Black Gold, Fool's Gold: The Dream and Nightmare of an Independent Alberta

An Independent Alberta would end up being a nightmare for Albertans

Imagine it. Alberta, proud and stubborn, breaks from Canada, riding a wave of oil-fueled independence rhetoric. The pipelines are drawn in the sand. The flags change. And in a stunning twist, Alberta is absorbed into the United States.

Freedom at last?

Not quite.

In the early days, it would feel like a bonanza. Freed from Ottawa's clumsy hand, corporate deals and mineral sales would skyrocket. Oil wells would sprout like weeds. Landowners lucky enough to secure mineral rights would cash in. Millionaires would be minted overnight. Private jets would buzz over abandoned public hospitals.

The wealth of the land, once broadly shared through provincial royalties, would migrate into private hands. Texas-style. Alberta's social contract - the hidden scaffolding behind its high standard of living - would buckle.

Year 5:Hospitals close. Schools plead for funding. Taxes don't fill the gap, because unlike royalties, taxes come slower and fight harder. Inequality blooms, fast and vicious. The first gated communities rise in Calgary and Edmonton, not just for show but for security.

Year 10:The culture divides into old oil dynasties and "everyone else." Without Canadian health care, tens of thousands rely on threadbare U.S. federal programs or drown in insurance debt. Alberta becomes a mirror of America's energy states: small islands of obscene wealth adrift in a sea of poverty and broken roads.

Year 20:The wells start to decline. The cash river that funded Alberta's first post-independence years dries to a trickle. The public, who once imagined a proud, sovereign Alberta, realize they’re tenants in their own land - working for corporations headquartered thousands of miles away. Their children's dreams are mortgaged for survival.

Year 40:Legacy families, those who captured the mineral rights in the early frenzy, live untouched in fortified suburbs. Ordinary Albertans, with nothing left of their public oil wealth, drift into the forgotten parts of the American landscape, lumped in with West Virginia, New Mexico, and Mississippi. A cautionary tale. A colony in everything but name.

The Root of the Collapse: Ownership.

In the Canadian model, the Crown holds natural resources in trust for the people. Royalties are the lifeblood of public services. In the American model, private mineral ownership dominates. The "lucky" own the earth; the rest work it for scraps.

By joining the U.S., Alberta would trade a socialized future for a privatized past. It would accelerate inequality, deepen poverty, and hollow out the very freedoms it sought by leaving Canada.

Alberta’s fatal mistake would not be separation itself. It would be swapping one master for another and mistaking private riches for public freedom.

There’s a lesson here, lurking under the oil sands:Freedom without ownership is a mirage. Independence without stewardship is a con.

If Alberta truly wanted independence, it wouldn't follow Texas. It would build the North American Norway.

But revolutions rarely pick the wisest dreamers. They pick the loudest ones.

And history, mercilessly, will not care.