The question of separation is fundamentally a question of identity: not just how you think a society should divvy up resources but who you are at a basic level. Take my home province of Alberta. It hasn’t been excessively hard for separatists to convince people that they’re getting a bad deal from the rest of Canada. It’s been another thing entirely to convince them they aren’t actually Canadian.

For the leaders of Alberta’s separatist movements, identity doesn’t seem to be a meaningful question. True, they are full of ideas of what an Albertan is, ranging from someone who is angry about DEI initiatives to somebody who “shouldn’t have to apologize for being white,” with a sprinkling of entrepreneurial, independent, cowboy spirit. But they rarely do anything with that identity beyond proclaiming it, as though endlessly asserting it were enough.

For reasons ranging from world-historic to personal, Alberta has struggled deeply to offer any cohesive sense of self that goes much deeper than a stereotype. Which is presumably why Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet felt so comfortable noting that he was “not certain that oil and gas qualify to define a culture.”