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