The Alberta Question

Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, has announced a referendum for the province around its constitutional status in the confederation of Canada.

In recent times, the question of Alberta separatism has appeared more acutely in Canadian politics, however, a feeling of regional alienation and contention with the Federal government has always been an issue throughout the history of our country, this has only been exacerbated in the last decade by policies regarding the energy industry, implemented by the Liberal Party, particularly the recent administrations of Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney.

However, there has also been a large degree of “astro-turfing,” particularly from the Trump administration, propping up separatist elements within the province to manufacture consent for the American annexation of Alberta.

Recently, leading members of the Alberta Prosperity Project have purportedly met with Senior Officials of the Trump Administration. As well, Premier Smith has made multiple trips to personally meet with Trump, such as attending his presidential inauguration in 2025 and visiting his Mar a Lago resort in Florida, accompanied by Kevin O’Leary and Jordan Peterson, in 2024.

Increasingly, it seems like the self-proclaimed “separatist” movement is not serious about undertaking this process for the purpose the province actually becoming an independent state in North America, and is more about Alberta becoming the Maple MAGA “51st state” of the United States of America.

The quirky brand of liberty-based conservativism which has become more prominent around the separatist movement leans much more towards that of America, compared to the order-based conservatism of foundational Canada.

For example, the Red Tory approach to “peace, order, and good governance” actually upheld the Crown Corporations which were the national assets that objectively built up the productive capacity of Canada. In contrast, many of the Libertarian-leaning types around the separatist movement advocate the opposite economics, enthusiastically embracing privatization of our publicly owned assets in opposition to the very vague concept of “big government.”

Jeff Rath, the primary spokesman of separatists seeking American statehood, grounds a lot of his arguments in anti-communism, believing that the Liberal Party are Bolsheviks leading is some sort “Soviet regime” in Ottawa. The irony is that one of the main things the Soviet Union was known for historically was its mass-scale industrialization, unleashing the productive forces, the exact opposite of the qualms that Albertans have with the Federal government.

If this process is about resource independence, joining the United States would simply transfer control of the oil reserves from Ottawa to Washington. This is already in large part the reality as most Alberta crude oil is shipped for refinement in Texas. This is a result of the privatization of the Canadian oil industry, namely Petro Canada, which used to be a publicly owned asset. Ironically, the nationalization of our natural resources is a staple of real socialist policy, which would be opposed by many of the very people who advocate separatism in the name of energy independence.

Furthermore, Alberta separatism is not driven by a sense of national identity, like the question of Quebec separatism. Named after British Princess Alberta, the daughter of Queen Victoria, the province historically was an extension of the project of the British Dominion, hence, both ethnically and economically, it does not stand apart from the other English-speaking provinces, compared to Quebec which has an ethno-linguistic basis of a distinct national identity, that existed prior to being annexed by the British Empire, as New France.

We can see parallels in other parts of the world where the American Empire has sought the “divide and conquer” strategy — something that was ironically perfected by the British Empire, now happening in the British Dominion — to force an artificial divide between those who are essentially the same people to undermine sovereignty of countries, regions, and civilizations.

A prime example of this happening is the sad situation we have seen play out in Ukraine and Russia which has escalated into a hot conflict in recent years, but this brother war is a product of decades of division fomented by actors in British and American intelligence courting ultra-nationalistic elements in Ukraine to artificially view themselves as apart from their civilization.

To a much lesser extent we can see the same phenomena happening with Trump administration propping up “Maple MAGA” in Alberta.

The separatist movement has also come into conflict with the territorial rights of the Alberta-based First Nations who already have existing treaties with the Federal government and British Crown. This failure to include the of the Indigenous people in the discussions around independence has lead the First Nations to come out definitely state that they will stay in confederation, continuing to work with their existing treaties, as flawed as they are, than to be put in a comparatively worse situation with no national status at all.

Lastly, a landlocked petro-state will not work!

For a country formed out of Canada’s West to function effectively on an economic basis, their exports would require coastal access to ship the oil, assuming it was nationalized in the first place, so to truly secure status as an independent state they would need at least Alberta and British Columbia to secede together, but there is very little coordination on this happening today.

Overall, it seems that Alberta separatism is not going to go anywhere. While Western alienation certainly exists, the majority of Albertans are not in favour of the project, people who immigrated to the province came to be Canadians, and the idea of leaving confederation is widely opposed by the First Nations.

The real reason for Premier Smith going forward with the referendum has less to do with catering toe more fringe separatist sentiments than it is about simply leveraging the threat of leaving confederation to be a bargaining chip to get better deals for her province when negotiating with with Ottawa.