Cometh the hour, cometh the book!
Actually, On Treason: Alberta Separatism, Foreign Interference, and Canada’s Survival in a Revolutionary Age is more than a little late. It rolled off the presses only a few days before Danielle Smith’s divisive and treason-adjacent separation referendum is due to take place on Monday.
This short book by international relations expert, former RCMP intelligence manager, Edmonton resident, and one-time federal political candidate Patrick Lennox is an essential quick guide to the plots and politics of Alberta’s separation referendum, the dangers of which should be obvious to all. If they are not obvious to you, they are made so in the pages of On Treason.
Alas, it comes too late to play the role it could have and should have in the continuing “shakedown approach to federalism” orchestrated by Alberta’s premier and her separatist-dominated United Conservative Party.
Never mind. Thanks to the exertions of Ms. Smith and the UCP, we are likely going to be stuck with this damned secessionist subversion for a long time, no matter the outcome of Monday’s perverse referendum on a referendum. This is true even if Alberta’s voters decisively reject breaking up one of the most successful experiments in democracy in the history of the earth, our Canada.
Dr. Lennox’s lucid little book – a sort of Canadian J’Accuse! – will, I strongly suspect, prove its value in the months ahead and help illuminate the way for Canada to grapple with similar disruptions, many more of which we Canadians are likely to face in the coming months and years.
In the best and most accurate sense, On Treason is a jeremiad – that is, a sustained lament combined with righteous prophecy of destruction if the unrighteous will not change their ways. This is a term, I admit, that is usually used with sarcasm in these pages. But not always.
Like all the best jeremiads – including the ones supposedly written by Jeremiah – On Treason hits precisely the right note of what we Canadians risk if we do not face up to the dangers illustrated so clearly by the machinations of the Freedom Convoy culture-war chuds who have come to dominate the United Conservative Party and its leader.
Of the government-drafted Oct. 19 separation referendum and its noxious nine additional questions, Dr. Lennox commences his analysis with the observation that “each question, in its own way, seeks to undermine the very idea of Canada at a moment of great national peril.
“The first five questions deal with matters of immigration, a matter of federal jurisdiction. The next four deal with constitutional issues, which the province of Alberta has no power to change on its own. The last is a question about whether Alberta should even be part of Canada at all. The real question, however, is why such plebiscites are happening in the first place, now, at this revolutionary moment in history.”
Dr. Lennox proceeds to answer that question in a blistering and comprehensive manner. No need for an alert: The spoiler is in the title. It’s treason. Perhaps not treason as defined by the Criminal Code of Canada, but treason nevertheless, as normally defined now and throughout history by normal people.
When Premier Smith and the UCP plunged ahead with their referendum on a referendum and its nine absurd side dishes, Dr. Lennox asserts, it was an act of treason.
For some of us, that may seem like a step too far, too fast. But throughout the 202 pages of argument (excluding footnotes, acknowledgements and the like) Dr. Lennox makes a persuasive case that this is so. He walks readers through how, despite frequent claims to the contrary, Alberta’s 21st Century grievances with Confederation have little to do with the traditional complaints of western Canadians. They were “born of fraud and the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Criminals and conmen and hucksters and conspiracists and collaborators are leading this separatist movement,” he writes. “They are dangerous, illiberal actors whose delinquency in the face of and complete disregard for the standards and regulations of their chosen professions and our electoral and criminal laws have been demonstrated. They have wrested control of the democratic levers of Alberta and are using the seemingly innocuous vehicle of a provincial plebiscite in a way that invites the foreign interference operations of their global far-right brethren.”
“It terrifies me to write this,” Dr. Lennox adds, “but I think we are woefully unprepared for what is coming for us. Our misguided belief that Canada is somehow immune from the dangers that confront the rest of the world renders us inert at a time when we must be most engaged.”
Herein lies the core of the author’s argument: “This referendum on whether to hold a referendum on Alberta’s future in Confederation is a big lie,” he writes. “This lie is foisted upon the nation and intended to reshape perceptions of Confederation.
“Canada is a representative, constitutional democracy. Not more than a single percentage of the Alberta electorate voted for one of the fringe, separatist candidates in the general election in 2023. And twice over the last year, the courts have ruled that a secession referendum would be unconstitutional and a violation of the treaties.
“To nonetheless move forward with the referendum is an act of treason. It is a form of psychological warfare conducted against us in alliance with the Trump administration’s continual and escalating efforts to have us question our right to exist as a sovereign nation.”
I don’t buy every single argument in this short book – part of publisher Biblioasis’s “Field Notes” series on public interest topics – but every key point is well researched and its core conclusions are very hard to dispute.
In the final chapter, Dr. Lennox offers his prescription for fighting back in defence of Canada. He is not a lawyer, but he is a PhD in international relations, and is clearly familiar with the law. There are some answers there, he suggests. However we approach this crisis, though, “Canada is worth defending militantly, urgently, and with the same level of intensity with which it is being attacked and betrayed.”
I can’t quote the whole book. So you’ll need to read it for yourselves. At $24.95 in paperback and $20.99 for an ebook, it shouldn’t break the bank. If you’re looking for a short form summary, Dr. Lennox authored an op-ed making some of the book’s arguments in a recent edition of The Globe and Mail.
NOTE: Readers will know that I seldom publish book reviews in this space. Indeed, this is only the second one in nearly 20 years of publication at AlbertaPolitics.ca. But the experience of those two decades tells me that what Dr. Lennox has written accurately captures the crisis in which we Albertans now find ourselves. DJC
Patrick Lennox is absolutely right. The UCP and Danielle have got to go.
I enjoyed Nahlah Ayed’s interview with him (CBC Ideas) that aired last night. I put a hold on the book at the library. Thank goodness for public institutions; I am going to cherish them while we’ve still got them.
Good use of the word “chud!” It’s all the rage now with the hip teenagers and made me smile.
My knees may say otherwise, Backpfeifengesicht, but I’m still a hip teenager at heart. (Hep, as we used to say when I was young.) DJC
It’s the first time I have encountered ‘chud’ as a noun. In my younger days, when I was less selective about my cinematic choices, I actually paid good money to see the film from which the word is derived. It was called ‘C.H.U.D.’, an acronym for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. It didn’t make any particular impression on me, although it might have had any of the C.H.U.D.s come across as scary as Mitch Sylvestre.
I haven’t read this book yet, but from your “precis”, and summaries by others it does beg the question, why isn’t Canada’s CSIS doing something about it? If they aren’t protecting our country from this kind of treason, then who is? Is it only the Globe and Mail investigating? I mean, it’s pretty obvious to everyone in Alberta what’s going on. Follow the breadcrumbs. And all roads regarding sketchy legislation changes lead back to our highest offices- the Premier and Minister of Justice, whether it’s favouring the separatists, or players in the private health schemes, or environmental destruction. Jeez, Louise, maybe hire some P.I.’s! This would not be tolerated in any other country. Can you imagine? The U.S.?? These guys would have been locked up a long time ago. Russia?? Off to the gulag with you. China?? I’m not even going to say it. In Canada we hand them the keys and hop in the bus they’re driving over the cliff!
Betts: Given the mandate of Canada’s security agencies, it seems to me unlikely that CSIS would be likely to tell us if they were investigating Alberta separatists. It would certainly be dereliction of duty if they were not. It’s not just Russia and China. Very few countries would be likely to tolerate the kind of thing we have seen from the AB seppie crowd. Dr. Lennox goes into this in some depth in his book. DJC
I heard his interview on CBC Calgary and I think is very on point, ordered his book and will read it thoroughly
Perhaps lawyer and seppie mouthpiece Keith Wilson should read this book.
Slyvestre, Rath, Modry, Parker et al are indeed traitors. In the case of the 3 Alberta Prosperity fools, maybe even in law.
That’s very divisive. I think we need to get back to the before time when Jonathan Denis and Heather Forsyth and Marlainia and Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day and Myron Thompson and Preston Manning and people like Sylvestre, Rath, Modry, Parker et al shared the same values with progressive Albertans and we were able to make sure that the greatest environmental catastrophe in human history could pump out the tar needed by the US war machine without any interruptions, and financiers and speculators could rake off all of the profits. Those were the days!
Try using paragraphs, rigorous logic, and cite your sources please. C-.
Oh, cripes, Gerald, don’t encourage him to write more!
Highly recommend! I was reading my copy last night in the wee hours after watching the Forever Canadian rally. I couldn’t sleep. The book explains why. We are on the precipice of a “direct democracy” disaster. Call these people what they are: authoritarians, nay, fascists. It’s moral treason.
If you want to hear more form Patrick Lennox right now:
https://youtu.be/hvKO2hpU5yM?si=xem8VGvtKVw12FFY
Progs and liberals are much worse now than Kons because it’s crucial for the imperialist narrative to be ingested and recycled by progs as this new phase of imperialism picks up speed. Lennox is literally a Five Eyes mouth-piece. That means CIA and MI6. There’s not a special non-imperialist-monster section of the Five Eyes. Progs have been given carte-blanche for fifty years to dismiss bald-faced US imperialism as “conspiracy theory”, ignoring or denying the fact that Canada is firmly ensconced within the US Military Industrial Academic Financial Media complex. Canada’s closest trading, intelligence and military partner, the United States, has overthrown dozens upon dozens of states since 1895. There is no Canadian state apparatus independent and sovereign from the US empire. For prog mouthpieces to assert and reassert that such a gulf exists ranks with the goofiest of Kon superstitions. “l”iberalism is not an ideology, it is a religion. It is not rooted in any materialist phenomenon, and that’s why you people laud the Carny Banker, who is right up the sphincters of the slave-holding sheikhs in the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and never misses an opportunity to talk about the monstrous threat posed by Iran. You progs must be famliar with Iran, the country whose neighbors on either side have been subject to Canadian military operations for most of the last thirty-five years. The Carny Banker loves him some kidnapping of the leadership of Venezuela by US special forces, and he loves to bits the imperialist, colonialist murder machine operating in Palestine. Kongratulations progs, you have now surpassed the Grift-o-kons for embracing superstitious counter-intutive imperialist propaganda. Unless, you know, maybe I’m confused and Canadian personnel serving with US Central Command and US-run NATO operations and working in intelligence along with MI6, the CIA and the FBI are actually double-secret anti-imperialist Canadian patriots, just like the bankers whose institutions are completely interwoven with Barclay’s and Citibank and JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, and the narco-trafficking HSBC and of course, Goldman Sachs. At least MAGAtards chalk it all up to Jeebuz. You people continue to pretend to be the pragmatic level-headed centrists as you cheer on the guy building a submarine fleet while the Central Public Library in Calgary has homeless junkies sprawled all over the grounds. Covid was a psy-op, whether or not a novel infectious lethal pathogen appeared in 2019. The amount of data generated to deny the nature of US operations like Dark Winter, and Crimson Contagion and Event 201 is the blinding pall of smoke indicating the conflagration. Unless, you know, maybe Saddam Hussein really was about to launch his WMD’s at Tony Blair. Thankfully Canada and those who opposed the criminal assault on Iraq and 2o03 formed a coalition to regime change the US and we got that all sorted out. Didn’t we?
You people! That will raise an eyebrow or two. The whole diatribe is manufactured to fit a narrative “your people” espouse.
Good grief, who taught you to write? This is practically unreadable. You reinforce our view of the separatists as poorly educated buffoons.
The one beef many have is with Federal transfer payments. One needs to remember the so called last kick at this was when Stephan Harper was prime minister and Jason Kenney was next to him at the table. So blaming Federal Liberals is wrong, they should be mad at Harper/ Kenney.
During the Strategy of Tension psy-op during the Quebec Crisis, the Mounties snapped up hundreds of politically unreliables without warrants, but they can’t do anything about these overt traitors?
I checked out a recent interview Dr. Lennox did with the CBC radio show Ideas and, yes, ladies and gentlemen, he claims Vladimir Putin is behind it all. Good grief, didn’t we just go through a panic about a group of Alberta separatists meeting in Washington and offering to give away Alberta water and whatnot on a silver plate. Hard to believe people take this hack seriously. The think tanks are filled with these creatures on the payroll to scare monger public opinion about Russia and China. Iran will be soon joining the list and I expect Yemen will shortly be rolling suit.
Lennox never fails to mention the wicked Pewtin, but that is because Lennox is a Canadian spook and the Canadian intelligence agencies do not exist outside the auspices of the Five Eyes subordinate relationship to CIA and the FBI. This is just an incontovertible fact. Lennox wrote a piece in the Walrus, talking about the fascist Big Lie in the context of the seppies in Alberta. It’s a real gaslighter because the Big Lie is that Canada is independent. He sets up a few strawmen concerning the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and then wraps them up in the Big Lie bow. The simple fact is that prior to the launch of Russian large-scale military operations in 2022, Russia was a strategic rival of the US in Europe and the two powers were in open conflict. Rand corporation stated very clearly that the Ukraine represented a device to use against Russia in pursuit of the stated US goal of “extending” and thereby weakening Russia in the context of its status as a geostrategic and economic rival to the US. Brzezinski admitted this thirty years ago and placed the Ukraine in that context. So Lennox is farting out the Big Lie incessantly. The current US strategy as it pertains to Canada the the rest of the declining vassals in Europe and Australia and the Philippines and Japan and South Korea and the Persian Gulf is to download the burden of the imperialist Custer’s Last Stand onto these entities. So pretending to stand up to Drumpf while fulfilling the wettest of Rand Corporation and CIA dreams is de rigeur among folks like the Carny Banker and sold to the masses by snake-oil salesmen like Lennnox. This article gives a sense of what Canada really is; it contains quotes from Scott Taylor, who for decades has told it like it is in the Canadian military machine: “Canada’s attack on Libya helped spread terrorism internationally…Canada’s CF-18 jets have dropped 696 bombs on Libya as part of the NATO attack which included 10,000 bombing sorties that killed and wounded more than 5,600 civilians (up until July 2011 alone) and destroyed vital civilian infrastructure, particularly water facilities, leaving four million Libyans (out of a population of six million) without potable water. NATO bombing demolished hospitals, universities, homes and the entire town of Sirte (population 100,000). These are clearly war crimes and crimes against humanity that Canada and NATO are responsible for. The NATO attack lasted seven months until October 2011, eradicating Libya’s central government, society and state and handing the country over to gangs of terrorists, criminals, Islamic fundamentalists and American operatives who started fighting with each other, pushing Libya into an abyss of violent anarchy that continues today, a decade later.” Elbows up! https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/canadas-attack-on-libya-helped-spread-terrorism-internationally/
It is a timely book, but many of us have argued and seen television footage of seized shotguns, hunting rifles, and sawed-offs to know that the Seppies are actually blowhard pussies like Rath and Sylvestre, and the UCP are nothing more than glorified Girl Guides and Boy Scouts, marching in goosesteps behind Smith, the railside cook, using big words they don’t understand. They make a lot of noise, especially among the double-clutching clatch of Kenworths, but they will continue to be a pain in the ass, and hopefully, this too will pass, once there are fewer and fewer Hinterlanders.
And you and I both know that Sylvestre is a buffoon, simpleton, and small town hockey player with an overblown ego who loves the spotlight. The fact that these clowns have been legitimized and given so much airtime is beyond infuriating. And that they have (potentially) the power to determine MY citizenship is outrageous and unacceptable.
There are two parts to this equation. The loudmouth Foghorn Leghorns of Alberta would sell us out if they got the chance. They’re interested in money and personal gain. They are not the ones who would dirty their hands with violence. Those people fly under the radar.
I got my copy yesterday at Chapters. They made it real easy as they had them on display right at the door, so no trying to hunt down a copy was necessary.
Another really good short read is called “On Tyranny” written about 6 or 7 years ago. It delves into how dictators operate and is targeted at Trump. However, one can see many parallels to the UCP and Danielle Smith in the book.
Not sure what to make of the große Lüge referendum-just-past being an attempt to “reshape perceptions of Confederation [sic].” Insofar as Alberta (and Saskatchewan) was not completely confederated in 1905 when it became a province—at least nominally—, I can perceive that the act of joining Alberta as a new federate to the then- 38 year-old Canadian federation as being one of the legitimate complaints that separatists list in their recipe: neither “spare-cloth province” had sovereign control over their natural resources until 1930 (Canada didn’t have legislative autonomy from UK until 1931, nor full independence until 1982). It’s just a pet peeve of mine that a federation like ours is so often referred to by the act of becoming, or becoming part of a federation. In my view, reshaping perceptions of either our Federation or of the act of Alberta’s 1905 confederation are two different things—as it happens both germane to the Alberta secession controversy. Although commonly mistaken in print and speech, Canada is properly a federation, not a “Confederation” (which is the act of joining two or more jurisdictions to a federation).
Phew!—that’s a load off my mind!—the referendum, I mean. Even so, there’s a caution: the fever might be broken but the patient is still not healed.
Although interesting, I leave aside the first nine questions which were really included as stalking-horses for the real question—whether to have a separation referendum— and get right to the 76%/24% dichotomy against holding such a referendum. Of course the seppies insist it’s all trending exactly as they expected —which is way better than insisting the vote was rigged against them—and that it ain’t over yet, a sentiment with which I agree, if for different reason.
News media will continue to beat the issue to death, fretting and fear-mongering that Canada was—and still might be—on the verge of falling apart when in fact the SCoC ruled decades ago that no province may secede unless the Constitution is amended to allow it ( and, then, only if all the sovereign parliaments of Canada approve). The original secession, yes-or-no question was shitcanned by a court of law for another reason—that the Crown (the government of Alberta, as Wab Kinew corrected Danielle Smith when she seemed to say it referred to Ottawa alone) is obliged to honour Treaties 6, 7, & 8 by way of consultation if the terms of those treaties are in any way proposed to be altered, an obligation the court found the Alberta government had neglected to do; the plaintiffs, a group of indigenous nations, were granted an injunction against a specific secession referendum. And as a result the central question on this omnibus referendum was changed to instead ask if voters wanted to hold a separation referendum later (presumably after the Alberta Crown has completed its obligation to insult with potentially impacted treaty-holders), so it doesn’t pose a threat to Canadian unity anyway, no matter which way it went. As it happened, three-quarters of Alberta voters rejected having a separation referendum.
Just like I wouldn’t call this issue a “crisis” the way MSM seems to do, I don’t see how “treason” could be proved—unless the CSIS has incriminating evidence we don’t know about yet. The way our law is currently written nothing short of assisting an invading force meets the level of treason. I suppose the question will keep coming up so politicians will probably have to address it eventually. Given the feds, the ROC and three-quarters (at least) of Albertans would like to put this behind them as much as the seppies and their sponsors don’t, the desire to let things cool off far outweighs the losers’ maudlin torch. Still, I’d feel better if I knew matters of treasonous sedition are being seriously investigated and considered in some policy reform forum somewhere.
Meanwhile I’d sure like to see MSM atone for their absolutely shitty, salacious, stupid, sensationalist reportage of the UCP’s sham referendum threat by educating Canadians on the actual facts: news-media, so’s to keep viewers on the hook, almost completely misled as to what secession is in law, and instead propagated a false narrative of Canada on the brink. In actual fact, if any province wants to separate from the federation at least one of them has to initiate the constitutional amendment process because without that any referendum, even one unanimously approving secession, is totally moot. (And while my BC compatriots are boning up on Aboriginal Title and meaningful consultation protocols interim to treaty settlement, I hope my Alberta compatriots do the same with respect the Numbered Treaty-holders in their own province.)
Finally, I always thought that on any quiet day support for separation hovers around 3% in Alberta, rising to about 10% during tumultuous times, and no more than 15% with concerted effort. The results seem to bear me out since the ambiguous Yes for Option 2 includes voters who would “send Ottawa a message” but not vote for secession in a separation-specific referendum. Naturally I have no idea what portion of the 24% these tactical voters comprise, but if I go for a very plausible little-less-than-half, then the number of ‘hard secessionists’ is around my 15% estimate—at its hottest. I’m optimistic that things will, therefore, settle back down to an endemic level of single-digit peeve which we can consider “normal.”
Good work, my Alberta compatriots!
Yes, let’s talk “treason.” Canada is now planning to nationalize it’s oil. Surprise surprise, Alberta, there goes your oil! The country is also planning on bringing in 15 million more Asian immigrants into its country and the nation is headed toward half of its population being foreign born . Surprise surprise, Alberta, there goes your culture! Elbows up, eh?