An independent Alberta may find the cost of regret hard to swallow

John Rapley is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. He is an author and academic whose books include Why Empires Fall and Twilight of the Money Gods.

At a time when much of the world regards Canada with envy and admiration – an island of calm and unity in a sea of political division and geopolitical turbulence – it’s incomprehensible to many foreigners that anyone would want to risk that stability. So envied are Canadians just now that twice as many Americans hold a favourable view of Canada as they do their own President. They are also more likely than not to take Canada’s side in the trade war with their own country.

But here we are. Although polls consistently say that the Alberta referendum will likely not produce a vote toward separation on Monday, we can’t assume things will always stay that way.

Just now, Canada is experiencing a patriotic moment, with approval for the Prime Minister’s leadership running high. However, those polls also reveal that support is very much a reaction to Donald Trump, to whom Mark Carney is seen as the antidote. Take Mr. Trump out of the picture, as the 2029 presidential inauguration will do, and the absence of a common enemy may weaken the bonds pulling Canadians together.

Separatism sentiment may rage again in not just Alberta but also Quebec, where the incoming premier has said he won’t pursue independence – but only while Mr. Trump is in office. To paraphrase (and slightly mangle) Oscar Wilde, for a country to face a secessionist referendum is unfortunate, but to face two looks like carelessness.

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Still, awaiting a more favourable moment to stage a referendum doesn’t guarantee the environment will remain favourable. Just as the conditions could become more propitious for secession in the future, so too could they reverse. Suppose an independence referendum took place in a more propitious geopolitical climate, succeeded on those terms and then delivered independence – only to find the geopolitical environment turn cold once again.

That’s essentially what happened to Britain with its Brexit referendum. In 2016, the country voted to leave the world’s biggest trading bloc – with which it enjoyed a fairly sweet deal – thinking it could do better yet. In a global climate that then favoured trade, globalization and alliance-building, the campaigners for Brexit were at least not being wild-eyed when they imagined they’d get even stronger deals if they set off alone.

But by the time the actual process of leaving Europe was complete, the international environment had changed beyond recognition. Trade barriers had started to go up, deals were hard to come by, countries drove much tougher bargains, supply chains got choked in the pandemic and Britain found itself buffeted by newly cold global winds.

It would be no different for an independent Alberta. Sure, there’s a fossil-fuel friendly president south of the border who’ll be tempted by the lures of Alberta’s oil and might offer the new country generous terms. But in two years, there could conceivably be a new president committed to the energy transition who imposes carbon taxes on Canadian exports. As a result, votes for independence would probably amount to cat-flap secessions – the term that’s been coined to describe the Brexit vote, which is gradually moving toward its ultimate destination of being reversed.

As cats are wont to do, countries will leave the house only to rush back in at the first sign of danger. The problem is that, unlike cats, once a province or state leaves a union it doesn’t get to choose the terms on which to re-enter. Economic gravity amid a more turbulent geopolitical work will inevitably push Britain back to Europe, but it seems unlikely the conditions will be as favourable as they were before. Britain will probably have to give up the pound and adopt the euro, and some of the opt-outs it once had won’t be renewed.

Meanwhile, the damage done to its reputation may never be fully reversed. In particular, the greater risk premium the British government must pay on its bonds – or gilts, as they are called in the United Kingdom – and which has forced the government to cut back what it’s able to do for its citizens, is likely to persist. Reputations are built over generations, even centuries, but can be reversed with one bad government.

Sovereignty debates in Canada can be parochial and inward-looking, dominated by understandable historical resentments against other parts of the country and having little regard to what the outside world thinks. But leave the country, and a newborn state will find new and worse foes in a changing world. All you have to do to see that is look at other countries’ experiences.