Carney Says Outside Forces Want to Break Canada Before Alberta Votes
Alberta votes on Monday on whether to instruct its government to begin the legal process towards a future referendum on leaving Canada. At a rally in Calgary the prime minister warned that “some outside our borders are working to break us so they can own us” and that a vote against Canada would be “a dangerous bluff”.
Monday’s question is narrower than independence: it asks whether the provincial government should start down the legal road, not whether the province should leave. That distinction matters because Alberta holds the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves, which is what gives the vote weight well beyond Canada. Mark Carney did not name the United States in the passage above, though he has before. He conceded the grievance was real — Ottawa had made Albertans feel “like our resources weren’t our own” — and offered a pipeline he says would create more than 140,000 jobs and cut dependence on American buyers, joking that Washington “might think that’s election interference” after its ambassador warned Canadian politicians against meddling in the midterms. His office put the crowd at about 5,000, some queuing more than two hours, with a second rally in Edmonton today. The campaign on the other side is unimpressed: Tanya Clemens of Let Alberta Decide called him “formidable for sure” but dismissed his agreements with the premier Danielle Smith as “pinky promises”.