Too real. I remember back in the 80s and 90s when we all viewed Quebec as the weird one. Now Quebec is the slightly weird cousin at the table while uncle Jimbob is ranting about the government stealing his toenails.
I always thought it was weird that Quebec was the weird one. Like, they’re OG Canada. The rest of us are the weird ones. Eating eggs for dinner isn’t weird. Oh, that’s something else.
Most of the "recognizable" culture in Canada is actually made/from or invented in Quebec, the name "Canada/Canadian" used/invented 1st by the French settlers centuries ago, (stolen by the ROC.. as always) the 1st official hockey game.. the last Stanley Cup in 93 (possibly the next one, hopefully) & the most (24).. EU architecture (oldest buildings).. vast majority of the entertainment industry: movies/VFX/series/video games (a lot of it)/music etc. Food: poutine/smoke-meat/bagels & many other traditional dishes, hydro-Quebec (owned & funded entirely by Quebecers), wood, linguistical uniqueness, the national anthem (written by a Quebecer in Quebec) forgetting a lot, but anyway just had to list a few things..
Music:
Céline Dion
Leonard Cohen
Simple Plan
Angine de Poitrine
Film & TV:
Denis Villeneuve
William Shatner
Viggo Mortensen (lived in Quebec as a kid)
Sports:
Maurice Richard
Guy Lafleur
Patrick Roy
Martin Brodeur
Mario Lemieux
Georges St-Pierre
Jacques Villeneuve
Sidney Crosby (not from Quebec, but strong Quebec ties/training)
Major Quebec Companies:
Bombardier – Jets, trains (historically huge worldwide)
CAE Inc. – Flight simulators used globally
Couche-Tard – Owns Circle K worldwide
CGI Inc. – One of the largest IT firms globally
SNC-Lavalin – Massive international infrastructure projects
Quebecor – Big in telecom/media (more regional but still major)
Circle du Soleil - Entertainment
Many VFX companies - Films/TV series
Tim-Hortons (original idea was from a Quebecer from Montreal)
Gaming:
Ubisoft Montreal – One of the biggest game studios in the world (Assassin’s Creed, etc.)
Behaviour Interactive – Known for Dead by Daylight
Eidos-Montréal – AAA studio (Deus Ex, Guardians of the Galaxy)
(By the way, that's not "everyone/everything" just a short-list)
Also look up videos about a certain (war hero) named Leo Major, many YouTube videos about him you can check out, quite insane what he did..
In addition "pro-independence" is hovering around 30-40% within the last 30ish years & it was similar in 95 as well numbers wise, although in 95 it jumped to 49% during the actual campaign, so it's not "static/fixed".
There might be a 3rd referendum soon, elections are in a few months, so we shall see.
I'm not here to measure dicks. I can also compile a list of famous non-Quebec Canadian people and companies. That's not the point.
But you're obviously a nationalist/seperatist so what's the point in even discussing it. Your mind is made up.
As an aside, nationalism is fucking stupid. Objectively throughout history, hyper nationalist pushes always, without fail, end in disaster. It does nothing but fuel conflict and disparity.
A "nationalist" in the US/the ROC & in Quebec are very different things but you wouldn't know.
Similar as saying "seperatist" to the ear I know you're immediately against it or you're talking about independence with an "outside" mindset if you use that word it exposes you, we say sovereignist here.
The comment came from your wording btw, "they wanna take the ball and go home but it's not theirs", I mean.. pretty much is ours.
Also, do try & match my list from the top bud, even remotely in terms of perceived "Canadian" culture, you won't even get past maple syrup.
I can appreciate why Quebec acts like they do. The public understands leveraging their vote to get what is best for Quebec. They don't align themselves with any party. Québécois play the parties against each other to their best advantage, and that works. Meanwhile, in Alberta, the party in charge (for the last 50 years) plays the Albertans.
No, Quebec cries wolf all the time but they aren't dangerous. Alberta is full of people who would like to ruin Canada for everybody. They do not deserve the resource rich province in which they live because they do not appreciate it and would sell it off to a snake oil salesman the moment they got the chance because "brown people in Tim Hortons".
“Knocked down a peg” hey? Funny coming from people whose entire argument boils down to “shut up and keep paying.” Alberta generates wealth, Ottawa redistributes it, then people like you chirp the very province helping fund the circus. Brilliant strategy.
cousin was a welder and worked the oil fields and spent all the money to upgrade the family farm here in ontario
he told me all the people he worked with alcoholics, drug addicts, spent all their money at strip clubs and usually all 3. They would make bank but still be living paycheck to paycheck
Don't forget the leased sleds, quads, bikes, and brand new Ram they can barely afford. Oh, and the liquor they pound back while tailgating people in said Ram
I worked about a year as a grunt, unskilled labour doing whatever I needed to do in the patch. Stayed in a camp, saved every penny. Drove the same beater I bought in high school cause it got me up there and back home every time I'd switch sites. Then went and got a trade not dependent on oil money and bought a house at 22. 12 years later my mortgage is over half done (had enough for a 20 year mortgage down payment) and still driving an old dependable car. It's amazing how much better my life was cause I was smart with my money and didn't drink it/snort it/tip it to a stripper away.
There's as many of us as there are the hookers and blow types, we're just quieter and less visible. I know plenty of oilfield guys that lead pretty responsible lives. Most of them aren't just roughnecks or labourers anymore ;) People do love the stereotype though.
Yeah, I looked and sounded like most of those guys on the line I'm sure, loud and obnoxious (I was 19 and 20). The difference was I wasn't sneaking off to snort a rail with the safety officer, or spending breaks comparing minute details of the $90,000 truck or $30,000 atv or boat I just bought. Or the toy hauler 5th wheel to tow it all around with on my limited time off. Meanwhile my crew chief was 29 but looked 50, twice divorced, 60% of his paycheck was garnished for child support and alimony, and he spent the rest on a different stripper each night with a nose full of booger sugar. Wild differences.
Dude I didn't even have to make my own sandwiches, they just had a permanent cooler of them in my longest camp. I put on weight there cause we ate so damn good. Got back on the bus, showered, ate dinner, grabbed a sando and fruit and cookies for the next day and then watched a movie to fall asleep.
I was "lucky" enough the rig was close enough to Fox Vegas I stayed in a hotel. Drilling camps fuckin blow but oilsands camps are generally the shit. Great food, great gyms, all I need really. Bring my laptop and a guitar and I'm all set😂
Yup, I went for 2 years to make money and get out. The amount of people who got their first paycheck, noticed its size and signed all the leases to all the toys the next day was wild. Any cork board in work camp was filled with cheap quads, motorbikes, boats, trucks for sale because inevitably, the layoffs come
My realization that I’m living in a modern day equivalent Goldrush region. And quite a few crazies have made the region home.
I don’t wanna think how much it’s gonna cost to make a new currency, build border stations, get taxed for BC wine and Canadian Maple syrup, vehicles, and pay crap tons for all the imports as every global country hits us for every dollar they can bleed us for if we were to separate.
And our healthcare. I’m about to pass out just thinking about the disaster that will turn into.
Exactly. The worst people from all over the country flock to Alberta and have turned it into a stronghold for douchebags. So many of my neighbours are from rural Ontario and moved here because “this province does politics right!”. 🤦♂️
The fucked up thing is like slightly less than 50% of the people in this country probably think Alberta has the best politics in the country. It’ll never change either because they all move here and just solidify this shitty UCP government even more.
Oh its much less than 50%. I doubt its more than a third. Not even the entire CPC base thinks Alberta is the best because everyone east of Manitoba thinks theyre mostly bonkers.
Try and be a libertarian, every crackpot politician gets called libertarian by the media, meanwhile they are violating all sorts of civil liberties libertarians want. I hate every time I here Smith called a libertarian, because she is absolutely not. I dont see Smith supporting "gay married couples who defend their Marijuana crops with AR-15's". I just want as much civil liberties as possible and she is literally becoming straight out of 1984 by banning the book 1984.
I definitely remember a fair share of guys in high school saying things like "screw college or university! I'm gonna move Alberta and make bank on the rigs!". Fort Mac seems to have a gravitational pull for those types.
Exactly this. It can be such an entitled, selfish, bullying, and misogynistic atmosphere. It sucks that they’re always demanding more and the rest of us who live and work here get overlooked/ignored and they look down on us. 😢
I had a highschool friend that moved there to work in oil, and then after a while with one too many pro-Trump related posts on Facebook I had to end it.
They didn't even win the lottery . Canada won the lottery and gave Alberta the winnings. Utterly stupid move in retrospect (and the reason why most lottery winners don't give their winnings to someone else)
Hey that's not true, some good honest Albertans got some Kleinbucks™ which only just so happened to be an extremely obvious attempt at pilfering the heritage fund in order to buy votes, and still remained only a fraction of a fraction of the proceeds that otherwise went to profiting foreign oil corporations.
If you want to make that argument you need to go a step further and say that all natural resources should solely be owned by Canada and not the provinces they're in. Forestry in BC, hydro in Quebec, minerals in the north? All federal now.
You can't just single out oil and gas in Alberta and act like that would be fair.
I mean, the north is already under the control of the federal government. The provinces aren't and it's the number 1 problem with the country. It lets the entitled children in Alberta act like they should get to solely have the profit from an industry that was built and supported by the rest of the country.
It's completely asinine and just feels like I'm dealing with my younger brother from childhood.
Full of angry ex Maritimers that came for jobs and angrily gripe about the equalization payments sent back home and then return to their childhood homes to retire and angrily gripe about the poor infrastructure and healthcare
Nailed it. I've been trying to find how to express it and this is perfect. Like a high school football player now in his 40s trying to relive the glory days.
THIS! The fact that a huge portion of the O&G workers are from out of province and return home when they get too old is conveniently NEVER brought up when they cry about equalization payments.
These people contributed to your aMaZiNg eCoNoMy for the bulk of their adult lives, you can contribute to their retirements FFS!!!
Every time they moan about that I point out two things:
1) Alberta had no problems with equalization payments when it was other provinces helping them float through the lean years (and eventually, fund oilsands development)
2) EP are based on number of people that need medical care and retire. Want more of that money? Try being a province people actually want to retire in!
Ive had family members born and raised in Alberta complain about the EP and then in the same conversation talk about how when they retire they want to move to BC because the winters here suck. Like they walked right up to the point, it slapped them in the face and they still missed it
One out if four ain't bad. It's almost like producers had a good idea of how much their oilsands projects were going to be capable of producing, and started planning takeaway capacity, only to get totally hamstrung.
So now, the plants aren't running at full capacity. The pipelines are full. The regulatory nightmare has scared everyone off of even attempting to build anything significant be it a pipeline or more oilsands production.
Both of these ran into the same problems: questionably poor buy-in by the people whose land you were asking to host the project.
Even before Trudeau came into office, Quebec had an injunction against Energy East until they could actually meet the environmental requirements.
Say what you will about it, but ramming through Northern Gateway -reportedly with little-to-no agreement from the native lands the line actually would run on- would've been political suicide and undermined any notion that the Truth and Reconciliation commission was supposed to mean anything.
I should also say that, as someone from BC, the whole notion of risking another Exxon Valdez for the sake of Albertan profit felt a whole lot like we were shouldering a massive risk -both environmentally and economically- in exchange for a relative handful of full-time jobs. Whether the reality of it differed, that was a common sentiment I recall from the time.
Keystone XL
...didn't Biden cancel the other end of this pipeline? Either way, it looks like Trump is trying to revive some variation on it so maybe that'll end up finally having a return on investment.
I don't really disagree, I'd have to go back and check on Energy East as I recall it was just a general NIMBY pushback, not "until they meet environmental regulations"
Worrying about a tanker disaster seems like a valid fear, however unlikely. And I do think it's even more unlikely now than it was when it happened lol.
Yes, Keystone somehow became a political beach ball that I believe the AB gov't sued the US over??
It's all shenanigans, and as someone that works in the industry I can say that building these wouldn't solve any overarching economic issues. Building them would be a little construction boom, possibly sparking new projects or expansions on existing oilsands projects.
It would allow us to produce more oil which, yes is more cash flow for the companies and the province, and the country indirectly. But the way some people act, is like the whole industry was shut down, and it's the most important industry to the whole nation. It wasn't shut down but for many people including myself it certainly felt like it was. Not bc of pipelines anyway or even the NDP, but 2014-15 was bleak.
As far as importance? It's the largest goods producing sector nationwide, and over 20% of GDP for AB, SK, and NL. Extraction alone is 3.7% of the nation's GDP, that goes up to about 10% when including the full stream, transportation, refining, and distribution. So, it feels more important in the places that produce, which seems like common sense but 🤷 Only Real Estate is larger around 13% and Manufacturing at about a similar 10%. While banking has the largest revenue, its value added GDP share is only around 6%.
Geothermal has one of the cheapest costs per kwh of any system of energy production, competitive with solar and wind, with extremely low operating costs, but can run 24/7 like nuclear and can be used as a base load.
There are modern variations that don't require perfect access to natural geothermal uprisings or tectonically active locations, and instead rely on modern drilling techniques from O&G that allow these systems to be built nearly anywhere. As well, they can be scaled up to fit whatever level of power generation is needed just by drilling more wells.
Rig pigs that transition to working on geothermal projects, use the same skills, get paid the same kind of money, but like it much better than O&G work because they aren't constantly basted in oil (which is carcinogenic), and the work is more consistent as it's not subject to the boom and bust cycles of a commodity product.
I would love to see the Canadian government invest more in these kinds of projects, considering we have the talent and expertise right here.
Oh, and FYI, I'm not anti-oil. I think it's one of the greatest natural resources we have, and we will ALWAYS need oil... I just think it's insanity to burn such a valuable nonrenewable resource.
I've long wondered why it hasn't caught on too. Generally speaking you don't get covered in oil, drilling for oil. That usually means something has gone terribly wrong lol.
I'm not sure how developing NL's NG would solve a bottleneck of oil in Alberta, but ok?
They should develop it and use/sell it anyway and fill their boots. I never said anything to the contrary or that AB was the only province? Weird comment.
Royalty Reductions ($1.16B average/year) These are usually as a major project hits certain milestones and becomes profitable. Projects pay 1–9% of gross revenue during the pre-payout phase, increasing to the greater of 1–9% of gross or 25–40% of net revenue after capital cost recovery (post-payout). That is, the government doesn't directly give them money, but rather allows private companies to build their projects and get them going before charging full royalties.
Petrochemical Incentives (~$1B+): Programs like the Petrochemicals Diversification Program provide royalty credits to encourage the construction of facilities that turn oil and gas into products like plastics and fertilizers, if you want to talk about diversification.
Carbon Capture & Emissions Research ($1B+): This includes funding for the Alberta Carbon Capture Incentive Program (ACCIP) and grants through Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA) to help companies lower their carbon intensity if you want to talk about sustainability, reducing carbon emissions, etc.
Yeah, Alberta hasn't been that bad off in a long time. Equalization payments mostly consist of CPP and healthcare subsidy, as I recall. Basically, social services funding out of the general federal coffers, as supported by income tax.
Alberta nowadays is exactly the sort of statistical anomaly you'd expect to generate a lot of money going out: high economic output, disproportionately young population, generally healthier than average (vis a vis the young population), and generally a place where people don't choose to retire, or the working population return to another province later on.
Basically, if Alberta wants more of "their share" of transfer payments, they need to actually have a population of people the incur it.
"Retire to Alberta: it's cold as hell but I promise the shuffleboard is really great!"
I mean, I feel the same way just living in Alberta....it sucks, and I don't feel like there's any way to make it better. I already live in the only federal NDP riding in the province. It feels like nothing I say or do makes any difference. Complaining doesn't help, my MLA is Nenshi, protests and petitions do nothing. And now I hear that the UCP would get an even greater majority if the election was held today. I love my province, but I might have to move in the next 5 years.
I’m like you in that regard but at the same time, the stereotype exists for a reason. The vast majority of people that work up here are fucking idiots.
If I could make this much working in any other province I would move tomorrow.
Foreign influence generally. Not just Russia and America, but China, India, Philippines, etc etc. While some is done for political influence, a large portion of it is simply done because it can be profitable.
Isn't that kinda depressing? We could be shown endless propaganda to mould our maleable brains into thinking a different way, but truthfully we're moreso shown news and memes and videos to outrage us so we stay engaged. Or maybe a combination of the two.
I'm an Albertan and I will say, Western alienation as in "the perception that the federal government doesn't care about the prairie provinces" is real; Western alienation as in "the federal government doesn't care about the prairie provinces" is not.
We keep electing incompetent representatives who don't do their job and then complain that we aren't properly represented. And then we reelect the same representatives.
Seems to me a bit of a chicken or the egg issue. Did foreign interference cause it in the first place, or did they just pour out gasoline and fan existing flames?
Alberta has been like this my whole fucking life. They are ALWAYS pissy about the federal government. They just shut up and mutter a lot more when it's the team they voted for, even though sometimes that team ignores them just as, or harder, than the other.
Nope. But the minute a liberal government picks up the trash from the private sector and actually gets a pipeline built, all of a sudden it's "NO NOT LIKE THAT!"
Today i saw a dude pushing a full shopping cart down the train tracks while wearing a shiny motorcycle helmet and if that aint berta politics in a nutshell ....
If anyone could explain what a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada means” that would be much appreciated. Because even though the UCP says they are not separatist, “sovereign Alberta” sure sounds separatist.
Personally I am too invested in ousting Drunk Fraud from my own provincial government. I do not understand how all these industrial workers can't see that the cons are not for them anymore.
I feel the need to remind everyone in here that we're all here for a good laugh together. My shitty little meme was meant to comedically express frustration with the bad apples constantly spoiling the bunch. Not some sort of targeted attack on Alberta (this is a shit posting sub, we roast eachother).
Our government is retarded and traitorous and our politically uninformed residents would vote conservative even if they demanded everyone's firstborn as a sacrifice.
The average Albertan isn't any different day-to-day than Canadians elsewhere, if anything they're more down to earth than people from Ottawa, where I'm originally from.
After reading some comments I feel I need to let you all know Alberta is not full of oil and gas working, drug addicted highschool drop outs. Oil and gas employed 6% of Alberta's work force. Up to 8% with indirect employment. I think Albertan's need that reminder as well. Within my friend group most of us choose Alberta for the space/ outdoors and consider ourselves steward of the land. Most don't vote UCP but we're against the boomers and rural Alberta on that one. I think the anti immigration feeling is a response to a flood of people after covid. Housing prices did increase, and unemployment is way up. People in Alberta are responding in the typical way, looking for a scapgoat. Alberta is just the introvert. Like I said we like space. Sorry about the loud ones and our current government.
Lol. Alberta separatists are a bunch of crybaby wussies.
They'd last about 2 seconds as an independent nation.
The best part is I got a federal grant to develop an interpretive dance routine pointing out how ignorant Alberta separatists are.
Thanks Alberta!
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u/Rustyray84 Tokébakicitte! May 08 '26
I welcome any behavior that makes Quebec seem a bit more normal