The Trudeau government has betrayed British Columbia so badly the province should leave Canada, says famed B.C. broadcaster and former MLA Rafe Mair.

Mair, a former Tyee columnist, outlined his feelings in a strongly worded article posted on his website.

In an interview with The Tyee, Mair said he has always resented what he called a “patronizing” central Canadian view that British Columbians are “some kind of mysterious savages out there that we had to convert.”

But recent moves by the federal Liberals drove him to argue the time has come for B.C. to break out on its own.

We asked Mair to elaborate on his idea in an interview. We’ve edited the transcript for brevity.

Tyee: This is something I know you have been dabbling with over the years, but you finally came out and said it. What lead to your decision to write the piece?

Mair: You’re quite right. I was born and raised in British Columbia and I have always been a British Columbian, and as I grew up I kind of wondered why I was learning about Iroquois and Algonquin and Hurons, and never anything about local “Indians” as we called them. I always seemed to be getting a history of somewhere else that was being passed off as mine. Champlain and all the rest of them, Cartier and so on. You never heard about Cook or Vancouver... I grew up kind of resenting this as time went on.

I kept on wondering, what was the matter? Did I have to love the Toronto Maple Leafs to be a Canadian? Was that the rule? That I had to love all the things I’m being told? The Toronto Star weekly and so on... I know that sounds silly.

I’ve gone right through life always thinking, why can’t I be a good solid, sound loyal British Columbian and still be a Canadian? Why do I have to believe these other things? But it never really bothered me that much, I never thought of taking up the pikes and heading to the streets. It was just emotionally, I wonder why all my friends, most of us, felt the same way…

Now we fast forward to the more recent days and for the first time in my life it became very serious, because when I thought of what was going to happen with [liquefied natural gas] plants in Howe Sound, more particularly with the Kinder Morgan going through to Vancouver and right across our Salish Sea and so on, I began to be horrified.

Then when I heard Mr. Trudeau talk, I thought, we are not on the same wavelength at all. We’re like two different countries; he cannot understand that we hold these things in B.C. to be sacred. We hold them to be just as sacred as I’m sure he regards things in Quebec. You just don’t mess with them. And yet we’re not discussing on that level, just on the economic level.

Finally, being an old man and not giving a damn about anyone throwing me in jail anymore I thought, “Goddamn it, I’m gonna say what I think.” And I’ve gotten to the point where if British Columbia left the country, I’d be delighted.

Tyee: A lot of people would say British Columbians have elected the BC Liberal Party, which has taken a similar stance on environmental issues. What would you say to that?

Mair: I don’t think there’s any question about that. The influence of the federal Liberals and the local Liberals and the federal Conservatives is very strong indeed. That’s been one of the changes that came from the disintegration of the Social Credit party. That was really and truly a B.C. party, and when I went to Ottawa on the instructions of Bill Bennett, if I had acted and spoken the way the current government does I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. So, there’s been a remarkable change.

However, I think I’m safe in saying on [the environment], they don’t represent the feelings of British Columbians and I wouldn’t be surprised if that becomes clear on the ninth of May. I could be 1,000 per cent wrong, I may be one in a hundred in B.C., but I suspect most people feel just as strongly as I do. You can mess with a lot of things, but don’t mess with my environment and where we live. But we’ll see.

Tyee: Is it possible for B.C. to separate from Canada?

Mair: I don’t see any reason why not. Of course there’s always lots of difficulties when that sort of thing happens.

Tyee: In your column you wrote about continued insults from Ottawa. Can you talk about that a little more?

Mair: I think the insult that bothers me is the constant put down, it’s “out west.” The Toronto Globe and Mail offered me a column years ago called the “view from the west.” When I tried to explain to them that I couldn’t talk for Biggar, Saskatchewan, or Moose Jaw, or Winnipeg, or any of those places, cause I hadn’t been there more than once, the editor said, “Of course you can, you are part of the West.” I thought, “You haven’t really taken the time to understand.”

It bothers me that we are treated by Ottawa as some kind of stray mongrels that just don’t seem to want to buy into and play the game.

I think B.C. has a much different and probably healthier attitude to Quebec than a lot of English-speaking Canadians do. British Columbians, we’re not mad at Quebec, we’re not upset at having French as a language in Canada, as long as the deal is fair. When the distinct society designation came (with Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord)... that’s what divided us. From that point on (B.C. was) considered to be anti-French, anti-Quebec and so on. That is not true. If you go around British Columbia, you’ll find more people cheer for the Habs than have ever cheered for the Leafs in this province.

This province is different. It thinks differently. It considers itself a very different part of Canada and it’s interested in its status in Canada, not so much in singing O Canada or whatever the latest version of patriotism is. I think that’s where the misunderstanding comes; we’re not going to be appealed to the same basis you can appeal to southern Ontario.

Tyee: Do you think this current government has any idea how they’ve rustled the bushes of British Columbia in terms of the Kinder Morgan approval, their part in the LNG approval?

Mair: Site C too! They’re part of that... I honestly don’t think that they have. I’m not being smarty pants here at all, I think that’s a tragedy and they’re going to find out I think… that B.C. is very serious about Kinder Morgan particularly and I think there’s going to be a very nasty time arise out of that, and it ought not to arise.

It really ought not to if there’s anything like democracy in this world. Ask the people of B.C. if they want to ship the tar sands through their province, out of their oceans and off into the atmosphere in China and you’re going to find almost all of them say, “No we don’t.” And when you’ve got the prime minister who says, “Well, I don’t care and we’re not going to let you have a word about this, you’re going to do what you’re told.” You’ve got a problem on your hands. That’s the situation we’re in. British Columbians are not prepared to do what they’re told.

Tyee: How far are we from having this dissatisfaction from B.C. boil over into a real separatist movement?

Mair: I don’t know about that . . . My own sense of it is, looking at other peoples around the world, that if you reach a point and if you let it go over that point, then it becomes unstoppable. I think the moment you start getting people really getting upset on picket lines and so on and god forbid somebody gets badly hurt or killed, then you’re in a position where it’s going to be almost impossible to get out of.

Believe me when I say I don’t want that to happen. If the federal government were to come along and say “Look, it’s time to have a little chat about Canada and where we all are and see how we feel” and indicated they have some concern if not agreement with the standards and values we have, I think that we could work that out. But there doesn’t seem to be any indication of that.

I guess this is what surprises me: I can’t imagine a sensitive prime minister wouldn’t A) know it was going on in B.C. and B) sit back and say, “Just a minute, surely to god there is something we can do about this.”

Tyee: Have you gotten much blow back from that column?

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Mair: There’s probably lots of people out there ready to kill me, but frankly so far it’s been almost 100 per cent in my favour, from people who surprised me… guess if you were to look at the mail I’ve gotten it’s pretty substantial. The thing that would surprise you is how many people have said “I was hoping somebody sooner or later would speak for me on that.” I don’t want your readers to have the idea I’m sitting here boasting about leading (B.C.) to separation. I’m simply telling you the truth of what’s happened to Rafe Mair. I am very, very surprised at not only the support I’ve received but the way that support has come.

This should tell Mr. Trudeau, frankly, to get off his ass and find out what’s going on and start to work towards fixing things instead of making them worse.

Tyee: Okay, thanks. That should do it.

Mair: Are we going to get sued or thrown in jail?

Tyee: No. I don’t think so.