Vol. XX, No. 11, November 2002
The Western Separatist Papers has been published (usually)
monthly by W.S.P. Ltd. since 1983. Address all correspondence to WSP, Box 101,
255 Menzies Street, Victoria, B.C. Western Canada V8V 2G6. A one-year
subscription is $15.00. Members of the Western Canada Concept receive the WSP
with their membership.
Send e-mail to kzubko@shaw.ca. Visit the WCC on the web at: www.westcan.org
Phone us at: 250-727-3438 or fax us at: 250-479-3294
Editor's Note: The letters and other messages have been pouring in this month, due mostly to the Kyoto Accord having raised the awareness of many Western Canadians to the West's real position in Confederation. There have been many letters of only a few words, like "separate!" or "Let us pull the pin. This is the time to finish this thing we call federation. We here in Western Canada are done with this!" or "You have my vote!" or Let's go." Here are a couple of longer letters:
To the Editor:
Regarding the Kyoto Accord, I think it will ruin us all including the idiots out in Ontario. I think the following:
Facts: By signing it Canada commits to reduce the CO2 emissions to 6% below the 1990 emissions levels.
Canada population increased between 1990 and 2002 by at least 10%; Canada is a country made for the car not for the people, we have homes in a dormitory area, we shop in malls far away from the home and work, at least a large number of us, in industrial parks far away from everything else. No car, hard life. Mass transportation is half decent and this is valid only in well established areas. The car usage is a necessity.
Canada has 7 months of winter and the most 3 of summer. 9 months a year we have to heat our homes. The electricity consumption growth out of nuclear power is dead, the hydro power growth is limited and the rest is coal and natural gas. All agricultural output is based on Diesel burning. None of us is going to voluntarily give up the car usage , the heat and electricity consumption needed to keep us comfortable.
What the Government will be "forced" to do to curb consumption is to (excise) tax fuel and electricity. How much tax it will take to lower the consumption to the target?
At $3.00 per litre, the streets will be still packed with cars for the only reason that we have no choice.
How much will be the gas bill? Likely between double and triple today's level. Electricity from coal will disappear, Electricity from Nuclear plants will be retired. Where the cost of kW is going to go? Maybe 25 cents? Or maybe 35 cents? I am afraid to think about. Now that the gasoline is $3.00, the Diesel will likely get to $2.50. Is anybody guess how much a loaf of bread will go and how much a kilogram of tomatoes shipped from California will cost.
So average Canadian household take note: If you pay for gas today $100 a month you'll end up paying some $400 $D300 If you pay for heat today $150 a month, you'll end up paying some $400 $D250 Your $100 electricity bill will at least double $D100 Your $300 grocery bill will go up at least 50% $D150 I am an optimistic kind of person and I quit here at an $800 increase in your monthly expenses. If all this extra tax will not get the desired energy consumption reduction, more tax will follow. I have to remind you that the trigger of the inflation in double digit range was a relative modest increase in the energy cost back in 1978.
As far as the $9600 extra tax the government milks you, don't worry, the Liberals will find a way to spend it before paying off the National Debt.
Oh Canada...
Alex Constantinescu
(by email)
[Editor's Note: The following letter is a great sample of what could be sent to every paper in the West. YOU could write a similar letter and send it to YOUR local papers. This is one way to help the cause of Western Independence.]
To the Editor:
This message to you is based upon my 60 years of life-experience. I was born in Alberta and I am concerned about Canada. All of my grandparents were homesteaders in this country at the turn of the last century. I was raised on a farm and educated in Lethbridge and Calgary. I have had a very interesting career, working for municipal government and operating my own consulting business. Having consulted and advised all levels of government, as well as many private corporations, I believe that my last 40+ years have made me reasonably aware and astute of the political scene. In addition, I worked on several campaigns for probably the most successful politician who is still in power today.
I think it is time for Western Canadians to face reality instead of facing continual frustration. Western separatism is now in the minds of many people west of the Manitoba/Ontario border. Only one roadway, the Trans-Canada Highway, crosses the border going west. For three decades we have primarily watched a Liberal government, backed by Ontario and Quebec voters, elect dictators in so called democratic clothing. Spending like drunken sailors, this government has ignored the reform of obsolete systems, programs, laws and policies and has left us with an impenetrable bureaucracy.
In that same era, it has festered the Quebec separatism movement, created a poverty situation in the Maritimes and driven down the Canadian dollar from $1.10 to $0.62 U.S. Kyoto, gun control, South African aid, along with a couple of airplanes are just a few other examples of our governmental incompetencies. In addition, there is a per capita national debt and taxation system that ranks second/ third highest in the world. No wonder global investors are nervous about Canada. I think that Canadians have much more reason to riot in the streets than Argentineans.
Because of our regional disparity and our incapability to incur proper representation in Ottawa, the government will continue to ignore our requests for reform. The Ontario and Quebec voters are not going to change the status quo so "let them keep the Liberals and their pork-barrelling complacency". This government cannot communicate with the world, let alone Canadians. We are a global joke and I am embarrassed. IT'S TIME FOR US TO WAKE UP!!!
We don't have to join the U.S. (but we could adopt its currency). We could become a separate country and call it Western Canada. We have our own heritage. We don't have to give up the monarchy. We could form our own central government with possible headquarters in Calgary, a centrally located city that currently is a major hub of activity. Who needs the St. Lawrence Seaway? Western Canada has Vancouver, as well as its own airlines, railways, truck lines, agriculture, energy and manufacturing. As Canada doesn't have a proper functioning military anyway, do we really need one?...A coast guard and our own national police force, yes. We could eliminate the Canadian Wheat Board, the CBC and any other poorly functioning crown corporations. We could revolutionize and streamline the Health Care System, Immigration, Human Resources, Justice System, Young Offenders Act, Parole Board, the Income Tax Act, G.S.T., etc. We could form a world class government (i.e., a republic - better representation and a functioning
As a young country we have made many mistakes. Now is the time to correct them and initiate reform for our upcoming and future generations. Common sense and efficiency should take place. Westerners do have the intelligence and ability to undertake this challenge. However, it must be led by prominent people already in power (i.e., Klein, Harper, etc.) and have full media participation. Otherwise, we will stumble and falter like our current unchangeable government down east.
There are numerous examples around the world are proving that a population of approximately 10 million people is sufficient to form a viable country. I suggest that a properly worded/presented poll to all of the western provinces and the northern territories would yield a positive vote. Who would do this poll? I would like to see changes in my lifetime; how about you? It is time for us to stand on our own TWO FEET.
J.R. OWSLEY
Cremona, AB
The Western Separatist Papers welcomes your letters to the editor, including your questions for Doug Christie. Please send them to kzubko@shaw.ca, or WSP, Box 101, 255 Menzies Street, Victoria, B.C. V8V 2G6, or fax them to 250-479-3294.
"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) French economist, statesman, and author.
"In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing."
de Montesquieu
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."
Justice Robert H. Jackson United States Supreme Court Justice
"Nature never breaks her own laws."
Leonardo da Vinci
"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance."
Woodrow Wilson
"Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong."
F.A. Hayek
"In a free society, standards of public morality can be measured only by whether physical coercion violence against persons or property occurs. There is no right not to be offended by words, actions or symbols."
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.
The following excerpts from an article that appeared Saturday, October 19th, 2002 from Reuters on various other news sites, shows that the stresses on Confederation continue to occur....
By Roger Bill
CARBONEAR, Newfoundland (Reuters) - Just 54 years after voting to leave Britain's embrace and join Canada, many people in the remote province of Newfoundland and Labrador are wondering whether they made a massive mistake.
Public unhappiness about perceived economic exploitation and mismanagement by Ottawa is so great that a special royal commission is now travelling across the rocky, sparsely populated Atlantic province to examine its place in Canada.
The commission -- which started a series of 23 public hearings on September 30 -- is formally charged with "renewing and strengthening our place in Canada" but some inhabitants of the country's youngest province want out altogether.
"It is time to throw off the Canadian yoke," lawyer Doug Moores told the commission during a hearing in Carbonear, 50 miles (80 km) east of the provincial capital St. John's.
"We've only been Canadians for 50 years. We've been here for 500 years and we've got ourselves in a fine mess."
One factor behind the frustration is that until relatively recently, Newfoundland did not have particularly close links with Canada.
British settlers first landed on the island 500 years ago and by the end of the 19th century -- together with the Labrador region on the nearby mainland -- it was a largely independent British dominion.
Newfoundland's trading partners were on the eastern seaboard of the United States and in the Caribbean, and its cultural ties were predominantly with England and Ireland.
In 1869 it even rejected a proposal to join Canada, which was uncharitably known at the time as "the Canadian Wolf."
But in the aftermath of World War Two, Britain shed much of its empire and in a 1948 referendum Newfoundlanders voted by a narrow margin to join Canada.
People in the province complain that the great natural riches they brought into Canada in 1949 -- the year they formally surrendered their independence -- have been squandered by those in Ottawa, 1,100 miles (1,800 km) away.
When chairman Vic Young was asked if the commission might conclude that Newfoundland should seek full independence, he told Reuters: "We have an open mind on everything."
No one is seriously suggesting that Newfoundland is about to be swept by the same kind of separatist sentiment seen in the neighbouring French-speaking province of Quebec, which has a government committed to breaking away from Canada.
That said, there is plenty of genuine anger and bitterness about the province's plight. Young becomes mournfully eloquent as he outlines all that Newfoundland has lost since 1949.
"Newfoundland brought into Canada a richness of resources -- our fishery, our hydro (electric power), our oil and gas, our forestry, our mines, our strategic location, our people, our cultural and artistic heritage," he said.
"Now, 53 years later, if you measure where Newfoundland and Labrador is versus the other provinces in Canada we see a disconnect between the resources we brought in...and where we stand today."
HIGH TAXES, POOR PUBLIC SERVICES
Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest jobless rate and the lowest per capita income in the country. Residents pay some of the highest taxes in Canada yet their provincial government is running a deficit and delivers public services widely seen as inferior to those elsewhere.
Even John Efford, the federal member of parliament from the ruling Liberal Party who represents the Carbonear area, freely admits there are problems.
"Everything is far from okay," he said.
Sceptics are calling Young's group the "Blame Canada Commission" and there were plenty of attacks on Ottawa's record at the public hearing in Carbonear.
"We allowed ourselves to be ravaged by mainland Canada," said Joe Noel, an 80-year-old former businessman who said he had voted against joining Canada in 1948.
People too young to have voted then may not believe the stories that ballots were stolen or back room deals were cut in London and Ottawa, but they are disenchanted all the same.
"We're not being heard. We're not being understood," complained businesswoman Ann Gosse.
One particularly sore point is the fate of the cod fishing industry, the backbone of the island's economy when it joined Canada. Ottawa took over control and 40 years later the cod fishery was closed down after rampant over fishing which Newfoundlanders say the government did little to combat.
"Canada has failed miserably. Our fishery used to yield 1.5 to 2.5 million tons of ground fish a year and today we have the commercial extinction of huge quantities of fish. This is unbelievable," said Gus Etchegary, the former head of a large Newfoundland fishing company.
Other grievances include a federal fiscal policy which gives Ottawa 70 to 80 cents of every royalty dollar from the burgeoning offshore petroleum industry.
Another source of unhappiness is a 1960s deal with Quebec over the lucrative Churchill Falls hydro project in Labrador that sees Quebec reaping windfall profits of up to $1 billion (US$630 million) a year while Newfoundland's share is a few million dollars.
And as if this were not enough, many worry about a population which is dropping at an increasingly rapid pace.
Doug May, an economist at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, said the population has fallen from about 580,000 in 1982 to less than 515,000 today and it is on its way to 475,000 in another 14 years. Other economists predict a population decline of a third over the next 40 years.
"It scares me when I think about that. Are we going to be a retirement home?" said John Grover, a retired schoolteacher from Carbonear. In 1972 there were 163,000 children enrolled in Newfoundland schools -- in 2000 the number was 87,000.
When the royal commission visited a local high school and asked the 24 students where they thought they would be in 2012, not one thought they would still be in Carbonear.
BIRTH RATE HITS RECORD LOWS
Migration from Newfoundland to other parts of Canada is not a new phenomenon but until now has been compensated for by a birth rate which was once the highest in the country. Today that rate is the lowest.
The commission's challenge is to develop a plan to achieve increasing prosperity and self-reliance against a backdrop of this dramatic population shift.
Gerry Byrne, the federal minister responsible for Newfoundland, said it would be wrong to portray the province's relationship with Ottawa in a purely negative light.
"Due to many policy decisions within the federal government today we have a fishery which in terms of landed value has never been as high as it has this year, so obviously (Ottawa) is doing some good things," he told Reuters, playing down the idea that Newfoundland voters had made a mistake in 1948.
"(The commission) should be about our future, not 53 years in the past ...there is no ambiguity about fighting for the province while at the same time being very proud of the accomplishments of our province within Canada."
But some -- including the province's own ombudsman -- say the official Terms of Union governing Newfoundland's relationship to Canada should be redrawn.
Newfoundland historian John Fitzgerald said the 1949 deal was fundamentally flawed, born from Britain's desire to push Newfoundland into Canada. In exchange, he said, Britain's substantial post-war debt to Canada was forgiven.
This is just one of the ideas which the commission will mull over before issuing its final report next June on how Newfoundland can do better inside Canada.
Two of those who voted in favour of joining Canada in 1948 were Vic Young's parents. When asked whether he was a first a Newfoundlander or a Canadian, he replied firmly "I am a Newfoundlander first."
After a pause he added: "But I am a proud Canadian."
[end of article]
By Doug Christie
[Doug Christie's "Views on Today's News" is a new feature on our website at www.westcan.org.]
On Friday November 1st, 2002, and All Saints Day, some historic and profound thoughts occurred to me. As in the case of any long sea voyage, in order to ascertain where you're going, it is essential to draw a line from where you have been. By extension of the line you can usually get an indication of your destination, that is, if the course remains the same. Over a long period of time even though the course may have changed occasionally from time to time, you get a fairly good description of your long-term destination from the two points in question.
In this regard I was thinking again of the 13 farmers who went to jail in Lethbridge yesterday. The media has already moved on to another story. In the jail, the farmers will wake up to the realization that they are really in jail. They wake up in a different country than I thought they would ever live. How do we communicate the tragedy of their circumstances? Well, let me try.
Suppose someone had said to the Americans of the 13 colonies, in about 1770 or 1776 that you will now be restricted in the following way:
1. You will now be restricted to only burning the amount of coal that you burned for fuel ten years ago less 10 percent.
2. You will now be required to register all your firearms and keep them locked in a secure place to which the government will have access at any time for the purposes of inspection. Only those of you of whom the government approves will be allowed to have a license to keep firearms.
3. If you are farmers, you will not be allowed to sell your wheat to anyone the government does not approve. If you do, you can be sent to jail.
4. You will now be required to publish everything of public nature in native Indian languages as well as English.
5. You will be required to pay half of all you earn any year to your government.
6. You will be required to pay various Indian tribes tribute in lands, legislative power, and taxes, to support them forever in their culture, because of what you've taken from them.
7. In the future you'll never again say anything disparaging against any Indian tribe, and will pay compensation for all past wrongs or perceived injuries.
8. In future you'll restrict your speech to only those statements which do not offend any race, religion, ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, mental or physical disability, or marital status. And if you do, the fact that what you say is the truth, will be no defence, and will be utterly irrelevant. Quoting parts of the Bible about homosexuality will also be unlawful.
9. In order to foster an attitude of religious tolerance, and avoid offending any religious group, no mention will remain in any public ceremonies of the name or person of Jesus Christ .
10. You will in future be required to file documents which accurately tell the government, whenever they shall so demand, exactly how much money you have earned, where and how you earned it, and where you spent it.
11. For the purposes of traveling from place to place in America on your horse on a public road, you will require the approval of the government and you will be required to carry a license with your photograph on it. To travel to any other country you'll need the government's permission on a sign document called passports.
12. In order for you to believe that these rules are made by your government and you live in a democracy, you will be allowed to elect to the parliament at Westminster in London less than 10 percent of the Members of Parliament. To ever bring about a change of that percentage will require the approval of the majority in the house.
What would the citizens of the 13 colonies say about such dictatorial rules? We will never know the answer to this question. We do know how they reacted to paying tax on tea. We do know that in Canada, at one time we were relatively free. We do know that each of the above 12 points reflects a reality in which we in western Canada live today. If the present state of affairs continues as it has in the past, we can draw a line from the place of freedom where we started out, to the place we are in today.
Now, extend this line into the future realizing that those12 points above reflect our present location in Canada and take a look at where we're going. Without separation and the building of a new government dedicated to freedom, you will soon live in discouraging tyranny. Our children deserve better and we received better from our forebears.
To achieve a better protection of our former freedom and to enshrine that any constitution dedicated to our land and heritage, we do not need to take up arms, become violent, or harm anyone. We merely need to exercise our democratic rights, recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada, ratified by the parliament of Canada, and the Clarity Act in the year 2000, and conduct a referendum with a clear question. On this website we have drafted such a referendum petition. All it takes for you to make a difference is to take the petition printed off and circulate them with a clear conviction that we must liberate ourselves again, just as people United States liberated themselves in 1776. Why we do not want to make a difference?
These days in Ottawa, the Alliance is crowing about its new-found success. It has been able to change the rules slightly in the selection of committees so that a secret ballot is possible. This can be rendered meaningless by party discipline. Fifty plus members of the Liberal caucus have voted against the government on another issue.
But let us not lose sight of the cause of this temporary anomaly. The Liberals are choosing a new King! King John has abdicated and King Paul is urging his more rapid departure. But when the new king is duly installed it will be business as usual.
The Alliance is now, and always will be, a Western minority party. There is really no new hope for the west in the temporary Liberal disarray.
And as if to prove the dead can arise, Preston Manning managed to drag Mike Harris into a <M>Unite the Right movement and imply that if the Tories surrender to the Alliance Mike Harris can and will lead the United Right.
This seems all so predictable. Manning's politics and Alliance-Reform is so thoroughly discredited in the West because of its impotence that Manning had to drag up a central Canadian ex-Premier to create new hope for federalism.
How many times do we have to see the cycle repeated? Trudeau creates Mulroney, and Chretien creates Mike Harris. Does Central Canada ever lose the levers of power and control? Not if the Preston Mannings of the world can help it! Let's face it, the Western political elite, the Mannings, Lougheeds, Roblins, or Romanows not to mention the Mazankowskis, are always just country cousins, well-paid and rewarded but still just country cousins for the elite of Toronto. They, and we, deserve better.
Is there really any hope? Yes, there really is.
Westerners are waking up. They are realizing they don't need Ontario at all, economically and with a multitude of hot issues form gun control, to immigration, to farmers going to jail for selling their own grain, to finally Kyoto, they are realizing nothing ever changes in Ottawa.
There is a growing sense among the young people of the West as to what a great, strong, free and prosperous nation Western Canada could and should be.
An article by Mike Byfield in Report Magazine on page 40 of their November 18<M>th issue reveals careful and positive analysis for the first time appearing in print of the economic benefits of Independence. His estimates are on the conservative side, but they echo what I have been saying for 25 years. The West is beginning to realize the cost of being in Canada. When Manning coined the phrase, "The West wants in," he began a process of betrayal of our interest which only benefits the Canadian elite and their country cousins. We will all benefit when we are OUT!
The meeting in Calgary on October 19th was very well attended despite the difficulties involved in the meeting place, and a lack of much advertising. We gained new supporters and members, there was some media attention, and many petitions distributed. Doug Christie's interview by one radio station was broadcast province-wide.
The petition campaign continues, with more going out and coming back in every day. We hear reports of businesses setting up displays of the petition, and empty petitions ready to be either signed or taken away with customers to get more signatures. We've had inquiries from the media about the petition campaign and some mention has been made of it in newspapers in Alberta as well as on the radio. Plans are in motion to have more meetings in Alberta in the coming weeks. Contact us if you are interested in helping. Call Doug at 250-385-1022.
Bumper stickers reading (in bright red letters on a white background) "Free the West" with our website address underneath in clear very readable letters are available by filling out the form below: