Wild Rose Diplomacy

This collection of thirteen chapters provides a window into the conservative brain trust that is helping Alberta navigate its relationship with the rest of Canada. Two of the three editors, Tom Flanagan and Ted Morton, along with Stephen Harper, were signatories to the five-point “firewall” letter, published in January 2001, that urged Premier Ralph Klein to seek greater autonomy for the province. Twenty years on, the current volume can be read as a fleshed-out version 2.0 of that missive.

As these contributors would have it, Alberta’s attempts to reach a better deal within Canada — captured by the phrase “The West wants in”— have failed. The province is worse off now than it was four decades ago, and it is time to seek a more independent relationship with the rest of the country; if that is not successful, Alberta should set in motion the formal secession process. Many of these writers are the same neo-liberal policy advocates who have shaped the agenda of the...