I’m not sure, as an Albertan, that the biggest Alberta political news of the week isn’t the official secession of the Alberta New Democratic Party from the national NDP. Last weekend members of the NDP-A voted at a general assembly to allow for separate provincial memberships in the party: no longer will the NDP be one and indivisible. It seems there is widespread agreement that Alberta’s economy and its political culture are so distinctive from Canada’s, and so permanently incompatible with it, that the two entities really needed to… what’s the word I’m looking for? “Separate”?