It's All In How We're Asked
By: Alan Clark
Over the past few days the Edmonton Journal has felt it necessary to trot out a few good apologists to insist that it's just a few of those radical fringe-dwellers who are in favour of separation. Nice people don't favour separation. I'd suggest that a lot more people favour independence for Alberta than the gentle folk at the Journal would allow the rest of Canada to know.
Like any other issue, it's all in how the question is asked. If you ask an Albertan "do you favour separation from Canada" the knee-jerk answer in most cases will be "no". This is a result of decades of the Quebec experience. Most Canadians, Albertans included, view referendums and separation as bad things. Separation = bad. Separation = declining standard of living. Separation = evil. This is what the Journal's editorialists and the federal government have been teaching us for decades.
Albertans aren't suffering from a minor problem such as that which effects the psyche of the average Quebecer. Albertans have lived for generations with a fundamentally flawed political system which regularly, annually puts us further in the distance from our economic competitors. Our views on culture, politics and society are discounted and maligned. We now find ourselves emotionally entrapped in a country which has a judicial system which we abhor, a political system which doesn't tolerate our views, a culture and language policy which the vast majority of us don't participate in or even understand. Moreover, the smallest of decisions are made for us by an over-bearing federal government which quite obviously hates us.
Occasionally, they even choose to single Albertans out for special treatment. Special treatment from the federal government means our industries are going to face discriminatory taxes and/or tariffs or our farmers are going to be sent to prison for the crime of having sold their own property without the consent of the appropriate federal commissar.
Ask a different question and you'll get a different answer. For example:
 | Would you support a new Constitution which would give Albertans all the services they currently enjoy as Canadians but with 20 percent lower taxes? |
| Would you support a government system where the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches are all totally independent of one another where Albertans vote for a Premier, MLA's and Supreme Court Justices? |
| Would you support an elected, equal and effective senate right here in Alberta to balance the power wielded by the Premier and the legislature? |
| Do you think Albertans should make decisions such as gun control, capital punishment, immigration or young offenders justice for themselves? |
| Should Ontario & Quebec politicians have the final say in where a dam, a power plant, an airport, a pig barn or a condo is built in Alberta? |
| Do you believe that Alberta's farmers should be sent to prison for selling their own wheat to an American? |
| Did you know that Albertans pay an average of six billion dollars annually for the privilege of being treated badly by the Canadian government. |
| Did you know that an independent Alberta could have all the existing benefits of being Canadians including health-care, schools, prisons, welfare, a military, unemployment insurance and pensions and our government would still have a multi-billion dollar budget surplus annually? |
The answers to these questions are almost universal among Albertans and the response is totally cerebral and logical. Like asking a 10 year-old "what's two plus two". Ask only "do you favour Alberta separation" and you won't often get cerebral or logical. You'll get the pre-programmed "separation is bad" response.
It illustrates the first rule of marketing - never ask a negative question. If you do, you will get a negative answer. Luckily for Canada, there seems to be no one who is willing to aggressively market the overwhelmingly positive side of the Alberta independence argument. Too bad.