Conrad Black: We Should Sympathize With Canada’s Indigenous People, but Not Yield to Radicals

A child passes between two canola fields with her bicycle near Cremona, Alta., in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh

Commentary

The agreement between the federal government and Premier Danielle Smith’s government in Alberta—a series of undertakings including the construction of an oil export pipeline to the North Pacific Coast—is a great step forward, though it is lumbered with some excessive green baggage. The more recent decision of an Alberta court that the province cannot respond to a petition from hundreds of thousands of its citizens fulfilling existing legal conditions to hold a referendum on the issue of independence, is a timely demonstration of the congestive breakdown of Canadian federalism.