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Meanwhile, Alberta, where all of Canada's "energy security" is located, is holding a secession referendum on Oct 19. The chances of Canada getting everyone to

• lostmsu 23d ago
  > It's just political theater Do you think the referendum in question is not a political theater? I don't know much, but it stands to me that the EU association is magnitudes more serious.
• petcat 23d ago
  > where all of Canada's "energy security" is located Alberta selling oil to USA is, by itself, like 20% of Canada's entire GDP. And 70% of all other exports go to USA too. So yeah it is mostly just theater because there's a loud mouth idiot in the White house. They're doing some lip-service and just hoping it will blow over when Trump is gone.
  • arbirk 23d ago
    it is only around 5% of GDP
  • john_strinlai 23d ago
    >Alberta selling oil to USA is, by itself, like 20% of Canada's entire GDP. wow, no, it's not "like 20%" at all. not even close. the entire oil and natural gas industry was 3.8% of canada's GDP in 2025. how did you even come up with that number?
    • ian_b13 23d ago
      The official stats Canada website has energy products at ~23.5% of total exports for July 2026 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020013-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020013... With crude oil and natural gas making up almost 90% of that number in 2025 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1210017201 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=121001...
      • john_strinlai 23d ago
        "Canada's entire GDP" and "exports" are very different.
• arbirk 23d ago
  The EU "theater" in wonderfully bureaucratic
• Pigo 23d ago
  Trips to Canada have always left a bad taste in my mouth, but they've always been to Ontario, Quebec. I've been wondering if I'd like the people in Alberta better.
  • pyth0 23d ago
    What does this mean?
    • Pigo 23d ago
      Just getting in I faced extremely rude border agents, which was just confusing. If it hadn't been for work I would have just gone home. There were some nice people, but I felt a general unfriendliness most places I went. Maybe it was just my experience.
      • TheCapn 23d ago
        As a Canadian I've had pretty shit experiences with the land crossings coming back to Canada from the US. They seem to be total grumpy shitheads all around. But at the same time I've had the absolute worst experiences crossing borders from Canada to US too. Seems like agents at the land crossings both ways just hate life or something. And lastly, as a Prairie resident, I've felt that general unease in Ontario/Quebec as well. I think people there are just generally more bitter. So I'd say don't take it personally, but that's only worth what you make of it I suppose.
      • technothrasher 23d ago
        > Maybe it was just my experience. It certainly hasn't been my experience visiting Ontario and Quebec. I've had nothing but good experiences. The Quebecois, especially in rural areas, are quite direct and I could maybe see that coming across as rude, but I've never felt unwelcome or a lack of friendliness there. I've had rude border agents in many countries I've visited, and I've watched CBP officers being incredibly obnoxious to visitors entering the US. I don't think that's a Canada thing.
    • ChrisRR 23d ago
• fidotron 23d ago
  Quebec is also about to have a provincial election where separatism, and everyone's relationship to it, is the main argument. Many people on both sides of the Atlantic wrongly think Quebec is more compatible with Europe than the rest of Canada because they speak French, but almost the exact things Quebec separatists care most about are the things the EU wouldn't let them control.
• bryanlarsen 23d ago
  Carney has a majority in Parliament, he can do this pretty much unilaterally if he wants. And a straw poll at the after-beer from band last night had everybody enthusiastic about the prospect. As for the secession referendum, it's currently polling at 20-30% and it's not a real referendum, its a referendum to hold a referendum.
• yokoprime 23d ago
  Its interesting to see just how MAGA-ajacent the comments are on hacker news. You would think most people in tech were more liberal.
  • dagmx 23d ago
    Tech communities like this skew more libertarian I find, which tends to be anti everything that isn’t immediately self serving.
    • danans 23d ago
      > Tech communities like this skew more libertarian Indeed, this is historically a forum with lots of "temporarily embarrassed billionaires". My observation is the opposite of the GP - that labor identity and consciousness (not "liberalism") is rising here, pushed in no small part by the transformation in labor value that LLMs have caused.
  • zmgsabst 23d ago
    Obama -> Bernie -> Trump is real.
    • DaSHacka 23d ago
      Are you.... me?
  • ChrisRR 23d ago
    I think it's more interesting to see how many profiles pop out of the woodwork when certain political topics arise
  • pjc50 23d ago
    Since the days of USENET there's always been a significant cluster of that kind of views in the tech sphere. Tech does not magically make people more liberal, it's just that going to university sometimes does.
• srveale 23d ago
  I think you'll find most Albertans would welcome international trade diversity, and if anything is theatre, it's the referendum. "Secessionists" are a significant minority, and even most of those don't actually want to secede, they just don't like the national government. "Send a message to Ottawa" is the motto.
  • beached_whale 23d ago
    Like, more markets for O&G and maybe AG too. I mean, they are getting everything the want with the Fed gov building pipelines and other infra to aid them. The east/west from years back was the company didn't want to budge on the route through Quebec and decided to walk, Keystone was the US cancelling. Trudeau got the pipeline to the west coast done and it's doing a million barrels a day almost now. Plus others to east and Churchill look like they are in the works. Only so many welders
• 1attice 23d ago
  Sort of. The referendum is unpopular and is non-binding, actually a question about whether to have a referendum. Its widely seen as a political maneuver by AB to extract pipeline concessions.
• AlexandrB 23d ago
  Giving Alberta a market where they can sell LNG might get them on board, but this would also require a bunch of new infrastructure (pipelines? ports?) that I suspect the Canadian government will not want built. It would be lovely to get Europe off of Russian energy imports.
  • fidotron 23d ago
    One of the major problems of Canada is it's essentially a line of provinces east-west. It means you cannot simply route around a province with unreasonable demands, everyone must be placated, and the resource region of Alberta is seriously landlocked. This has bred an economy of rent seekers and real estate at the expense of almost everything else. There are reasons that the best and brightest of Canada enthusiastically leave en masse to the place that Canadians claim to detest most of all, which leads to a sort of self loathing complex with the ones that stay; they are utterly mystified by the idea that anyone with any skills/talent whatsoever would want to move to Canada, it's truly mind boggling. (This is why I prefer Quebec - it's got enough people in it that really like Quebec a lot).
    • llm_nerd 23d ago
      > you cannot simply route around a province with unreasonable demands, everyone must be placated, and the resource region of Alberta is seriously landlocked. Retconned horseshit that emanates from idiot chambers. The US is a big country next door, and historically the two economies and trade have been very tightly integrated. So Alberta hooks into the US pipeline system, as cooperative players in a continental energy system, and so does Ontario. There was never a critical reason to make significant East/West pipelines, in the same way that the US has loads of LNG export terminals (they were actually converted import terminals), and being connected to their LNG system meant it made little sense to spend billions of new terminals. Not to mention some geographic issues. Running a pipeline through the Canadian shield is not a trivial matter. Possible, but it's much easier though the flyover US states. And most hilarious of all about this, the reviled national energy program (NEP) -- you know, the one that 0% of Albertans understand but they're sure it was to screw them -- was the federal government proposing a national pipeline system. Alberta had a massive tantrum about it. Instead Alberta was constrained to selling oil at a massive discount to the US for decades. >There are reasons that the best and brightest of Canada enthusiastically leave en masse to the place that Canadians claim to detest most of all ROFL. Good god. The fact that you're in Quebec, and you celebrate Quebec (by far the most dysfunctional part of the country, largely a welfare state propped up by the rest of Canada, primarily Ontario), has to be the most hilarious part of this comical fan-fiction nonsense. Now you seem to have a hilarious take on Canada, but in the real world the "West" anointed the US as the centre of power (the largest population base, unharmed by two world wars in a row). This means that people from everywhere generally centralized there, for media, for technology, and so on. Thanks to the current idiocracy and the accelerating decline of that country, the whole thing has reversed.
• speak_plainly 23d ago
  The real political theatre is coming from Alberta. Secession can't be achieved unilaterally under Canadian constitutional law. A clear majority on a clear referendum question would create an obligation to negotiate. More critically, the Numbered Treaties (6, 7, and 8, and to a lesser extent 4 and 10) make the entire idea, for all practical purposes, a legal dead end. These are nation-to-nation covenants with the Crown and not with the province. To leave with its borders intact, Alberta would have to negotiate constitutional amendments with Ottawa and the other provinces, while securing affected First Nations’ consent to any transfer or replacement of their treaty relationships with Canada in a situation where Alberta has almost no leverage. Good luck.
  • dallen33 23d ago
    Only sane response in this thread about this topic. Thank you.
  • beached_whale 23d ago
    Alberta's existence as a province was predicated upon those Treaties existing in the first place. It and Saskatchewan were part of the NW Territories until like 1905.
  • atomic_cattlepr 23d ago
    > A clear majority on a clear referendum question would create an obligation to negotiate. To be further clear: it would create an obligation on the Alberta government to negotiate. A provincial referendum creates no such obligation on the Canadian government.
• noir_lord 23d ago
  > The chances of Canada getting everyone to go along with this are close to zero. They are a democracy, they don't have to get "everyone to go along with this" they just have to get the majority to go along with it.
• shpx 23d ago
  The actual referendum question will be > should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada? So it's a referendum on whether or not to start the process towards possibly, maybe, holding a referendum in the future. https://www.elections.ab.ca/elections/referendum/ https://www.elections.ab.ca/elections/referendum/
• timbit42 20d ago
  Over 60% of Canada's energy comes from hydro 15% nuclear 6% wind 5% natural gas 3% bioenergy 2% solar 1% oil