re: Alberta is voting to begin the process of seceding from Canada on October 19th

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Quebec has tried this several times. It will go nowhere.

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Quebec didn’t have an aggressively expansionist US president in office supporting them or they would’ve probably voted to leave, it was exceptionally close the first time.

Québec also had a government in Ottawa that was willing to bribe them to stay. They paid the bribes with money from Alberta. Ottawa has nothing to bribe Albertans with, only threats.

Calm down, Eric.

The separatists in Alberta needed 177,732 votes to get their initiative on the ballot for October 19, what they got was 222,521 votes. While they got quite a bit more than they needed, it's far from a done deal yet.

The question they will now have included on the October 19 ballot is:

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Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or 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?

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If the majority vote "YES," all that does is authorize the Alberta government to begin the constitutional process for a subsequent binding referendum on independence.

However, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Quebec Secession Reference (1998) that a province has no unilateral right to secede. Even a referendum victory would not -by itself- allow Alberta to secede.

This is where Canada's Clarity Act becomes important.

The federal House of Commons gets to determine whether the referendum question is sufficiently clear. It cannot simply be a question that combines independence with some other proposal or ambiguous alternative.

But let's say the House of Commons agrees the question was straight-forward, at that point it then returns to Alberta to vote again. This would be the real secession referendum., but understand that a simple vote of 51% would not automatically be enough.

The Supreme Court has also said there must be a “clear majority” expressing a “clear” desire to secede. The Clarity Act subsequently gave the House of Commons the responsibility for determining whether the result constitutes a clear expression of the will of a clear majority (meaning it can consider the size of the majority, turnout, and other circumstances).

Now let's say that there was a clear majority and a clear desire... well, that's STILL NOT the secession. The Supreme Court's ruling also says a clear democratic mandate would create a constitutional obligation for the federal government to begin good faith negotiations. That's a lot more simple than it sounds because it would include things like the borders, federal debt and assets, federal government buildings and property in Alberta, Canadian Armed Forces installations and equipment, pensions for federal employees, what happens with federal employees living in Alberta, citizenship and immigration, currency and monetary policy, trade between Alberta and Canada, access to ports and transportation infrastructure, oil and gas infrastructure and pipelines, water rights, social programs, international treaties, rights of Albertans living elsewhere in Canada and Canadians living in Alberta, etc.

As if all that wasn't enough, there are also a plethora of issues concerning indigenous and treaty rights as well as First Nations' lands and territories. This could be especially consequential in Alberta because First Nations treaties cover essentially the entire province.

And once all of this was accomplished, there would be one final legal hurdle: there is no constitutional mechanism by which a province can simply repeal its membership in Canada. Their Constitution would have to be amended to remove Alberta from the Canadian federation and establish the new constitutional relationship.

And the cherry on top of this is that there is (at least at this point) no legal timeframe within which any of these points would need to be completed, much less the whole thing.

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I, for one, welcome the 51st state and cheer on the inevitable collapse of the Canadian experiment.

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We would need to add another state, a left-leaning state (assuming Alberta would be a Red State), in a modern-day Missouri Compromise.

Can we trade a few blue states for Alberta?

Square deal that.

That referendum is going to fail bigly. All polling to this point indicates more than 2/3rds of Albertans favor staying in Canada.

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I, for one, welcome the 51st state and cheer on the inevitable collapse of the Canadian experiment.

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Yeah, add 2 more democrat seats to the senate.

No thanks, no more states.

I doubt the referendum will succeed, and if it does, Ottawa will fight tooth and nail to obstruct the legal process to keep Albertans in the federation for as long as possible.

However, if Alberta leaves after that contentious process, odds are they will take most of Western Canada with them. Without Western Canada, Quebec will leave and attempt to join the EU. This will leave what remains in 6 pieces:

Western Canada: aligns itself economically and politically with the US as an independent nation that is a US territory in all but name.

BC: faces a choice between aligning itself with China or joining Western Canada

Quebec: joins the EU

The Maritimes: are completely stranded with no means of supporting themselves. They will look to join someone for support: the U.S., UK, or EU.

Ontario: angered by the loss of their provinces, they will likely align themselves with China and possibly break diplomatic and economic ties with the U.S. after negotiations mediated by the British crown fail. if their government cannot be overthrown. This will trigger an economic crisis, a refugee crisis, and possibly a war.

Northern Territories: Western Canada (backed by the U.S.) and Ontario (backed by China) will fight for these territories which contain valuable mineral deposits and potentially lucrative shipping lanes.