Alberta Separatists Are Desperate to Attract U.S. Interference, Money ⇥ ft.com

Ilya Gridneff and Myles McCormick, in a Financial Times article with the headline “Trump Officials Met Group Pushing Alberta Independence From Canada”:

Leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group of far-right separatists who want the western province to become independent, met US state department officials in Washington three times since April last year, according to people familiar with the talks.

A worrisome paragraph if I have ever read one. The separatists’ behaviour has understandably been interpreted as treasonous, and the possible interference of the U.S. is a question of national sovereignty.

But — and maybe I am being naïve — I think this article is less of a description of reality, and more like a marketing stunt by these traitors. Here are the next two paragraphs:

They are seeking another meeting next month with state and Treasury officials to ask for a $500bn credit facility to help bankroll the province if an independence referendum — yet to be called — is passed.

“The US is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta,” Jeff Rath, APP legal counsel, who attended the meetings, told the FT.

And later in the article:

Rath declined to say who the APP spoke to in Washington. “We’re meeting very, very senior people leaving our meetings to go directly to the Oval Office,” he claimed.

I would like to believe the Times has better sourcing than trusting the word of a ding-dong like Rath, but I have my doubts. The Times has previously relied on self-aggrandizing leaks for news stories, and this sounds like more of the same. These meetings surely happened — which is scary enough — but Rath could have leaked this in order to pressure State Department officials ahead of another meeting next month.

This is very dangerous, of course. These jokers are inviting meddling and laundering it through the respectable and staid pages of the Financial Times. If these guys so badly want to live in the U.S., they are capable of moving there. But they should not drag the rest of us into their braindead plan, nor should the U.S. government encourage or support them.

The one thing giving me hope is that, according to Ipsos polling, 28% of Albertans would vote to separate, and only 56% of that segment are actually committed. This is nowhere near the kind of public support as, for example, Brexit. On the other hand, that committed group still represents one in six Albertans who want to ruin the lives of the rest of us because, again according to Ipsos, they feel we have been “historically mistreated within Canada”. These people are fools — but we often fail to take seriously the power of very foolish people.