People are tribal. It’s in our genes. We are a communal species. It makes us what we are, it brings us together, and it tears us apart.

Put borders around a piece of land, any piece of land, and almost instantaneously the people inside those borders become a tribe. This is our land. These are our resources. And those outside the borders had better respect that.

All of this is on display in Alberta at the moment. The borders of the province arose for a variety of reasons, the last one—with Saskatchewan—was drawn in because it was thought otherwise the province would be too large relative to the others. So, two provinces instead of one. And the two were topped off at the 60th parallel because it was assumed that agriculture and therefore settlement weren’t viable any further north. Then to be fair, Manitoba was also extended to the 60th. All a rather arbitrary business.

Some Albertans are very much more tribal about their patch than others, our premier being a prime example. Danielle Smith is the very definition of provincial. Those rather arbitrary borders define her world.

And like many Albertans, her possessiveness of the province’s oil reserves knows no bounds. One might almost think that they were in some way responsible for the treasure. In fact, they had nothing to do with it. These are not assets earned by merit.

These major sources of the provincial wealth are a product of dumb luck, as of course ultimately everything is. Two strokes of luck actually. The first is Mother Nature putting the oil there in the first place rather than, say, under Prince Edward Island. The second is a cartel of countries called OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) exploiting their near-monopoly to drive oil prices well above that of a free market. This unholy marriage of Mother Nature and a bunch of Arab dictators made the province filthy rich. It seems more than a little presumptuous to feel exclusively entitled to something one had no hand in creating.

The proceeds of the oil should be distributed fairly, but why a bigger share to Albertans than any other Canadians? Just because that’s where some arbitrary borders were drawn in the last century?

Perhaps I’m less tribal about Alberta because I’ve lived and worked in four provinces and found them all to be very fine places. And they are all very fine places primarily because they are all part of a very fine country. And that tends to be where my tribalism lies.

I’m not much of a flag waver but Canada is one of the finest countries ever created and that’s not patriotism talking, it’s fact. Alberta is no more nor less than an arbitrary part of it. So with this province having the highest average income of all the provinces because of oil, I have no problem with sharing a little of the bonanza that nature and OPEC have favoured us with.

And then there’s the little matter of global warming. Canadians, along with Australians and Americans, are one of the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitting peoples, and Alberta’s oil production is the major cause of that. I wholeheartedly support any efforts by the federal government to impose some responsibility on an increasingly irresponsible practice. The Alberta tribe needs the discipline.