Edmonton Journal columnist Lorne Gunter wrote a piece making the case that population growth projections for Alberta will undercut independence ambitions. Alberta’s history as a province built upon waves of immigration doesn't support his case.

Gunter’s position is based on projections of Alberta’s population growing by 39% over the next 25 years. If indeed the predictions are accurate, it still won’t be Alberta’s fastest period of population growth historically, and it can’t be assumed the new citizens will reject the independence movement.

Alberta began as a frontier for the ambitious, and it remains one. From 1901 until 1911, Alberta’s population went from 73,000 to over 374,000. The 412% surge in population was made of primarily of immigrants taking the chance to try and make a living farming and in other entrepreneurial endeavours. Later growth spurts were sparked by the growing petroleum industry, with the population growing by 42% between 1951 and 1961 and by 37% between 1971 and 1981.

Alberta’s population growth has consistently outpaced the rest of the country since its inception as a province. So why hasn’t it ever comfortably fit into the federation? Why hasn’t the default setting for voters become complacently liberal as it has in Laurentian Canada?

It’s because the type of person willing to cross a country or a planet to make a new life for themselves isn’t the type of person who wants to be governed. Newcomers to Alberta are predominantly self-starters who just want to be left alone, and they maintain a healthy distrust of centralized governments.

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They are willing to take a chance to move to a better future rather than to stay in their place of birth and hope their local government may somehow change for the better. These are naturally independent-minded people.

Some of the most strident of independence supporters in Alberta have roots in Eastern Europe, where they were born into the tyranny of communism managed by a distant, central government. They escaped to Alberta and are horrified to see the same sort of authoritarianism creeping into Canada. They will do whatever they must to ensure their children don’t have to endure such a life.

More contemporary immigrants are often from South and East Asia, and while they may lean toward federalism in their first few years in the province, they often change their stances when they realize that their future is threatened by the status quo.

New Albertans are no more thrilled with woke culture, interminable waits for health-care access, high taxes and overwhelmed educational facilities than anybody else is. They sacrificed so much to get to Alberta; they aren’t willing to see the future they pursued being degraded and becoming more receptive to the concept of independence with every passing year.

If immigration were able to kill the frontier spirit and culture of individualism in Alberta, it would have done so generations ago. Instead, independence sentiment is higher than ever.

The underpinnings of the independence movement are based on political imbalance, economic inequity and the erosion of individual freedoms due to a distant central government. Those won’t change no matter how many newcomers settle in Alberta.

To assume that the independence movement will die on the vine over time due to population growth is simplistic and ignores the real factors driving Alberta from the federation.