This is an excerpt from Coffee and Covid this morning. 😳 I don’t have a paid subscription so can’t send him a comment or tell him the movement is a whole lot more serious than some people are letting on. IMO, it will never result in 51st state but will be an independent country happy to work WITH the US on many fronts.

(As usual, Rath can’t keep his trap shut…)

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Jeffrey Rath, a long-time Albertan-independence activist lawyer in Canada, teased yesterday that his group will meet with US Treasury officials next month to discuss a “500 billion line of credit to support the transition to a free and independent Alberta:”

I couldn’t confirm the meeting. If it is scheduled, Rath should have probably kept it under wraps. But either way— is the 51st state plan quietly in motion? There has been a lot of chatter about Albertans organizing a petition drive for an independence referendum. The Albertan government quickly changed a law in December that might have blocked the referendum effort, so commenters feel the provincial government supports the move.

Alberta holds some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves (primarily in its oil sands), estimated at around 167 billion barrels— nearly four times the U.S. total. That makes it a massive source of conventional and unconventional oil. Alberta is also the most conservative province in Canada, and most aligned with Trump policies. It’s questionable whether the rest of Canada could long survive without the province.

I can’t tell how serious the Albertan separatist movement is. Polls are unreliable, of course, and most serious commentators treat the movement as a strange outlier, like the movement for Texan independence. But these days, you never know.