Conor here: Perhaps things are about to get real “interesting” in Canada?
There is a small but real chance that China will succeed in using Canada against the United States in the manner that the United States uses Ukraine against Russia. She already has men in both parliament & the security forces. https://t.co/olkw96xdDw
— Nemets (@Peter_Nimitz) February 15, 2026
Personally, I think Trump acts as a useful bogeyman for governments in Canada and Europe to increase military budgets at the expense of social spending while the Five Eyes and company continue agenda overlap. Hopefully some Canada experts can comment on whether there’s real meat on the bone to the divergence narrative.
By Tamara Krawchenko, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria. Originally published at The Conversation.
In the past year, leaders of Alberta’s main separatist organization have travelled repeatedly to Washington, D.C., for quiet meetings with senior American government officials in the Treasury and State departments. They’ve reportedly discussed everything from adopting the American dollar to building an independent Alberta military.
These highly unusual interactions — which prompted Canada to warn the Donald Trump administration to respect Canadian sovereignty — are unfolding just as a new Angus Reid poll shows 29 per cent of Albertans would vote, or are inclined to vote, for separation if a referendum were held today.
This is a clear minority, but it’s also an indication of some discontentment. The more interesting question is why a province that has long been among Canada’s richest feels so hard done by that some are willing to contemplate breaking up the country.
Alberta Defies the Usual Template
Andrés Rodríguez‑Pose, a professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, argues that populist eruptions are rooted in regions suffering persistent economic decline, demographic loss and a pervasive sense that they have been “left behind” in a globalized economy.
In Europe and the United States, voters in deindustrialized regions have used the ballot box to punish political leaders for abandoning them. The core grievance is material and territorial: my region is poorer, ignored and slipping further behind.
Alberta does not fit that template.
Its economy has grown faster than any other province since 1950, and it still sits near the top of Canada’s income and employment league tables, even after oil price shocks.
In fact, a central anomaly of Canadian federalism is that Alberta’s economic heft far exceeds its population and representation in Ottawa, feeding a sense of under‑recognized importance rather than marginality.
Alberta is not a place that “doesn’t matter” economically; the anger of those who want to separate stems from believing it matters a great deal and is nonetheless disrespected.
A Long History of Grievance Politics
To understand today’s sovereigntist turn, we need to situate it in Alberta’s political culture. For nearly a century, Alberta political leaders have fused populism, “western alienation” and oil politics into a powerful narrative about Ottawa exploiting the province’s resources.
From Social Credit premiers William Aberhart and Ernest Manning through to Progressive Conservative Peter Lougheed, provincial governments portrayed hard‑working Albertans as besieged by federal political leaders and eastern “money powers” siphoning off “their” oil wealth.
That story hardened during the National Energy Program in the 1980s and was revived against former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s climate policies and carbon pricing, which UCP governments portrayed as an attack on a fossil‑fuel‑based way of life.
Recent scholarship shows how this individualism, free‑market ideology and fossil‑fuel identity has been continually updated through the Reform Party, the “firewall” letter, Jason Kenney’s “Fair Deal Panel” and, most recently, Premier Danielle Smith’s Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act.
Alberta’s sovereigntist politics are therefore less an aberration than a radicalization of longstanding themes: populist anti‑elite rhetoric, resentment of Ottawa and a deep attachment to oil and gas.
The Alberta Prosperity Project
The Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) crystallizes this paradox. Its leaders speak the language of hardship and urgency — “we see the writing on the wall” — and claim Alberta must seize “freedom, prosperity and sovereignty” from a confederation that no longer shares its “values” and “entrepreneurship.”
Their draft fiscal blueprint, The Value of Freedom, promises that independence would unleash tens of billions in savings, eliminate personal income tax, slash other taxes and transform Alberta into “the most prosperous country in the world.”
Central to this case is the complaint that Albertans pay too much to Ottawa and get too little back in return — especially through equalization and other transfers. In this telling, sovereignty — or at least a radically “restructured” relationship with Canada — is the only way to stop Ottawa from siphoning off the fruits of Alberta’s oil.
Yet this narrative glosses over Alberta’s own choices. During boom years, successive Conservative governments — strongly backed by many of the same constituencies now drawn to sovereigntist rhetoric — cut taxes, kept royalties comparatively low and resisted building a large, Norway‑style savings fund.
At the same time, Alberta chronically under-invested in health care, education and social services relative to its fiscal capacity, leaving systems stretched even before the COVID-19 pandemic. When oil prices fell, the result was not simply federal neglect but the exposure of a model that had privileged low taxes and immediate consumption over long‑term resilience.
In other words, the Alberta Prosperity Project is right that Albertans feel squeezed — but its account of who did the squeezing is selective. Sovereigntists who blame Ottawa and equalization for every shortfall ignore the role of provincial policy in creating the ongoing boom-and-bust cycle in Alberta.
‘Fossilized’ Regionalism
Another source of discontent lies in the collision between Alberta’s oil‑dependent economy and the global climate transition.
Scholars say Alberta regionalism is “fossilized” — decades of political and economic investment in oil and gas have locked in expectations about jobs, identity and provincial autonomy.
As federal and international climate policies intensify, many Albertans interpret decarbonization as a threat. In a 2023 poll, three in five Albertans said they believe the province is right to resist the federal government’s net-zero goals.
The fear is not that Alberta has been excluded from growth, but that it will be deliberately left behind in the next economy while its existing wealth is constrained or stranded.
The Alberta Prosperity Project’s fiscal plan doubles down on hydrocarbons, promising prosperity through continued or expanded oil and gas development while railing against “externally imposed limits” on emissions.
Idiosyncrasies
The Alberta Prosperity Project embodies the idiosyncrasies of this approach. It calls for an independent, low‑tax petro‑state, denounces federal redistribution and promises world‑leading prosperity. Yet it rarely acknowledges that the same political camp has historically opposed higher royalties, stronger stabilization funds and robust social investment when times were good.
It presents the climate transition as an illegitimate imposition rather than a predictable structural shift that responsible governments could have prepared for.
Recent revelations that APP leaders have been workshopping state‑building with senior U.S. officials shows this isn’t just a symbolic protest, but an attempt to secure external backing for an oil‑centred future that Canada’s constitutional order and climate obligations cannot sustain.
Alberta’s sovereigntist discontent is a three-way collision: long‑cultivated politics of grievance against Ottawa; a self‑inflicted fiscal and social vulnerability rooted in decisions made during boom years; and a global energy transition that threatens a deeply embedded regional identity.
The danger? In insisting on a future of perpetual oil‑funded prosperity while railing against transfers and federal authority, movements like APP offer Albertans a superficially compelling story that cannot be reconciled with either Canada’s Constitution or the realities of a warming world.
28 comments
Comments are closed.
Since the 1950’s, Alberta has been a one-party state: the Oil Party. The party will go on for as long as oil exports are viable.
For twenty years or more, the Canadian economy has consisted principally of Tar Sands and a Housing Bubble. Ex-Alberta, Canada lives mostly on credit-fuelled consumption.
There have been some years in which Alberta has been the sole contributor to national equalization. The separatist claims that Alberta carries Canada, while exaggerated, are not groundless.
Albertans became understandably frustrated when provinces that received Alberta’s equalization payments blocked pipeline developments that could bring the tar sands oil to world markets. Worse, Alberta had to sell to USA at a heavy discount, for lack of alternates.
In other words, Canada makes a big contribution to global warming, and doesn’t even get the full short term gain. One could make a proverb of Canadian folly.
Under the younger Trudeau, Canada impaled itself on both horns of the climate change dilemma. Canada imposed the costs of carbon tax on itself, while becoming more dependent than ever on fossil fuel production. Trudeau increased the overall cost of living, while at the same time antagonizing the province that is the critical foreign currency earner.
That might seem to be political suicide, but Trudeau’s party could hold power in Ottawa, without needing to win any seats in Alberta. In terms of electoral tactics, Trudeau’s hypocrisy was a winning play.
WRT health care and social services, it’s a similar story across the Western world: aging demographics, aging infrastructure, widening class distinctions, high housing and food costs, rancours about immigration, etc. Alberta is neither better nor worse than is typical.
All this being said, I don’t know if actual separatism could ever win in Alberta. (1) There’s no ethnic dimension as in Quebec. (2) A large proportion of Albertans are from other parts of Canada, and will want to remain Canadian.
If faced with an Alberta referendum, Carney will use the same tactics he used in the last federal election. He’ll avoid the real questions, and try to make it all about Trump. It’s worked for him, so far.
As a federalist, I’m still uneasy. Everybody knows that we’re living in weird times. If it went, “Leave,” then oh boy.
The article focuses on material concerns. I think this is the wrong approach. Quebec nearly voted for independence despite being a “have not” province benefiting from transfer payments. It is snubbed elites, not the poor, who make revolution. The condescension poured on Alberta by what Albertans call “the Laurentian establishment” has been unceasing (when Alberta was riding high during the 2010s oil boom the arrogance flowed other way).
I think it was Yves or Lambert who proposed that with the 2016 election the PMC achieved consciousness as a class for itself. I think this is less a class in the Marxist sense than a national identity distributed among the world’s technlogical metropoles, contrasted with what in France Christophe Guilluy calls la France périphérique. Many Albertans have a strong sense that they are treated as peripheral to Central Canada.
Which animosity is greater: between anglophone and francophone or between somewheres and anywheres? These two solitudes correspond strongly with progressive and, for want of a better term, conservative. They increasingly consume different news sources, read different books, frequent different social media and networks. They do different kinds of labour. Their moral systems and histories are different. Mating is assortative. Birth rates are diverging. They live in different places – and in the U.S. they are starting to move between states to sort themselves into like-minded communities.
If print media could transform imagined communities into nations, how powerful are the differentiating effects of electronic media today? The closest parallel I have found is the English Civil War. The wokes today are linked to that conflict. The Puritans who fled the Civil War settled Massachusetts and regions west (Minnesota, Washington, Oregon) – and, after the American Revolution, Ontario. These New England regions and the religious colleges they founded are the heart of wokeness today, and many woke beliefs and practices echo those of the early colonists. I suspect we are inaugurating new wars of religion.
Stuart Parker has long experience working in Canadian politics. Here he compares the situation in Alberta today with that in Quebec in the 1970s:
Very insightful comment, Alphonse.
Two things about electronic media, compared to print: (1) people can easily click from one thing to another, which is easier than, say, changing newspaper subscriptions. (2) social media do not carry the sort of authority or prestige that old flagship papers or magazines used to have. What I mean here is that transformative effect on imagined communities might not be as strong as you suggest.
Also a good quote from Parker. I hadn’t thought of comparing Smith with Bourassa.
She is doing that in a rather subtle way.
Apparently the UCP is OK with 18 of its MLAs being publicly identified as separatists
The 18 MLAs appear on a list of separation sympathizers named publicly by the so-called Republican Party of Alberta. As of last night,[2026-02-09] well after the RPA’s “MLA Independence Scorecard” was widely discussed by media last weekend, all 18 remain identified on it as independence supporters.
In addition to the eight cabinet ministers, one of the MLAs is a Parliamentary secretary, one is the party whip, and one is the Speaker of the House.
My first thought when reading this article is that these border changes could be the same as colleges leaving athletic conferences on a whim, in search of more revenue, until that well dries up and it’s time to seek another conference.
Should I stay or should I go?
It’s a pity the APP people know nothing of Canadian history. The first Québec referendum is an interesting study.
Recent Kunsler cast on the topic, the wheels in Canada have been in motion quite a long time.
https://www.kunstler.com/p/kunstlercast-436-elizabeth-nickson
Alberta is a pretty weird place. I lived there (graduate school) in the late 70s in between growing up in southern Ontario and moving farther west to BC where I have lived and worked ever since.
Historically, AB got the last wave of westward-moving American settlers who ran into the Rockies and were diverted north of the border to where there was still available land. Later, the cyclical volatility of the post-WWII oil booms, each accompanied by waves of inter-provincial in-migration, meant that a lot of the population had little commitment to being there; it was simply somewhere you went if there wasn’t decent employment in the place where you actually wanted to live. So it fostered a consumer-oriented, individualistic culture with little attachment to place. As long as the sugar highs of inflated salaries, low taxes, and big pickups in every driveway kept coming, there was little internal public pressure to think longer-term.
The resulting useful idiocy of the local political class was quite helpful to the oil industry by keeping royalties low, as the article notes. So even though the AB petroleum resource was larger than Norway’s, there is surprising little to show for decades of extraction, apart from $multi-billions of unfunded liabilities in the form of derelict wells and pipelines.
Although I’d get shot for saying this, the Alberta example illustrates one of the most serious built-in weaknesses of Canadian federalism: provincial control of natural resources, which has stimulated competitive races to the bottom between provinces to keep royalties, taxes, and regulations on extraction as minimal as possible.
Also from Southern Ontario and now in BC. There’s a lot of high paying jobs that don’t require a higher education, and it’s known as a conservative stronghold for people across Canada to go to as a refugee from Liberals, not realizing that the neoliberal privatization that they want to flee to is the source of their problems. Canadian conservative media has convinced people that the Liberal party is socialist and in no way good for business, but really they are still a party of neoliberalism. I do think the (US) oil industry has a huge role in how Alberta is. Alberta is very “Americanized” and I think this is partly due to American media being pushed there to keep social discourse in favour of maintaining oil profits and oil flows to the US. Alberta separatism has ebb and flowed for decades now because they feel like they’re being treated unfairly in the federation. Really they are just getting exploited at home.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Funds-Tighten-Grip-on-Canadas-Oil-Patch.html
“According to McCrea, U.S. funds now own about 59% of Canadian oil and gas companies, up from 56% at the end of 2024, while investments by Canadians have declined to 34% from 37%.”
Yet at the same time from the original post: “Yet this narrative glosses over Alberta’s own choices. During boom years, successive Conservative governments — strongly backed by many of the same constituencies now drawn to sovereigntist rhetoric — cut taxes, kept royalties comparatively low and resisted building a large, Norway‑style savings fund.
At the same time, Alberta chronically under-invested in health care, education and social services relative to its fiscal capacity, leaving systems stretched even before the COVID-19 pandemic. When oil prices fell, the result was not simply federal neglect but the exposure of a model that had privileged low taxes and immediate consumption over long‑term resilience.”
Ha, sounds just like Oztrya with its absurdly low royalties and taxes on all natural resources and absurdly enormous real estate bubble on the other hand and practically no industry left to speak of to act as a counterbalance like it used to. When the mining boom care of Chyna ends, Oz is going to flame out in a big way,. I reckon its not long to go now. Same with Canada?
I’ve always thought of Canada and Oz as a kind of twins-separated-at-birth experiment, with the differentiating variable being whether there was either 1 or 2 founding European settler groups.
The presence of Quebec, both for practical political and hardwired constitutional reasons, has placed a permanent hobble on the ability of the federal government to take major initiatives – and that can be both good and bad. So Canadian federalism is much more decentralized than its American and Australian counterparts.
Yes, the reliance on primary, extractive industries is certainly something in common. In our case, as noted by another commenter, those industries and especially oil, have a high proportion of foreign ownership. (And in one of the many instances of its finger-on-the-scale regulatory regime, the current AB government is trying to enable one of your oligarchs to rip open the Rocky Mountains to strip out coal.)
the Alberta example illustrates one of the most serious built-in weaknesses of Canadian federalism: provincial control of natural resources,
I blame Sir John A. If only he’d left the gin alone that day in Québec!
I’d say the provinces have too much discretionary power in many areas, health being a major one along with natural resources.
As an Alberta resident since ’06 and someone who works with a lot of people on the right who detest Ottawa politics, I would treat that Angus Reid poll with a great deal of caution indeed. A third of Albertans support separation? That is almost certainly an over-estimation. Consider that even the UCP’s prior leader, Jason Kenney, condemned the APP’s meetings with the Trump reps, saying Canada should have recalled its ambassador and summoned the US ambassador for an explanation. Revelations that the APP is openly courting the US, and speculating about an independent Alberta on the USD, do not go over well with a lot of Canadians.
Regardless of bigger wheels in motion, I do not believe this separatism has the grip the APP and UCP pretend it has. I do expect it to linger, and vocally so. It does have powerful interests behind it, just not popular ones.
My son, who grew up and works in Alberta oil patch adjacent and prooves to be a very astute and analytic young man, very atuned to the municipal and provincial politics is saying that the % is maybe at 10. And he can express himself only outside work…
I lived through both Quebec referendums, the second being a very near run thing, indeed.
I sense zero chance that an Alberta referendum to separate will succeed. Zero.
Saw a Michael Moore doco years ago where Canadians were saying that even if they went for a day trip to the US, they made certain that they had medical insurance just in case something happened. Does the average Albertan really want to swap that socialistic Canadian health care so that they can go into the American health care system? Being one illness away from living on the streets has a different meaning when you are talking about Canadian winters.
You’d think! But AB Premier Smith is doing her best to weaken public health care before we even worry about separation/annexation: The end of Canadian medicare? Since health care is in provincial jurisdiction, they can do quite a lot of mischief. However, the federal government does have some levers to pull, chiefly through cost-sharing and the Canada Health Act, but so far it has been conspicuously and frustratingly silent.
Rev, our system is not working very well right now. Where I live (a small city in central British Columbia,) it’s an eight-month wait to see a GP. Otherwise go to the ER, and wait until somebody decides to notice your existence, or until you catch COVID and die, whichever comes first.
It’s not bad if you’re “grandfathered” by being a longstanding patient in somebody’s practice. But God help you if your GP retires. Into the pool you go!
It’s not really a money thing; it’s demographics, combined with lack of planning.
Canadian politics are decidedly regional. The formative event for prairie politics was the Great Depression. A form of populism arose shaped by very real exploitation by the grain companies and the railroads. My province of Saskatchewan turned to socialism in the CCF (now the NDP). In Alberta it turned right-wing under Social Credit. Given the great similarities of the two provinces at the time, the effect of charismatic leaders seems to be decisive for which direction they took. That sense of populist grievance became a staple of prairie politics even after the economies changed to become resource dependent. Separatism in Alberta comes and goes, shifting with the price of oil. At bottom, it is the age-old complaint of the wealthy who don’t have as much political power as they think their wealth entitles them to.
Family in central Alberta since the 1880s here (although I haven’t lived there for the last few decades). Without a doubt the province has gone rightward, but if we take the Social Credit period mentioned by @Old Canuck (1930s, Aberhart), we need to remember that they tried issuing “prosperity certificates” as a kind of currency to stimulate spending, established Alberta Treasury Branches to provide alternative credit, and pushed for control over credit creation and direct distribution to citizens. Not quite MMT, but it has some similarity to it. This changed under Manning, who I can say led the decline of Social Credit as more and more of a party aligned to Oil interests, leading to an opening for Lougheed’s “red Tory” Progressive Conservatives (1971-1985), who used oil boom revenue for infrastructure investment, expanded public services, and particularly economic diversification efforts (I remember they even bought an airline at one point).
Then oil prices crashed in the 1980s, leading to austerity. And I would mark the rightward shift really starting with Klein from the early 1990s. In addition to revenue challenges, I recall many of the diversification efforts of Lougheed failing after he left (under Getty) and this period coincided with the global rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s-1990s.
So one could say that the rightward shift is more a response to boom-bust cycles and a larger conservative resurgence that happened at the right time, not so much an ideological matter, or one of leadership.
Good history, Santo.
One of the rich ironies of contemporary Albertan complaints about “equalization” is that it was Alberta’s serial defaults on its own provincial bonds which led to the federal equalization scheme in the first place. They don’t even know the history of their own province, let alone the country.
Most Albertan complainers about equalization also unwittingly demonstrate their utter ignorance both of the technical operations of the program and fiat monetary operations. They unwittingly embarrass themselves every time they open their mouths.
The article pretty much hit the right notes. Having lived in the region the grievance politics is intolerable given what was squandered and yet can only point the finger outward.
What I could not stomach myself is how there were always the deliberate attempts to brand the extraction as ‘Canada’s Oil’, all the while throwing a screaming fit about the equalization program. For all the sentiment that the Feds were anti-west, at no point could the region ever look in the mirror and see how their hubris allowed them to piss away generations of wealth. What’s more, there is some humor to me the idea that Alberta would ditch Canada to become part of the flyover country nexus (Grievance politics right out of the box – they’ll hit the ground running)
I also am getting the feeling that the separatist movement is being laundered in the media. It’s always been there (I can still recall the Western Independence Party commercials as a kid) but a movement formed on an identity of commodity production has no legs. At best, this is going to be leveraged for concessions from Ottawa but it remains how much they’ll swallow the hook on this.
fascinating, and well said.
Note the oil state, Texas, is also known for wanting to secede. It seems to be a thing with oil, “we’ve got oil so we’re speshul, don’t like to be told what to do, don’t want to share”.
While we’re talking about redrawing maps, are there any US states which would like to secede and join Canada? Or perhaps Greenland? Ice(free)land?
Third generation albera resident here, who has spent significant amounts of time in communities that represent the strongest support for the APP, and a very significant amount of time researching alberta history.
Just a couple of notes, one; this goes back farther than people are picking up on. Alberta sovereignty is actually very closely tied to the struggle between french and English speaking populations in Canada, or more to the point, Catholics and Protestants.
I don’t have my notes in front of me so I’m not going to go into great detail here, but the orange order and it’s system of lodges was instrumental in inserting a strong vein of toryism into alberta, as Laurier called it at the time, and it set the tone for generations to come, particularly the familiar gripe against “laurentian elites”. The key issue came down to provisions for language, Ottawa did not want to grant control over resources to alberta unless there were legal guarantees around equal education for French (Catholic) and English (Protestant) education.
The orange Tories, who remain the key power block to this day were of course violently opposed to equal rights for Catholics and they fought the federal government for decades over it. Alberta finally won by the way, the Tories got their wish and the federal government caved, granting full control of resources to Alberta with no provision for education, I believe brownlee was premier, again I don’t have my notes in front of me.
Point being all of this predates Alberta itself, and these crybaby separatists (traitor tots is a trending nickname) don’t even remember what this all is actually about. Their constant griping about transfer payments is nonsense and anyone with half a brain on either side of the argument knows it, it’s just the line they use to whip up low information voters.
As far as the likelihood of the referendum succeeding, let’s wait and see if they even get enough support to petition for it in the first place.
For it to pass they would basically need to pull the populations of both major cities, which itself is a non starter. The APP “movement” if you can call it that is essentially rural in nature, and most of Alberta’s population is now either urban or suburban.
Would the optimal solution be a MN for the Alberta swap?
I know the politics are complicated but that seems like the happiness optimizing solution.
CA, OR, WA, MN for AB? The entire notion is absurd.
Precisely why a ‘deal-making’ idjut like King Donald L’Orange might find it appealing.
If 29% might be in favor, 71% aren’t.
An Albertan resident here. A couple of notes:
I would agree with the 10% support estimate.
A person who I was listening to who had been to an independence rally in Calgary found a lot of support for reversing immigration. In fact, that was the singular most popular item in their platform, judging from the audience response.
I note that it may be grievance politics, but ignoring people’s grievances and belittling them leaves the door wide for someone to take advantage of the political opening.