s royalty rates are embarrassingly, laughably puny. On the world stage, no one else on the planet comes nearly as close to simply giving their resources away for free than Alberta does. That’s why Norway has amassed a sovereign wealth fund worth more than $200,000 USD for every single citizen from the sale of its oil reserves — exactly the sort of thing that comes in handy when a crisis like Covid comes along — while Alberta has sold 45% more oil than Norway did over the same time period and still managed to end up nearly $100 Billion in debt.
For the people on Turtle Island to have done what the people of Norway did, this region would need to have been governed by people naturalized to the nations and worldviews of this homeland. Ongoing colonialism doesn't allow that to happen.
As with many problems with "Canada" and its subsidiary governments, I strongly believe LandBack is the only long-term solution.
What does being a Canadian mean to me?
In 2020, starting on January 7’th, there were a series of protests in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en First Nations. At the time I did not know what was happening, and did not have a clue what people could mean by “Shut Down Canada.”
2025 Update:
In the context of this article, I’ve been asked about why I question Alberta but not other “provinces”. The assumption they have is that this is a disagreement between the north-western regions vs the south-eastern regions.
I have lived under the Ontario government since birth in 1968, and I also believe the expansion of the territory claimed as the jurisdiction of Ontario since 1867 (when the government of Ontario was created by the first British North America Act) should also be rescinded. The conflicts of interest between southern settlers and domestic/indigenous nations we see with the imposition of the Alberta and Saskatchewan governments in 1905 can also be seen in the expansions of Ontario and Quebec northward.
I do not believe the foreign/southern colonial Government of Ontario has a legitimate say in anything related to the so-called “Ring Of Fire”
There were no legitimate land claims from the Hudson’s Bay company to what some called “Ruperts Land”, so they could not sell that land to “Canada”. All the Hudson’s Bay had was an exclusive grant to do business between domestic nations and Western Europe — at most a crown imposed trade agreement, not a land grant.
