Colby Cosh: Affirming those who do not believe in the existence of Alberta

A research questionnaire felt the need to lend legitimacy to those who don't recognize the province

Published Oct 12, 2024  •  Last updated 2 hours ago  •  3 minute read

Photo by Government of Alberta

I was a little sorry, I admit, not to see 2024’s most exciting new form of wokeness get more attention in the press. I am referring, of course, to Alberta denialism. Late last month a few people noticed that a research questionnaire on “2SLGBTQ+” poverty, part of a federally funded project by St. Mary’s University in Halifax, was being published in search of Alberta participants — and so the questionnaire asked “Do you live in Alberta?”

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Available multiple-choice answers were “Yes,” “No,” and the hyper-modern third option: “I do not recognize the province of Alberta, but live in a region within the geographic boundaries of what is known as the province of Alberta.”

The story came and went, though my own assessment would be that it still has high meme potential. Unfortunately I can’t be sure whether clicking on the long idiot answer would have produced a pop-up screen saying “OK, thanks, we’ll just count that as a yes then.” I also don’t even know who exactly would insist on giving the third answer: refusing to “recognize” the legal existence of the province of Alberta seems like more of a stance for right-wing freeman-on-the-land zanies than some kind of woke consciousness.

In case there’s any doubt in reader minds, the legal object “Alberta” does have a perfect bijective relationship to the gnawed-off rectangle that’s represented on the maps. Wherever you roam in Alberta, including its Indian reserves and its federal lands, you are subject to the authority of, and the general laws passed by, Alberta’s legislature. There are no secret holes in the territorial garment. Your feelings don’t factor into the equation anywhere.

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But it’s not really hard to smell the familiar fear behind that funny little questionnaire item — the process whereby a question as simple as “Do you live in Alberta?” had to be interrogated, probably by an entire committee, for potential offensiveness. Asking someone flat out if they live “in Alberta” might be a microaggression on the level of asking a stranger their ethnicity. As the very idea of a study on “2SLGBTQ+” people suggests, any binary classification of humans carries overwhelming dangers, possibly including imminent genocide.

How much time and effort went into the search for the politically proper language in that third option, just for the sake of having a third option? And is it a coincidence that it’s Alberta, of all provinces, which creates a previously unknown requirement for survey respondents to say “Yes, I do live there, but ewww”?

Then again, maybe it’s my fault: I’ve been making jokes for years about “Greater Alberta” being a thing. There are parts of British Columbia and Saskatchewan that are culturally, economically and politically (but not legally) Albertan — adjoining territories that have more in common with Alberta than with the remainder of their own provinces or their capital cities.

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The B.C. side of the Peace River block has a long history of actively secessionist sentiment, and there are parts of western Saskatchewan that vote and shop and go to church with indistinguishable Alberta neighbours (often while collecting oil-lease royalty cheques). This would be the perfect introduction to a highly learned mini-lecture on the Battle River Time Option Area and its Albertanized clocks, but I’ll spare you. Until the Greater Alberta revolution comes and the fighting begins, of course …

National Post
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