So, let’s start off with the sidebar. The reason why @[email protected] wants independence from Canada specifically is because of the “freedom of speech, the right to privacy, and the inherent right to self-defense”.

Alright, so let’s take a look at Canadian free speech laws. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other federal laws state that people have a freedom of speech within reasonable grounds. Now what exactly is considered not within reasonable grounds?

• Defamation
• Hate speech
• Obscenity

Of these three, only the third is a point to be debated on with how vague it is. Changing Canada’s free speech laws to make them “more free” would disregard other people’s rights to live how they want without prejudice from others, or the right to not be the victim of defamatory and provably false claims. That is, “free speech” would go into the “right” to call your coworkers slurs without consequence, the “right” to call someone a sex pest without any proof whatsoever, or the “right” to harass vulnerable minority groups such as trans people, 2SLGTBQ+ folks in general, racial minorities, indigenous people, those with disabilities, and more.

What about their freedoms? Does your freedom of speech usurp their freedom to live a daily life safely and without unjust hatred or harassment? I love free speech, where I can stand outside the house of a trans woman and call her slurs until she’s driven mad. I love free speech, where I can call the coworker I don’t like a rapist because I don’t like him, and spread that lie around the office to get him fired.

Oh and the most ironic thing? The people separatists voted for this federal election is lead by a guy who feels your Charter rights can, and should, be usurped with the notwithstanding clause. Ridiculous. Why not just admit you don’t really care about “free speech” and care more about not having any consequences for harassing minorities, spewing false statements, and infringing on the rights of others to lead a normal daily life?

Moving on, the right to self-defense. Self defense from what? Violent crime has been down 40% since 1975. Gun restrictions have further reduced that. Which provinces have the highest rates of violent crime? Huh, curious, it’s Manitoba and Saskatchewan, two western provinces. You would think that crime would be down in these provinces seeing how we care oh so much about dealing with crime here right? Perhaps instead of pushing the federal government to give civilians less restrictive gun rights, we should put the blame where it belongs on the provinces, who directly oversee social services that have been scientifically proven to decrease crime, especially as it pertains to desperation with poverty. You know, the same provinces that are ignoring this scientific evidence, and instead withdrawing funding from these programs for baseless reasons.

Do you want access to firearms with less restrictions? All you have to do is look down south of the border to see how stupid an idea this is. First off, when you have governments like those here in the West reducing funding for social programs that better people’s mental health, and reduce restrictions for guns, you know what you get? A huge surge in suicides and murder-suicides. I myself have wished in my worst moments that we had less restrictive gun laws not because of self-defense but because I wanted to end it all, and gun restrictions as they stand have prevented me from just walking into a gun shop, picking up a weapon, and offing myself that night. This was after years of hardship in being homeless after my family threw me out on the street after stealing thousands from me, and struggling to get any support from the provincial government to get me back on my feet as a result of that.

Secondly, gun crime targeting others. One third of the world’s mass shootings happen in the U.S… In 2018 there were over 38,000 gun deaths in the U.S., with a vast minority of them being justified by either cops or civilians. You are heavily reducing people’s safety when you ease gun restrictions for “self-defense” reasons and lead to things getting out of control when everyone starts getting guns to protect themselves from people with guns.

Let’s end things off with privacy laws. Privacy from what? Government surveillance? If so, sure, valid issue, go ahead and advocate against that, but you are kidding yourself if you feel that splitting from Canada as an entity serving corporate interests more is going to do anything better on the privacy front. Cookies following you everywhere you go? Google tracking your every move on their platforms to the point you have no idea where to start in deleting your history with them? Right to be forgotten laws? Consider progress going in the wrong direction when you separate, as we can already see with the increase in unlawful surveillance and blatant violations of privacy down south. The world’s richest man downloading your sensitive data to his private hard drive? Is that the example you want to follow?

There’s so much more to touch on, but keeping it to the three points in your sidebar, this already falls flat on it’s ass, and anybody who thinks this is a remotely good idea lacks any credibility or critical thinking skills, and is more focused on stirring the pot and taking sides than they are on making decisions rationally.

Quebec wants to separate because they have historic, cultural reasons to want that for themselves and a strong, and legitimate, desire to protect their heritage being infringed on by the rest of Canada, English speakers whose traditions and culture differ vastly from their own. Whether you agree with their actions in wanting to do that is one thing, their complete legitimacy with those concerns is another.

We want to separate because “oh no Liberals” and we can’t for the life of us diversify our economies away from oil, even to use the profits we generate from oil to do so. Manufacturing? Nope. Tech? The NDP was spearheading that effort here in Alberta. We’re not even doing so much as to support our local farmers, if the provinces actually cared about their workers and farmers, they would be doing shit like pushing the feds to develop a domestic sugar policy to protect and build up our domestic sugar beet farmers, or call for the feds to do heavy national campaigns for canola farmers so that people swap from imported olive oils.

And yet, they don’t, and that fact isn’t going to change after separation.