REGINA – Just a darn minute there, Canada! Preston Manning wants you to know another pipeline or two isn’t going to cut the mustard.
You’re going to have to fork over more – we Albertans will decide more of what later. Probably federal jurisdiction. Sovereignty, ya know!
This just in thanks to an obsequious little screed masquerading as news about Mr. Manning’s views on Alberta’s separation referendum in The National Post, a publication that’s been light on analysis and hard on spin since 1998.
On Tuesday the Post quoted the superannuated Godfather of the Canadian right explaining that “the question with respect to remain is: Remain and do what? That’s the question that the remain people have to answer.”
“It means remain and push this sovereignty option within the federation,” he asserted. (Emphasis added, of course.) And remember, thanks to the magic of international trade agreements, especially with the United States, more sovereignty for provinces like Alberta means less sovereignty for Canada.
Ergo, Mr. Manning continued, “there’s a number of other things the federal government could do if it wants to address the root cause of that alienation. Simply building a pipeline is not the complete answer.”
This is the game plan Mr. Manning spelled out to Danielle Smith in 2021 at that Red Deer conference put on by the misnamed Canada Strong and Free Network, the rebranded version of what was previously known as the Manning Centre.
Inappropriately wearing an Order of Canada pin on his chest, Mr. Manning smugly told Ms. Smith and their audience that “fear of the United States can be a factor in federal provincial relations.”
He continued: “What if Alberta did actually secede? There will be an offer from the United States for Alberta to become the 51st state. And why will that offer be made? It will be made because the United States would like to get a hold of the second or third largest source of petroleum in the world. That is why it will be made.”
“Now when that finally sinks in to Ottawa,” Mr. Manning paused, obviously pleased with himself … “Do they want that to happen? Or do they have to say, ‘Maybe we have to do something, to keep that energy sector and its development in Canada,’ and to accede to some of these other demands.”
Manning concluded his homily with another question: “Is there some way that fear of the United States can be used as a lever to get some of the things that the West needs to have addressed?” The answer, in Mr. Manning’s opinion, was obviously yes.
I know I’ve printed this before, but it deserves to be hammered home that this is how Mr. Manning operates, and his strategy has clearly influenced the tactics adopted by Ms. Smith as premier and the UCP to blackmail Ottawa into in effect making Alberta a super-province that rules all the others in a new Confederation designed to make Canada as much as possible like the United States short of the fallback position in this game of threats, assimilation.
Nor is this the only time Mr. Manning has trotted out this kind of thing. Who can forget his warning last spring that if the Liberals under Prime Minister Mark Carney won again, Alberta might take its ball and go home.
“Large numbers of Westerners simply will not stand for another four years of Liberal government, no matter who leads it,” he asserted in an op-ed in the pages of The Globe and Mail. Or to put that another way, no matter how many Canadians, including in Alberta, vote for it.
“The support for Western secession is therefore growing, unabated and even fuelled by Liberal promises to reverse many of their previous positions,” he said. “Such promises of expediency simply don’t ring true in the West. Who, except the most politically naive, would believe Mark Carney’s promises to reverse the Liberal positions on everything from east-west pipelines to identity politics and climate change, when standing behind him is a cabinet of 23 MPs who, just a month ago, were advocating for the very opposite and have done so for years?”
Who? I dunno. Someone who had actually paid attention to who Mr. Carney was and what was in his resume, maybe? Someone who wasn’t threatening the future of the country because the his team always has to win?
Well, maybe Mr. Manning didn’t call that one right, but Ms. Smith’s character is to push for a kilometre every time she’s given a centimetre, which is one explanation for why she’s pressing ahead with the Manning Strategy no matter how much harm it may do to the country.
And Mr. Manning, it would appear from his latest bloviations, is on board with that.
It can be credibly argued that Mr. Manning, who thanks to the esteem in which he is held by so many Conservatives here in Wild Rose Country has played a significant role in helping gin up the current separatist brouhaha in Alberta, is offering up a version of the complaint Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon levelled at Mr. Carney, that Ottawa is being generous to Quebec to undermine separatism. (Translation: Stop showing federalism works! Just quit it!)
Arguably, that may be more of a problem for Quebec separatists – who can accurately argue Quebec has a distinct culture and language – than for divorce-minded Albertans. As Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet famously observed, a unique culture is something Alberta lacks in the North American context, the UCP’s best efforts to say that ain’t so notwithstanding.
To separate, Mr. Blanchet said, stingingly, “requires a culture of their own. I am not certain that oil and gas qualifies to define a culture.”
So it is almost certainly true that if Albertans make the decision in their referendum this fall based on economics alone, they will vote to stay, as even Ms. Smith now concedes.
All that said, whatever Ms. Smith thinks, Mr. Manning has a different, in some ways more ambitious, agenda than the PQ leader. He doesn’t want to see Alberta break away from Canada so much as he wishes to see all of Canada turned into a neoliberal clone of the United States, right down to its sclerotic rural-dominated elected senate.
That is, in the words of Aurelien, the pseudonymous author of the Trying to Understand the World Substack: “The aim of neoliberalism, after all, is to reduce human beings to the unique status of interchangeable consumers, with no bonds of family, community, history, culture or language that might undermine their homogeneity, and make the markets that constitute their entire existence less efficient than they might be.”
In other words, the 51st State in all but the law.
As for the rest of our demands, Canada, we’ll get back to you.
This is why Postmedia newspapers are garbage. The majority of their columnists, give accolades to the UCP and Danielle Smith, which they don’t deserve, while disregarding their abysmal governance on many fronts. Why aren’t these columnists talking about the data breach, which the UCP are responsible for making happen, from one of their badly crafted bills, Bill 54? Public healthcare in Alberta is in shambles. There are a whole list of other problems too, but these columnists won’t talk about those.
Let’s call this out for what it is.
Blackmail. “Give us what we want or we’ll leave and you’ll all be phucked”
Someone explain to this pack of reprobates that just because the land you were born on that your ancestors stole from someone else doesn’t mean you have a right to control those resources over the original people you stole it from. Or the other people you blackmailed to pay for your extraction of those resources from which you, profit. Otherwise, I can steal Preston Manning’s car, and now that I had a new key made for it–it’s mine.
The Quebecois wanted the car painted their colour. They weren’t trying to drive it outta the parking lot unless they were eternally stuck with the factory puce paint job. We could all kinda get behind that, even if some of us complained.
When you have to dig up that half-witted fossil Preston Manning to shill for your cause–you know you ain’t got one.
How Ebola Brain delirious one has to be to listen to Manning?
All of this is exhausting and that’s more than likely been the right wing’s long game all along. Wear the people down. I think it’s time just to neuter Post Media, the UPC, Rath, the whole lot of them. And as far as the Sacred Cow, Preston Manning goes, well….., maybe he should get together with David Parker and have a game of Tiddly Winks in a rubber room. The sooner, the better.
You’re absolutely correct, David. As someone wrote a while ago, Smith is not a separatist, she’s something worse. Pipelines is one thing, but Smith wants to dismantle social Canada – health care, etc. – giving all power to the squabbling provinces and leaving the federal government a hollow shell.
I suppose a big difference between Quebec separatists and their western cousins is those in Quebec are mostly sincere. They really do want their own country for reasons mostly related to language and culture.
For their western counterparts their motivation is a more confusing mix of threats to get what they want and petty grievances. Nowhere is this confusion more apparent than with Manning, the former federal opposition leader who at that time insisted the west wants in. Now the message seems to be it wants out unless an increasing list of demands is met. Of course that includes pipelines, but when you dig deeper with separatists it gets into many other more niche things like gun laws which most Albertans probably don’t care about so much.
Manning also seems to feel it is the time to play on national angst about our southern neighbour. At least he has not gone to Mar a Lago yet, as far as we know, but it does not quite seem in keeping with his former role as leader of the loyal opposition. I suppose unlike his colleague Harper who was PM, Manning does not have as much of a legacy to protect and perhaps not as good of an understanding of the rest of the country.
I’m fairly sure Brexit was caused by leaders who had not much commitment to the cause, but mostly saw it as something to be used as a tactical advantage. They never expected what they got when they unleashed forces they could not control. Our former Premier Kenney may understand this better now which is probably one of the reasons he is also more measured in what he says than Manning who, while he has much experience and many ideas, never had the responsibilities of power.
It has been infuriating to see people like Manning (and Harper and Smith) disguise their radicalism by pretending they advocate for reasonable “reform” when want they really want is to blow $#!+ up.
Hey Mr. Manning, why should we remain? Cuz it isn’t just that we are settling for our country. Rather, together, we’ve made a country that’s ranked in the top 20 nations for
– life expectancy (81.7)
– national and per capital GDP ($2.8T, $68K)
– gender equality
– safety
– happiness
– governance
And top 10 for
– literacy
– education
– reputation
– social justice
– food safety
– stability
(Multiple sources including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_Canada)
Mr. Manning, I’ve heard your whining. How about YOU make a better case for secession that isn’t reduced to “more money”.
Or as the oilmen state “If Alberta was charging oil royalties at the same rate that Lougheed was there would be no need for additional pipelines”.
Of course Reformers are all about looking after the rich and to hell with everyone else and guess who started all this stupidity? It didn’t happen in Norway or Alaska and look at differences in financial wealth?
I wonder if the separatists who are all in favour of Alberta becoming the 51st state realize that it would leave them answering to a central government even farther away than Ottawa? And – since racism is a huge part of the Alberta separatist movement – do they understand that as the 51st state, Alberta would be an attractive option for Americans looking for a new start in life? White Americans, black Americans, brown Americans, yellow Americans etc. There would be no border to cross. No one standing on the 49th parallel administering a whites only purity test before people displaced from overheated southern US states moved into Alberta. Climate change refugees. Millions of them. What will the separatists intent on Taking Back Alberta to some imaginary ‘white Christians only’ homeland do then? Complain to Washington, DC???
Going to hazard a guess the sovereigntists are busy printing out everybody’s new Alberta driver’s license (complete with the obligatory oil derrick) as we speak, just in time for October’s referendum. Got all the information they need after all to whip up 3 million fake IDs. Voter turnout will be so high! Highest ever!
That’s a scary thought…I wouldn’t put it past some of them and Elections Alberta (and the police) should be wary.
I wish Preston Manning would get the message that nobody wants to play with him. Now pick up your ball and go home, Preston. Like a classic playground bully, you whine when you don’t get your way. We’re tired of it, and you. Now go to your room and count all the money we’ve paid you for your “services”. That last thing we need in Alberta is a wilted and withered Donald Trump mini-me stomping his feet. You do not speak for Alberta and Albertans. Capiche? Scram!
To be fair to Preston, he’s the farthest thing from a Donald Trump mini-me. That said, he did grow up very privileged as the son of a long-time premier so he thinks he has some kind of special insight into who Albertans are and what they want. In reality, he is a cranky Soc Cred re-tread who seems to have never gotten over the fact that Alberta moved on from it’s backwater conservative status once in elected Lougheed in 1971.
Well said , David. and thank you for bringing the “Trying to understand the World” Substack to my attention.
Manning was shown to be a liar right out of the chute with the reform fiasco…he called a flock screaming that they would be heard akways then sent out a questionaire on founding principles..and when his flock returned them they did not even get opened…got found in the dumpster behind his office.
Preston Manning’s irrelevance is only surpassed by his massive, unjustified ego. He is THE failson of western politics.
He can also go *family blog* himself.
Go family blog himself? I like that. 🙂
More people should read Aurelien, nice work with the reference
@A Little Bird
100% agree. It sent me down a substack rabbit hole of Aurelien’s writing for the whole morning. Plenty to ponder, on.
What? Presto has to go. Even his goofy old man knew:
“On National Unity”Do not let internal discord do to Canada what wars, depressions and hard times were unable to do. Continue to build!”— Often cited as his guiding political philosophy, famously shared by his son, Preston Manning, at his funeral in 1996.”
>“the question with respect to remain is: Remain and do what? That’s the question that the remain people have to answer.”
“It means remain and push this sovereignty option within the federation,” he asserted.–This is exactly what the other nine questions are about. Sovereignty within the federation is precisely what Smith and Rob “Rasputin” Anderson have been pushing for ages, very explicitly and loudly. The only reason we’re talking about actual separation is that the separatists are too stupid to get it. And about the 51st state thing: it isn’t necessary to take down the flag and start singing the Star Spangled banner. We just have to let the American private insurance companies take over the health care system, which again is something Smith has been preaching for this openly for many years and is already halfway to achieving it completely. But for some mysterious reason this is not a matter of public discourse. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if an opposition political party put up a website explaining what the other nine questions are about and why we should all vote NO. Instead of trying to convince us to look the other way.
I’m at the point of ripping my hair out and I really don’t know any other way to put this.
Alberta, WAKE THE ACTUAL F*CK UP
We are sitting above a lunatic asylum that’s busy birthing a fourth Reich right now and these nitwits are like the French generals arguing with de Gaulle about which border they should secure while exigent politicians are whittering away in back rooms about how they can best secure their positions after the invasion instead of pulling together to stop it.
For the love of beef cows and oil rigs, read some arfing history. There’s three ways Empires die, USA included. In a blaze of glory where they are soundly defeated and destroyed–which is looking likelier by the day; through economic collapse–AI bust incoming; and/or through civil war and internal fracturing from wealth inequality that results in a complete revolutionary restructuring.
That, THAT is what Preston Manning is calling for you to join. Alberta is landlocked and it can’t just sit there like a beached oil whale, all by itself, heaving for air. At least Canada isn’t suffering the same lack of coherence as the USA and that comes from someone who disagrees with the government more often than I agree.
Because it’s not about the government you daft sods, it’s about the *country*. You either love it, or you don’t. If you don’t, pack your shirt and move somewhere you’d like better.
If you DO, stay and duke it out like the rest of us have done for a lifetime. Even if the wins are far, far apart.
It’s called, “adulting” and “nation-building” and yes, it’s hard work and it sucks.
Correct, David – Manning and his epigones have always had the goal of imposing Alberta’s political culture on the rest of Canada. That was the purpose of the federal Reform Party, and unfortunately it was successful in eating the Progressive Conservative Party alive, so we’d have to say that this purpose has been fulfilled to some extent.
Presto Manning has evolved far beyond his days as a huckster passing around an empty KFC bucket for donations to his infant RPC. From modest origins comes barely interesting blips in history. The fact that he was awarded an Order of Canada is in itself comical. I guess the selection committee never attended one of the RPC’s rallies.
While in the official opposition, Manning spent an abundance of time defending himself against internal dissent. It is wasn’t the loony racist former cop, it was the former high school principal, who wore the moniker of Fred Flintstone quite proudly. Manning had to find new and impressive ways to keep the lid on the crazies. But it was finally relenting and ending the booze embargo on the RPC that endeared him to his MPs. And then the whole thing took another turn for the dumpster, when when it was found during two national campaigns that Manning had a substantial clothing allowance. How substantial? Let’s say it was more in the realm of a Henry Singer’s budget than Moore’s. But everyone liked it that Manning was looking like a hottie, thanks to the LASIK surgery and the Hugo Boss mens wear. (I found it interesting that no one caught on about the potential controversy of wearing Hugo Boss.)
In the end, even Manning was crushed by that juggernaut known as Stockwell Day. And so begat the trials of Stockwell Day, which made Manning not look so bad in the end.
So, now Manning wants to be considered the last living father of Confederation, huh? Jimmy Smallwood would beat the living crap out of him.
I remember Stockwell Day during the leadership race addressing Manning with pity and condescension, suggesting Manning was getting old and out of touch. A very dirty trick, but then he was taken down by Barney the dinosaur and Rick Mercer’s Doris Day petition (which I was proud to vote for online) and Don Ferguson playing him on Air Farce wearing a seadoo suit with gleaming teeth.
Who can forget the passing of the KFC bucket at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium? I was there for entertainment purposes only, with a friend. Side-eye was exchanged. People tossed coins and bills in the bucket, like a church collection plate back in the day. That’s what it reminded me of: church and Calgary Transit. You see, bus drivers used blue chicken buckets at the time for drivers to discard used transfer tickets. Get on the bus!
Anyone who witnessed the passing of the chicken buckets cannot think of Preston Manning and his flock in any other way. The Loonie also came into existence in 1987.
Manning was always a shit-disturber. When he entered politics he looked like his wardrobe came direct from papa Earnest. “The West wants in,” his slogan was, read by many as: guy’s so f–ked-up he doesn’t know the West was already in. Why else did he think the National Energy Program set the domestic price of oil right across Canada, or that Alberta oil—for actual oil it really was back then—could be sold to foreign buyers for whatever the market would bear?
It’s probably due to where Preston came in, just in time for the NEP to be rescinded—but like carbon taxes, that effrontery can never be forgiven, a not very Christian position for the scion of Bible Hour on the radio his father and Bible Bill Aberhqart pioneered until Petro Lougheed replaced the long, Bible-thumping Socred regime with what would be an even longer one. I guess he thought the prospect of an independent Quebec would offer some possibilities for Alberta, maybe?
Preston was the only leader the Reform party ever had and he led the party to the only success it ever had: Loyal Opposition. Had the party gone further he could have boasted that he destroyed Quebec influence in conservative politics and put it in its place. I guess if you’re gonna be a “super province” you have to be the sole confederate within a strong federation—meaning, “Alberta wants Quebec out.” But a guy who thought (prob’ly still does) that reforming the Senate into an elected, effective and equal House of Parliament would be simply a statutory exercise might not have understood that Quebec voters did not want out. So far the majority of them never have. I’ve yet to hear Quebec commentators demanding Alberta get out of Canada. But Preston might hallucinate such; he’s the grand old fuddy-duddy after all.
You still hear the ill-informed “reasoning” that if Quebec can separate, then so can Alberta—even though Quebec never did separate, nor were Quebec voters ever directly asked in either Referenda (1980 & 1995) if they approved of separation. Neither Referendum question mentioned secession but rather asked if voters would approve”sovereignty association” —which any federate can say it already has—or, in the second Referendum, if they’d permit the Quebec government to negotiate something with the feds. The 2000 Clarity Act would have disallowed either question for not clearly asking, ‘secession, yes or no’.
Trudeau Sr ridiculed Quebec premier Lévesque unpreparedness in both the 1980 Referendum and during the 1982 “patriation” of the Constitution. René fumed in a cloud of cigarette smoke that the consequences of the other 9 premiers ratifying the new Constitution without him would be “incalculable,” when in fact he himself either fumbled his negotiating calculus or, as many suspected, was affecting a performance not unlike what Manning and Danielle Smith are doing today. But will we ever see either of them give such a heart-rending performance as Lévesque’s when he promised, “next time [in french]” to the devastated throng in conceding the federalist victory in 1980? I rather doubt Danielle and Preston could ever be so distinctive.
But the first Referendum was effectively Preston’s meal-ticket. It overwhelmed NEP outrage. It amplified bigotry towards francophone Canadians. It condemned both federal Progressive Conservatives and Liberals for respecting the french fact in Canada. It whittled “Western alienation” down to Alberta. And it alienated both Ontario and Quebec from Reform despite the longtime Angevin-like contention between the two Canadas. It took a head-on with a freight train —the Bloc Québécois bumping Reform as the Loyal Opposition—for Manning to finally figure out that ditching the granny spectacles, getting a makeover, and soft-pedaling Triple-E could not make up even half the suspicion he inspired in the East—especially in Quebec without which no party can form a stable majority.
Well, d’uh, Preston. Dumb became dumber when his “unite the right” Alliance party failed to elect him leader and picked Stockwell Day instead. Manning’s political career in public office was over. His fortunes tanking, he retreated to a self-established think tank to–uh—think it over, maybe?
His legacy is an abiding anti-Quebec sentiment in Alberta and anti-conservative sentiment in Quebec which even Harper’s CPC couldn’t overcome despite many of his non-Québécois cabinet speaking perfect french. Eventually Harper wooed enough Eastern conservatives to win a majority in 2011, but all from Atlantic Canada and Ontario, not Quebec. And that part of caucus became today’s Eastern Tory faction which, although quiescent at present, presents an ever-present threat to party unity, especially as the Western Reform faction gets sucked into another Manning endorsed debacle. Besides, Harper’s first majority was the CPC’s last.
In his dotage Manning seems to forget that the more he prattles on about Liberals forcing Alberta to want out, the more resolve Canadians have to show him how wrong he is. Again. Naturally that includes the majority of Albertans—whom I guess he’s also trying to scare into endorsing a moot secession question.
One day Preston’s cenotaph will say: Here Preston Manning Lies. He Made Canada Stronger.
Thank you, David, for not providing any automatic audio linkage to that perennial whiny, unhappy, miserable miscontent who claims to represent the majority of westerners never mind Albertans.
When is the threshold of treason crossed?
Jim Dinning did a youtube interview with John Ivison today and I thought he did a poor job of arguing against the separatists. He’s too kind to them and of course he wants a pipeline and other dinosaur stuff.
These old Conservatives won’t admit that they have catered too much to the extreme right. Travis Toews is another.
Peak kayfabe. The penultimate celebrity grifter heel continues to wave the belt at the audience and the face lies slumped against the ropes. The Carny Banker’s war machine sent a Canadian frigate through the Taiwan Strait two weeks ago, because you know, that’s where the interests of the average Canadian citizen lies. The Orange Quickchange artist pretends to be battling to keep the Strait of Hormuz open while everything humanly possible is done to ensure that energy does not flow to China from the Gulf. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been milked to keep the energy shock from sending the whole apparatus crashing to the ground, as the CIA yanks their UKrainian Weekend at Bandera’s corpse around and sets Russia’s oil infrastructure on fire. A big ol’ 1970’s economic slump is upon us and it’s being barely kept under wraps by the ongoing stock market fraud and the theatrics of Drumpf and the Inept Klown Posse. The US doesn’t have a care in the world about the Canadian tar. They own it, and it’s not going anywhere without the say-so of the kleptocrats. Folks like to get all hot and bothered about the wicked Reds, but they knew what to do about a Preston Manning. Puyi, the last emperor of China and a fellow imperialist puppet, was put to work sweeping the streets. ““The aim of neoliberalism, after all, is to reduce human beings to the unique status of interchangeable consumers, with no bonds of family, community, history, culture or language that might undermine their homogeneity, and make the markets that constitute their entire existence less efficient than they might be.” Was there ever a more precise description of Canadian society?
And this relates to Preston Manning and Alberta how??
Preston Manning once said that: if he could, he would charge people for the very air they breathe. A sickening, psychopathic level of greed.
BAC: Not that I’d put it past Mr. Manning to believe there is merit in market-based breathing solutions, but I’m pretty sure this started as a Royal Canadian Air Farce joke. DJC
Manning was bloviating on CBC’s The House podcast a couple of weeks ago — putting the lie to the right’s specious accusations that the CBC is a Liberal house organ — and his basic position is a complete dismantling of Canada’s federation except in areas like national defence. He’d push provincial power into federal jurisdictions, he’d repeal the Canada Health Act, and basically jettison everything that makes Canada a more compassionate place than lie neighbours to the south.
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-house/id250083234?i=1000769207656