If The West Wants Out, Just Go

With Brian Jean deciding to be the latest, and most high profile, public figure to suggest that Alberta should leave Canada if they aren’t given a radically new constitutional deal, it’s time to talk about Wexit on this site. I have two opinions about this topic – the more rational of the two being that the Tories should use this as an opportunity, but the other opinion is if you want to go, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. As the son of two Montreal anglos who finds the unity battles of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to be fascinating, and the idea of the Unity Rally is one of my favourite topics, I should have learned my lessons from the Quebec example and want to make this work, but my overwhelming opinion every time someone claims we have a unity crisis in this country is just to tell that person to leave. Maybe it’s just a representation of my most boomer-ass tendencies, but Wexit very much feels like a failed political project before it has even begun.



We will have some Wexit, or Western rights, party in the next election campaign, I feel very comfortable saying so. Whether in the form of the People’s Party or in some other shape, the Wexit right will exist, and attempt to either split the vote from the Tories or win a balance of power to push the Conservatives to the right. The high comedy of this, of course, is that in trying to be Reform 2.0 this movement will almost assuredly end in the same way that the original Reform Party ended – with a decade more of Liberal governments ruling Alberta and the west unchecked – but that’s not the concern of these grifters. For Brian Jean, a supposed sane conservative, a reasonable person even if one didn’t always love his politics, to flirt with separation in the Edmonton Journal is vaguely treasonous, but it’s also just patently hilarious. Jean, the loser of the inaugural UCP leadership race in Alberta, was almost the Premier of Alberta today, but Jason Kenney beat him. So, what’s it mean when someone who absolutely should know better panders to the dumbest idea in the public consciousness?



It says very clearly something we already know – Canadian conservatism is a broken ideology, led by people who either have no core beliefs or horrendous core beliefs. A movement for people who merely don’t like the Liberals much and therefore pretend that the very reasonable fiscal record we have going for us in Canada isn’t happening because they weren’t invited to the cool kids’ table or preening homophobes and misogynists who think the rights of gay people and women should be on the table based on the views of old men, Canada’s Conservatives (and conservatives) are rudderless, and therefore going crazy. If they wanted to win an election they would use the Wexit crazies in the way Jean Chretien used the Reform Party on fiscal matters in the 1990’s – as a position to drift off of as a way to make themselves look more reasonable. Chretien’s cuts looked less extreme in the face of Reform calling for 10% cuts across the board, as the CPC could make their views on federalism and the health of Canada. They are instead pandering to places they already have and voters they don’t need, and pissing off the voters they actually need who live in Ontario. But instead of taking this glorious, perfect example to show the centre that Canadian conservatism has abandoned the crazy fringe and is now firmly in the middle, they’ve decided they should bow down to the crazies. That’s their choice, but nobody gets to be surprised when the Tories continue to be a shitty caricature of a serious party of government.