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02/24/2003 Archived Entry: "Ralph Klein"

PUT A SOCK IN IT, RALPH: I talked before about Ralph Klein's separatist fantasias, but I'm not a professional journalist employed by a major national newspaper. Don Martin is though, and it's because of articles like this:

With every fill-up of 83¢ litres of regular gas, and with every monthly whack from hefty heating bills, it gets harder to feel Alberta's pain as the hard-done-by energy sheik of Canada.

As home to the lowest taxes, the highest per capita program spending, the most vigorous economy, the lowest unemployment and the fastest growth by the nation's youngest population, well, cry me a river, Alberta.

Yet once again, from homes out on the range, a discouraging word is heard, voices suggesting Alberta is sick of serving as a no-fees ATM to a federation of ungrateful shopaholics and may opt to create its own bank account...the Alberta Republican movement is the same as it's always been -- a tiny sometimes-vocal sliver of the actual population. I suspect this to be true because a survey of a dozen prominent Albertans yesterday failed to yield a single informed voice expressing fresh separatist sentiment.

For some reason, Martin goes all portentous in the very last word of the article, but this and Andrew Coyne's commentary in today's National Post (not posted on the website yet), should relieve any anxious busybody actually scared of Alberta separatism occuring within the next century or so. Doesn't Klein have a clue that everytime the word "separatism" comes out of his mouth, we selfish central Canadians (unfortunately, including the conservatives among us) take him just a smite less seriously then we did before or is he really that tone-deaf?