I live in Alberta. People ask: will my province separate from Canada? The issue has made the front page of the BBC News site. I wonder if State Departments in foreign countries are desperately trying to find out, if only so they can advise investors. Perhaps State is using ELINT, electronic intelligence. If so, there was a fascinating radio phone-in show in Calgary with all sorts of facts and opinions.
Better to use HUMINT by asking a local human like me.
I first learned the value of HUMINT when all the journalists had glowing praises for Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to move away from communism and the dreaded Cold War with his glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). In fact, those two Russians words were soon no longer being italicized in our newspapers as foreign words because they had become so familiar. But I soon became one of the very few in the west to know that Gorbachev, our hero, was NOT a hero to his fellow Russians. Today he is still disliked there, long after he was punted aside in favour of President Yeltsin.
How did I learn a truth that evaded reporters? Simply by being in Vancouver having supper with a man who was responsible for making sure the Russian mariners had scrubbed their freighters clean. No invasive moths allowed! My dinner guest told me, that the Russians told him, that our reporters were totally wrong.
To best evaluate the danger of separatism, it might help to combine human intelligence with what we know of human nature. Or rather, could know. Everybody “knows” that business executives and other high performers in the work force will leave their jobs if it rationally makes sense to do so. Maybe not. While it is widely believed that folks will leave an unethical, or toxic, work place this belief is wrong. In What Should I Do With My Life by Po Branson, a series of in-depth interviews showed Po that people stick around. They don’t leave a job unless it becomes personal. The boss has to personally insult the them first. And then, being high achievers, they do well elsewhere, perhaps with their own business.
Incidentally, this month I consulted an accountant who is skilled enough to start a chain of accounting firms, skilled enough that all his clients went with him when he left his original firm: He left because he was insulted when his bosses broke their word to make him a partner.
Canada’s last prime minister, Trudeau, was stupid in many ways. Today, Sunday, is National Indigenous Peoples Day, and Prime Minister Carney is visiting an indigenous museum in Nanaimo. How nice. But when PM Trudeau instigated the first ever National Truth and Reconciliation Day, a supposedly important event, important enough to be a federal workers holiday during the workweek… he observed the day not with a cheerful speech at an event… but by escaping off to Tofino to go surf. People noticed. Like I said, stupid.
And in an age when pipelines safely cross Europe from Russia through France, Trudeau’s policy was to keep Canada landlocked, with pipelines not to tidewater but across the land into the US. Of course Yankees will not pay Albertans the global market rates for our oil, not when the capitalists have a monopoly. The PM’s stupid policy was a cause for Albertans feeling anger, but not for feeling insulted, not exactly. Because, however stupid his policy, we knew it was not purely personal against Alberta. Not open contempt.
That’s why when I see a pickup truck off the road, and folks with a separatist sign, looking like righteous heroes in their own minds, standing forlorn, vainly hoping that people will walk over to discuss the issue… That’s when I can be a secret agent in my own mind. I know Alberta won’t separate. Not unless my fellow Canadians elect an insulting jerk into the prime minister’s office. But they won’t, and we won’t… Regardless of what the reporters at the BBC might think.
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Sean Crawford
Calgary
June
2026
