Globe and Mail columnist Tyler Dawson wrote a column claiming separatists want to “unmake” Alberta.

Most of Mr. Dawson’s conclusions are based on documents released by the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) entitled the Value of Freedom and Foundation of Freedom. It should be noted that these are discussion papers, not binding manifestos. Other sovereigntists are writing their own papers on currency, defence, and health. Some independence voters want a sovereign Alberta with familiar parliamentary institutions. Some want a republic. Some want more control inside Canada and would never leave if the federation were repaired. Collapsing all of that into “the separatists” is convenient for a column. It is not accurate.

The intent of the independence movement is creation and preservation rather than unmaking. If anything, the federation of Canada has been unmade around the province of Alberta for decades as traditional values have been tossed aside and central policies have divided the nation. Independence supporters aren’t trying to unmake Canada any more than they are trying to do so with Alberta. They are just trying to decouple from it.

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Dawson notes that Alberta sovereigntists lack Quebec’s 500-page livre bleu. Fine. They also lack Quebec’s decades of official nation-building inside the Canadian state. What they have instead, at least from APP, is something more exposing: public drafts. That is not the behaviour of a movement hiding its aims. It is also not proof that every independence supporter wants the same state.

Dawson lists items from the APP draft such as a right to bear arms, immigration control, security of the person, and medical choice as if they indicate a desire to impose policies upon Albertans that citizens don’t want. These are popular notions held in Alberta that are being stymied by federal governance. Proposing to embrace these principles in an independent Alberta isn’t offering to change the views of Albertans. It’s offering to reflect them.

The present arrangement is a province whose resource wealth is nationalized in practice, whose criminal and immigration settings are set elsewhere, whose courts can be appointed without its consent, and whose political energy is spent explaining itself to people who think oil is an embarrassment. Yes, the independence movement wants to unmake that deal.

What the broader movement wants is simpler than Dawson allows. A political order that can protect Alberta’s economy, self-government, and social peace if the old Canadian deal cannot provide it. It is not an attempt to unmake Alberta. It’s an effort to save it.