OP-ED: Alberta’s future must include the children conceived here

"We are searching the world for tomorrow’s Albertans while approximately 11,000 of tomorrow’s Albertans are lost to abortion here every year."

Author: Richard Dur

There is a serious conversation underway in this province about Alberta independence.

Those who support it speak about sovereignty and self-determination. They believe Alberta should control its resources, defend its interests, and determine its future without having that future dictated by Ottawa.

Whatever one thinks of independence, there is something important contained in that instinct. At its heart is the belief that Alberta is more than an economy or a jurisdiction, that it is a people with a way of life and a future worth preserving.

But if Alberta is going to have a serious conversation about becoming a nation, then it must eventually confront the question every nation must confront: Who will constitute that nation?

The Government of Alberta has released new population projections extending to 2051. They describe a province transformed: larger, older, more urban and increasingly concentrated along the Calgary–Edmonton corridor.

Under the medium-growth scenario, Alberta is projected to approach seven million people. Seven million Albertans.

It sounds impressive. But buried beneath that number is a question more important than the number itself: Where will those Albertans come from?

The projections provide an answer. Increasingly, they will come from somewhere else.

Migration is expected to produce most of Alberta’s population growth in the decades ahead. Natural increase - the number of births exceeding the number of deaths - is expected to contribute comparatively little.

Alberta will grow, in other words. But increasingly, it will grow because people born elsewhere come here.

People have always come to Alberta looking for something better. They have crossed oceans, provincial borders and continents. They have worked our farms, built our cities, started businesses, raised children and become our neighbours. They became Albertans.

But there is another number that belongs in this discussion.

Approximately 11,000 abortions occur in Alberta every year. Eleven thousand. Year after year.

If that rate continued across the 25 years covered by the government’s projections, it would amount to approximately 275,000 abortions.

That does not necessarily mean Alberta’s population would simply be 275,000 larger. Demography does not work by simple addition: some would not live to 2051, some would leave Alberta, and those born earlier in the period might themselves have children within that time. But we should not forget what the abortion numbers represent.

Every abortion represents one particular human life.

Not an abstraction. Not a demographic unit. A child.

Someone who might have grown up as a son or daughter, brother or sister, student or teacher, farmer or tradesman, neighbour, worker, parent or friend.

Someone who might have called Alberta home.

The loss is first human. Then familial. Then cultural. And, eventually, demographic.

And this is where Alberta’s demographic ambitions collide with an uncomfortable reality: We are searching the world for tomorrow’s Albertans while approximately 11,000 of tomorrow’s Albertans are lost to abortion here every year.

Immigration cannot answer every demographic question. A society must also ask whether it is capable of welcoming and raising another generation of its own.

We worry about Ottawa taking Alberta’s money. We worry about Ottawa taking Alberta’s resources. We worry about Ottawa taking Alberta’s political future.

Meanwhile, thousands of Alberta’s unborn children disappear from that future every year by Alberta’s own hand. Abortion is funded and facilitated by institutions of the Alberta government itself.

A movement serious about Alberta sovereignty should therefore become serious about Alberta families and Alberta births.

Migration may add population. But families create generations. What kind of independence can forget the next generation?

Is Alberta prepared to leave Canada? Perhaps. But there is a question that comes first: Is Alberta prepared to welcome its own future?

And this is not merely a question for independence-minded Albertans. It belongs equally to those who believe Alberta’s future lies within Canada.

Because there is something profoundly contradictory about a society that worries constantly about having enough future workers, taxpayers, and citizens while treating children already conceived within it as disposable.

You may want an independent Alberta. You may want a stronger Alberta within Canada. You may believe passionately in Confederation. But this question is more fundamental than any of those constitutional arrangements.

We can argue about the rights Alberta should possess as a province or as a nation. But beneath them lies a more fundamental right still: the right of its people to life.

Because whether the flag above the Legislature in 2051 bears a maple leaf or something altogether different, one truth will remain: There is no Alberta without Albertans.

And there is no future generation unless we permit that generation to be born.