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Carson Jerema: Canada too polite to tell Alberta separatists to quit it

No serious government should concede that separatists have a right to destroy the country

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EDMONTON — The last time there was a declaration of independence in the West, Canada sent the military in to squash the violent rebellion, whose leader, Louis Riel, was justly hanged for treason. This is how a serious country, governed by serious people, deals with threats of its dismemberment. Though the consequences of Riel’s execution in 1885 are felt to this day, most acutely in the cleavages between Canada’s founding peoples, Sir John A. Macdonald could hardly have acted differently. A fledgling country, not 20 years old at the time, would not have survived if it did not assert its sovereignty.

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Contrast that dutiful determination with today, where Canada is a country in which a surprising number of people are unsure it should even exist, an illness that long predates the current hysteria over “settlers.” It is one thing for a country, even a peaceful democratic one, to be home to separatist movements. It is quite another to oblige such movements by legislating an orderly way for the country to dissolve, as Canada has done.

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