It's also worth asking ourselves: What kind of utopia do the Alberta separatists want to build for themselves?

So far as I can tell, they want a conservative mono-culture. A white Albertan ethno-state purged of immigrants and minorities and anyone who happens to disagree with them or doesn't fit into their idealized and rather fascist view of Albertan life. They don't want to be part of a political community with pluralism, respect for diversity, and a belief in the legitimacy and dignity of minorities. They want to end indigenous rights, and mass deport any and all immigrants they dislike (in other words, all of them). They want to defund and shut down the universities with their pesky liberal tendencies, and force Alberta's diverse and cosmopolitan cities to adhere to their own views. They want to ban abortion and end gay marriage and get women back into the kitchen and pregnant.

To paraphrase George Orwell, their vision is of a vast, brainless empire where, essentially, nothing ever happens except the endless mining for more oil and continual breeding of new generations of oil riggers.

They promise a utopia, but their utopia is actually a dystopia for anyone who doesn't look and act like them.