> having access to the ocean not landlocked and remarkably more viable as an independent state

And a natural foreign ally.

> Quebec would be worse off independent of Canada absolutely

Writes someone in English. I don't think everyone would agree.

Everyone might not agree but it wouldn't be true. Quebec shot itself in the foot just threatening separatism. Separating would be like Brexit but worse. A smaller, less powerful nation would need to make a bunch of trade deals and companies would likely be even less inclined to enter QC.

no, they are solved by becoming an American state , or by taking BC with us (close enough to zero chance to just say zero chance) or taking Saskatchewan and Manitoba (not zero chance but pretty darn close). Becoming an American state is the least unlikely of several extremely unlikely outcomes. My personal preference would be for Alberta to stay in Canada and Canada to stop pretending it doesn't need natural resource extraction as a leading part of creating a strong middle class (along with being a cheaper second option for multinational tech company/medical research/etc satellite offices). instead of the current idiotic crushing of natural resources and trying to pick and grow winners in high tech, medical,etc. which is impossible to turn into a pipeline of companies/jobs here (you can get lucky and have one offs that eventually get eaten like RIM and salesforce but that's not an economy.) There is not enough rich people here (and taxes are too high to make enough rich people even if our population was equal to the USA instead of a tenth of its size) to drive the whole finance ecosystem necessary to create an innovation company pipeline. It's all just wasted federal money, most of it was financed by money transferred out of Alberta at the margin.