Alberta Isn’t Pleased With Carney’s Choice for Governor-General

 By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

Is Prime Minister Mark Carney, born in the Northwest Territories and raised in Edmonton, secretly an Albertan “Trojan Horse” on behalf of central Canadian elites? (See Homer’s Iliad if that term puzzles you.)

 Because selecting left-wing Québécoise Louise Arbour as Canada’s next governor general is bound to increase support for separatism in that already very angry western province. And it comes at a time when Canada faces an America under Donald Trump that is no longer perceived as a benign neighbour and a taken-for-granted ally. 

A governor general is supposed to be a figure above politics. But as a former Supreme Court justice, a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and a former chief prosecutor of international war crimes tribunals, Montreal-born Arbour is, as writer Stephen Taylor pointed out in “Governor General Louise Arbour: the Laurentian Default,” on his Canadian Politics and Commentary website May 5, “the most ideologically loaded appointment to Rideau Hall in living memory.”

There is no doubt that she fits the stereotype of a Laurentian liberal insider who holds all the left’s progressive views. From the earliest days of Arbour’s legal career at the Law Reform Commission of Canada, a left-wing activist group, through to her time at the Supreme Court and the United Nations, one thing has been consistent -- her activism.

As someone who spent two years at the United Nations building an international framework to normalize mass migration, she will be the Crown’s representative “in a Canada where the previous government’s immigration policy is widely regarded as a catastrophe,” Taylor adds.

Her views are standard fare among central Canadian political elites. Despite all that, at other times, Arbour might be less of a lightning rod or someone adding fuel to a fire. But it’s not just about her -- the appointment is seen as yet another example of disregard for the west, in a country already under strain.

About 13 million people live west of Ontario and for them to have had no representation in the governor general’s office in more than two decades is indeed noteworthy. The last time the region had a governor general was more than 20 years ago, when Ray Hnatyshyn of Saskatchewan held the post. Subsequent governors general were, originally, from New Brunswick, Hong Kong, Haiti, Ontario and, twice, Quebec. Given the length of the drought since there was a governor general from the west, this current choice deserved extra consideration.

“Not Choosing an Albertan to be GG is an Alarmingly Obvious Missed Opportunity,” suggested journalist Matt Gurney on his May 7 Line Substack. “Because the next governor general should have been from western Canada. Alberta, specifically. The actual physical embodiment of the Canadian state could have been from a part of the country that feels, rightly or wrongly, largely alienated from the Canadian state. He has appointed someone who will confirm a lot of the suspicions the Alberta separatists already had about him, his worldview, the people around him, and the country in general.” It adds insult to injury.

Alberta hasn’t had much respect for years. The oil industry was seen under Justin Trudeau as a source of shame rather than an economic resource. The memorandum of understanding signed by Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith last year promised a deal to approve a new pipeline, but until now it had placed onerous burdens on any plan to build one. Have the recent negotiations between Carney and Smith improved things? Maybe there’s finally been some progress.

Recently, reports have been published suggesting that American and Russian actors are exploiting these regional grievances. “Both Russian and pro-Trump U.S. actors are amplifying and spreading misinformation about Alberta separatism in the hope of fraying Canadian unity and sowing distrust in key institutions and authorities,” according to a May 6 article on the CBC’s website.

Even if this is true, it’s hardly been necessary. The Alberta separatist movement has its roots in western alienation, the belief that the interests of the province are often overlooked by decision-makers in Ottawa. It long precedes Vladimir Putin and Trump.

In his new book The Republic of Alberta: An Idea That Won’t Go Away, journalist Tyler Dawson examines the long history of Alberta separatism. “The grievances and tensions have simmered for decades, occasionally boiling over; subsequent premiers of Alberta fought with Ottawa over banking rules and pushed to wrest control of Alberta’s resources from the federal government,” he notes. Independence advocates claim that Alberta has been systematically undermined by the Canadian federation that created it.

The fact that support for separation hovers in the polls around 30 per cent is hardly surprising. Indeed, if Albertans were ethnically or linguistically different from other Canadians, it would be far higher.

A proposed independence referendum could face a vote as soon as this autumn. Every time the Liberals dismiss Alberta or bring in new policies to control its resources, it motivates the separatists. One of these days, smoldering resentment may turn into a fire hard to extinguish.

As for Arbour, she was asked to respond to her critics who see her as too political, too partisan to occupy a role that should represent all Canadians. “I will reach out, not only to those who agree with me,” she replied. Let’s hope she means it.

 

The United Arab Emirates are Moving Away from Saudi Arabia

 

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

The United Arab Emirates, the world’s third-largest oil producer, quit the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) at the end of April. And that’s a very big deal.

Apart from its effect on the cartel’s ability to control oil prices, the move reflects a widening confrontation with Saudi Arabia and a fundamental realignment of alliances as a result of the current Middle East war over Iran, as well as the ongoing civil war in Yemen.

The Saudi-Emirati fracture is not new, but it crossed a qualitative threshold in late 2025. On December 29, Saudi Arabian air strikes targeted an Emirati weapons convoy at the port of Mukalla in Yemen, an act without precedent between two nominal allies. Riyadh then publicly demanded the withdrawal of all UAE forces from Yemeni territory and in early 2026, that call was answered with the dissolution of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), Abu Dhabi’s principal proxy in the country.

The Saudi foreign ministry accused the UAE of pressuring the STC to conduct military operations along the kingdom’s southern borders, describing the move as a direct threat to Saudi national security and a “red line” for Riyadh that it would not hesitate to confront.

These developments also point to a significant Emirati miscalculation. By backing the STC’s advance into eastern Yemen along the coast, Abu Dhabi has sought to build leverage over Saudi Arabia and Oman while consolidating its influence across the Arabian Sea and the Horn of Africa.

The Emiratis, however, underestimated both Riyadh’s willingness to assert itself directly in its immediate neighborhood and its enduring leverage over Yemen’s political and military actors. The episode emphasizes a central reality of the conflict: While the UAE has built deep influence through local partners, Saudi Arabia remains the decisive external actor in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia seeks to preserve the territorial integrity of Arab states and to position itself as a regional stabilising power. The UAE, on the other hand, has built, since 2015, a doctrine founded on force projection through non-state actors in Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.

The UAE has backed the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the Sudanese civil war that began in April 2023, while Riyadh supports the latter. In Somalia, breaking ranks with other Arab nations, the UAE became the first Arab and Muslim country to recognise the breakaway region of Somaliland.

“The Saudis want obedience, or at least alignment with their regional policies,” according to Jonny Gannon, a former senior CIA officer with decades of experience in the Middle East. “The Emiratis don’t want to be obedient. They want optionality.”

Most important, in 2020, the UAE became the first Gulf country and only the third Arab country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords facilitated by the first Trump administration. That paved the way for other Arab countries, such as Bahrain and Morocco, to normalize ties with Israel.

The Saudis have attacked the UAE as “Israel’s Trojan Horse” and denounced the Abraham Accords, as “a political military alliance dressed in the garb of religion.” Emirati officials believe the Saudis are waging a deliberate incitement campaign centered on the UAE’s relationship with Israel. After Saudi Arabia bombed the UAE’s partner forces in Yemen last December, Saudi posts criticizing Israel spiked dramatically, with 77 per cent of the comments attacking the UAE as “Israel’s proxy executing Zionist plans to divide Arab states.”

The accords helped deepen economic, cultural, trade, investment, and intelligence cooperation between the UAE and Israel, which extended to defence as well. This is perhaps why Iran made the UAE its biggest target in the current war. Iran has launched roughly 550 ballistic and cruise missiles and over 2,200 drones specifically at the Emirates. For years, the UAE had pursued a strategy of “omni-alignment,” attempting to maintain deep security ties with Washington and economic ties with Beijing, while fostering a détente with Tehran to protect its status as a safe haven for global capital.

The Iranian bombardment violently disproved this thesis. It proved that economic integration and diplomatic hedging do not grant immunity when regional hostilities boil over. In a historic move, Israel deployed an active Iron Dome battery, accompanied by dozens of Israel Defence Forces operators, directly to the UAE to help defend Emirati airspace against Iran. This marked the very first time Israel deployed its premier air-defence system and its own troops to protect a foreign Arab nation. The UAE realized that when its survival was on the line, the Arab League issued statements, but Israel sent interceptors.

This traumatic realization served as the catalyst for Abu Dhabi to aggressively assert its own sovereignty, deciding that if it must endure the costs of a regional war, it will no longer subvert its economic or political interests to regional consortiums that offer no tangible protection.

So Abu Dhabi has made a choice that goes well beyond energy policy. It is purchasing American strategic goodwill, at the precise moment when its regional alliance framework is collapsing and when it needs a substitute security guarantee. With Iran having conducted direct attacks on Emirati territory and shipping, and with Saudi Arabia having shifted into open confrontation mode, Abu Dhabi’s strategic calculus has fundamentally changed. Washington is no longer a preferred partner. It has become a necessity.