There are those amongst us that are pretty riled at the prospect of British Columbia being a part of an independent West. Among the reasons heard are that there are too many differences, too many leftists, too many of “those” people.  Of course there are the usual handles, granola crunchers, tree huggers, hippies, leftoids, etc, etc, etc. And those are the kind ones! Another comment I hear with regards to BC and an Independent West is, “Turn off the taps, that’ll teach’em.”

 

Really?

It would go without saying that it takes all kinds to make a country, to think otherwise would not only be narrow of thought but self defeating if one is truly serious about building a country. If a neighbour came up to you and asked to join you in an enterprise, do you think he would be as willing if he was greeted with, “First I have to teach you a lesson then I’ll watch you like a hawk you son of a —–.” I’m sure your neighbour would be a bit put off, right?

At present, there is much angst and commotion going on over the former Kinder Morgan pipeline, now owned by taxpayers. Lawsuits are flying and tempers are boiling to the point where the real issues and causes have been desiccated to “us and them”. So let’s look at what’s really going on, shall we?

To understand and get a real perspective on the friction between provinces and how this is meaningful to our ambitious project called independence, we have to look at the parts of the issue separately then as a whole.

Nationally, we have a government led by a Prime Minister that has been put in office through the machinations of outside money and dishonest representation in the media. He is reminiscent of Barack Obama, who got the Nobel Peace Prize for?  And whose previous accomplishments were scant to say the least. Justin Trudeau was elected based on his name, nice hair and his ability to woo tourists and take selfies.  A great amount of foreign capital went into demeaning Harper and promoting Trudeau, money that was funneled into the election via 3rd party advertising, much of which provided by individuals that stand to profit by stifling Canada’s energy sector. Trudeau is owned, period. As such he has the unenviable task of appearing to support the oil industry while actually destroying it.

Alberta made the unwise choice of electing an NDP government in order to show the Conservatives that they’d better watch out! It’s much like saying, “Look, I don’t want you to walk like you did before again so I’ll just break your legs…but I don’t really mean it.” Then everyone was aghast that an NDP government was in power! Make sense?

Now it worked out that Alberta committed hara-kiri just at the right time since Trudeau now had an ally in Edmonton that also needed to look like she cared but really hoped Trudeau would get his way and oil would be dead. But to be fair, the NDP is more like a willing accomplice than a paid hit man.

Now we get to British Columbia.

British Columbia took a page from the Alberta playbook and hoped to teach the rascals in power a lesson! So what did they do? Elected an NDP government.  But wait, there’s more! Not to be outdone by Alberta, BC got a coalition government, how European!

And the coalition means that if John Horgan wants to sit in the Premier’s chair he has to do the bidding of the Greens. And so BC is essentially governed by a party holding 3 seats. My, how the masses have spoken!

And so my dear reader, we can see that although one might opt to vent about us and them, in fact it is a matter of us and us. There are so many similarities that it is simply remarkable. Can anyone dispute this?

To build a country we need to look ahead as one people. And this “one people” includes right, left, old, young, gay, straight, all the colours you can think of, religions of all sorts. All fighting for the common good, to become Western Canadians in a country where everyone is equal under the law, free from foreign interference and enjoying the benefits and responsibility of making life better for all.

It’s a tall order but I do think we’re up to it.

But achieving such a thing requires a start point. A point at which we show our neighbours that not only are we serious about independence, but that we talk the talk and walk the walk. If we don’t all we are doing is parroting the divisive doctrine of Trudeau and his ilk. And if that’s the way it is then we are doomed from the start.

Can it be done?