OK, but there are some logistical issues here- let's say Alberta votes to secede and this is somehow legally viable. All of the Albertan voters who didn't want to secede- including the native tribes- could then by your rules vote to secede from Alberta and join back to Canada. It'd be a mess. Towns and counties would split themselves in half, and so on.

What would happen if a landlocked town within Alberta wants to rejoin Canada- how would you handle that?

Russia is currently placing Russian citizens in the occupied parts of Ukraine exactly for this reason. If there will ever be a vote whether the Donbas Oblast or the Luhansk Oblast want to rejoin Ukraine, you can bet the vote will be pro Russia.

The huge problem is that geographical borders don't nicely line up with cultural/ethnic/attitude borders. Let's say you let a province (or US state) secede over political/cultural issues. What happens to all of the people who don't want to go along for the ride? They're now at a huge risk. Those dissenters might even be persecuted or, at worst, cleansed, depending on the laws of the new seceded country.

So then you say, ok let's do it by county (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is) instead. Same problem. Even within a county-sized area, you're going to have dissenters who are at risk in the new country. Even within a single town. You can't draw geographic borders around and write laws for swiss-cheese-shaped clumpings of individual people.

I live in a pretty "red" area in a "blue" US state. If Team Red decided that half of my state (including my home) was going to secede into their own Red Utopia, my family would legitimately be in fear for our lives. I don't think secession is ever going to be a viable option in the real, polarized world where political beliefs are peanut butter spread across the geography.

Yes, also the right to self-determination is an unalienable human right.

I find it sort of fascinating because people really do have a fanaticism about this that they don't have for other political artifacts. Nationalism is a powerful force. And people will special-plead themselves silly arguing why one group should be given self-determinism and others shouldn't, including invoking federal laws, untestable predictions about future events, etc. But when it comes to other politics, they revert back to a globalist position.

On the flip side, separatists are often driven by nationalistic interests as well - look at Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries as fantastic examples of this.

But the meaning of "people want" is very delicately depending on the geographical area and moment in time.

Where do we draw the line of “people want to change them”?

I’m 100% with the political philosopher Bertrand Russel on this topic: borders are arbitrary, and a benevolent world government/federation of cultures would not restrict your movement or sense of belonging.

But! But how many people must vote yes? What percentage of abstention? If 60% vote to leave, but half the people didn’t vote, only 30% of the yes is valid.

I don’t think this should be taken lightly by populist movements. To me, Brexit has shown us exactly what the dangers are of a non- or weirdly-qualified majority.

That's fine and all, but leave all by yourself. A territory isn't owned by the people that happen to be there. It's bound up in the systems and institutions they found and accepted, ingrained into a much bigger machinery. Alberta's own referendum already shows this: a court halted the petition because First Nations weren't consulted, because their claims predate any popular vote.

Unless you get everyone with a stake on board, which is hard, and accept it will take a long while to unwind, it's irresponsible. And if you aren't willing to do that work, just pack your bags and leave.

I think the problem is the irreversible aspect of this. Once they leave they will never join back.

I’d love to see stats on countries merging vs splitting, may sumptuous is 1 to 50 at least.

Which is why most countries have border guard agency?

It's kind of obvious that borders are not a physical phenomenon but a social construct.

Lincoln disagreed. The good man even had the balls to let loose Sherman.

Sure, and history deals the cards we're given and so on and so forth. Why don't we have referendums on keeping the US Constitution every year? That would be democratic as hell.

>If the people want to change them, they absolutely have the right to do so

Not so fast. They are in a union with other provinces ergo they have a say.

If nonetheless in some asinine way they secede, will they take their portion of Canada's debt, and other liabilities?

Won't all other provinces require them to negotiate a border, security, and trade policy? Surely they can't expect to be separate yet equal to BC or even the NWT?

If it is untenable for a country to defend its boundaries, why is it tenable for you to lock your house?

> If the people want to change [political borders], they absolutely have the right to do so

That's exactly what Putin thinks, right? "I'm one of the people; I wanna change borders!" :)

Cool. I suppose we'll see the U.S. support referenda in the Basque territory in Spain, Northern Ireland, the West Bank, Gaza, and Texas soon. Maybe in Guam and Hawaii, too.

Nice NED propaganda.