The motivations that have contributed to the separatist movement and Alberta’s sense of grievance in recent years are not especially discrete; it’s more like a nebulous Venn diagram. Simple politics have pushed some people toward separatism. Indeed, the paucity of separatist talk during the time when Stephen Harper was prime minister suggests there’s a significant political component to the idea; when Liberals are in power, people feel more inclined to talk about leaving. Culture also plays a role. When Angus Reid pollsters talked to separatists in February 2026, 86.5 percent said they thought Canada forced Alberta to take in too many immigrants, and 96 percent believed that an independent Alberta would better protect personal freedoms.
But … separatists tend to find the economic arguments particularly seductive. Angus Reid polling shows 96 percent of respondents who want an independent Alberta believe they would be free from economically damaging federal government policies. Separatist leaders promise the elimination of the personal income tax while creating a new provincial sales tax of 5 percent. They also claim Alberta would save $75 billion from no longer paying federal taxes.
Not all separatists promise immediate prosperity, but the argument remains persuasive. Cameron Davies is the leader of the Republican Party of Alberta. “I don’t paint an immediate rosy, utopian picture of what independence looks like,” he says. “Will it be difficult? Yes. Will it be immediate sunshine and rainbows? Probably not. But will it be worth it? Five, ten, fifteen years down the road for your kids and your grandkids? One hundred percent yes.”
Alberta screwed themselves when they rejected national energy program that would have cost them some provincial control in exchange for building Canadian energy self sufficiency. They would have pipelines crisscrossing Canada and refineries to boot to get ‘their’ oil to. However they were hoodwinked by US corporate interest into rejecting the NEP and they have been taken advantage of by those same corporate interests ever since. Along with that the Alberta government has spend every waking moment blaming Ottawa. No AB sales tax to even out cyclical O&G revenues? Ottawa’s fault, somehow. Not enough environmental deposits to clean up after the O&G company has taken all the profits it wants and offshored them? Ottawa’s fault. No refineries? US extraction companies want to refine in US and close Canadian sites, Ottawa’s fault. Petro Canada. Short sightedly sold by Conservatives. Was Ottawa’s fault but at the behest of Alberta.
Sounds like Texas with their stupid separate energy grid that crashes all the fucking time and causes old people to die. Maybe they can both secede at the same time and start their own country.
Nice rewrite of how P. Trudeau dealt with Alberta.
I can imagine a mass exodus too. I live here. I’d rather be homeless and jobless made destitute with a mortgage on a made worthless house than American.
I can imagine a mass exodus too
Starting with corporate head offices.
Exactly like what happened to Quebec during their sovereignty campaigns.
Businesses hate instability and unpredictability. And that’s exactly what separatist movements cause.
As an American, I’d be jealous of your homelessness especially when you don’t get imprisoned for said homelessness.
Oops sorry gotta go back to working for pennies at the child labor factory!
Maybe not jailed but left outside to die in winter instead.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it really feels like the separation thing is mostly a guise so that the US can step in and “save” the struggling and destitute Alberta.
Crimea 2
USA funded Brexit, USA funded the fucker kkklownvoy, USA is funding Alberta “separatism”.
More likely some ill advised Canadian Oil exec that thinks that they will be better off in the US.
Albertan separatists tend to forget that nobodies want their oil, it’s too costly to transform. The only reason they have a place at the table is that the Federal government massively finance it.
At Trump first term their were talks about passing TransMountain down to the US, they refuse because even TM didn’t respect the American safety standards which is fucking low.
Thinking that thing will change in the US or as Independent nation is fucking laughable, at best Trump or the US will use Alberta to spearhead an invasion of the North for their critical mineral
If Alberta becomes the 51st state, all the Newfies will head home leaving a large labour shortage in the oil fields. Being an American state, Alberta will have to follow American immigration practices. It would be a real shock for people in Alberta. Lots of Americans would flood in and take Albertians’ jobs, just by the shear volume of people in the States, they have almost 350million people.
You mean that they can simply annex it without first ng a shot.
This is basically just a civil type of invasion of the province
When one of the people being interviewed leads the Republican Party of Alberta, it’s hard to believe they’re anything but American shills. But there will be Albertans who think it was purely a coincidence that led to such a catchy name.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with their oil.
Back in the day Civilization had a scenario where the US was supporting Quebec in a war of independence.
Alberta sounds a lot more likely.
What non Albertans need to understand is that “the separatists” in Alberta are two different groups. There are a significant number of Albertans who are upset with the way Alberta has been milked as a cash cow for decades without the corresponding political power like the populous provinces out east. Mostly they want to express their displeasure and if that means some sabre rattling and threats of separation thats fine. It works for Quebec and they just want to follow the same playbook. They would be the mild separatists who may or may not see the value in having Alberta be an independent state within Canada, but they are still a minority.
Then there are the radical separatists who believe that Alberta should separate and join the US. That is a VERY small group of people. If anything Albertans are fiercely independent, with an “I can do it myself” attitude and the last thing the vast majority wants is to jump out of a stable democracy into the shit show that exists down south.
So when you say ‘separatists’ you have to be clear who you are talking about. MOST of us want a more fair deal for Alberta but we’re not pro US and particularly not pro Trump.
That’s probably fair when talking about the electorate broadly, but also leaves out the powerful special interests contributing to shaping and manipulating the movement, and which have much more direct and influential access to provincial government than your average Jane or Joe. Those interests, and the stakeholders to which they’re most responsive, need to be included as part of any discussion of how this movement is developing.
I have MAGA family in Alberta. They don’t want to join the USA but they’re pro pro-trump politicians.
I love em but they’re rather ignorant and because of the religion they don’t care about objective truth beyond their own confirmation bias.
So in that regard I don’t place a lot of value on the distinction between hardcore and mediocre separatists. IMO the difference comes down to incentives and who’s getting kick backs for saying shit.
It works for Quebec and they just want to follow the same playbook
Us Québécois are linguistically, culturally, and ethnically separate from the rest of Canada. Alberta is just culturally “pessimistic”, so it’ll never work for them to become independent. They’ll trip over their own dicks when it comes down to _who_will lead them amongst the conservatives. If the Middle East is any precedent, good luck pitting a jungle of conservative groups against each other for control. They can’t function without unity, which the Albertans lack on a fundamental level. They’re just going to remain the dicks who live out west and complain about social programs in QC and BC.
I think, if you don’t like where you live, you should move, but you can’t take your land with you. I also think, if you don’t care about separation but push the agenda just to entangle yourself with powerful cabals above and beyond your reach, should be a special kind of treason.
trade Alberta for Washington, Oregon, and California
Some sane people live in Alberta, so no we wont be doing that.
ah yes, Canadian Washington, property of the crown
(just a joke about the name)
And Minnesota! I’d much rather be Canadian
You would think that after the fiasco of Brexit Albertans would know better. Albertans would still be subject to their own governments damaging economic policies even if they could divorce from the federal ones. Most of their economic problems are self inflicted. That will only get worse. It is clear that their Premier and cabinet and advisors are already on the payroll of American billionaires. How any Albertan thinks that will make life or income better for them is astonishing. They harken back to some good ol days that never existed, while falling for Koch brothers (or whomever) marketing their takeover. They wouldn’t become the next Alaska, they would become the next Puerto Rico, if that lucky. And like Quebec before them, they don’t understand that the current provincial borders won’t be the ones that would exist if they managed to secede.
Personally I’d be willing to work on a trade group: all the Albertans (and the few from BC, Sask, & Man) who want to secede could be swapped for an equal number of Americans who wanted to come North.For any article to put zero weight on how Liberal governments have treated Alberta is just ingenuous. Of course that has had an effect on the separatist movement.
Yes the record heights of oil production under Trudeau Jr were the federal gov’t treating AB badly.
Also the $35B pipeline the feds paid to construct, fuck them, am I rite.
Waaaah more fake Albertan butthurt. It’s your own fucking fault your province didn’t build refineries. No one else’s.
You forget about federal restrictions.
Please. Trudeau bought you a pipeline. How conveniently you forget that.
Trudeau introduced so many regulatory restrictions the private sector walked away from the construction forcing the government to purchase the uncompleted pipeline. A pipeline that then took 3 times the money to complete. What exactly am I conveniently forgetting?
STFU whining constantly about regulations. It’s a toxic wasteland of an industry which needs to be heavily regulated.
Good. Fuck Alberta and fuck oil and gas. Marlaina Melania Danielle Smith and her merry band of redneck fucktards should all go apply for asylum in Montana and go join the failing experiment in unbridled capitalism that is our southern neighbour.
5 million people who own…
-the 3rd largest oil reserves on Earth -5th most natural gas produced on Earth
- huge forestry
- huge mining
- huge agriculture
- 1000s of freshwater lakes
They do lack fisheries tho
Yes this place is set up for economic disaster
You dont understand economics hey
Everyone is smarter than me I know that
Lol.
If Alberta separates it becomes landlocked by two much more powerful nations who can then tax us into oblivion on any imports or exports, or simply shut the door and screw us entirely. Doesn’t matter how much we have if we can’t export or import anything without being at the mercy of much larger nations, one of whom we’d have just pissed off and the other has a vested interest in annexing us.
Alberta “independence” would just be becoming a territory of the US in the long run.
When Alberta does stand up to leave the room and says “who’s coming with me?” I could legit see Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and possibly BC and Yukon going with them
I could care less if a bunch of rednecks want to leave Canada, the problem is it immediately becomes part of the US. They are not saying that part loudly enough.
LOL, the US is not going to create another state, it’s too political. Best the USA can do is create another territory, similar to Puetro Rico. Under US law for territories, “fundamental rights apply as a matter of law, but other constitutional rights are not available”, meaning that the US gets to determine what laws apply and what laws don’t. Being a legal backwater means no one will be directly investing into Alberta but into the American companies that can legal do whatever they please in the territory.
I meant territory. There’s no way they allow voting.
Learn from us in the United States and remove these cancerous traitors from your country NOW. Preserve your education and REGULATE BUSINESS AND TECH.
If you fail to do this. You too will have concentration camps and data centers all over your country and fascist traitors in charge
… Cameron Davies is the leader of the Republican Party of Alberta
Jfc. :/
Carney needs to start a loud public investigation into foreign money. Expose these jerks.
skidmark isn’t going to do a fucking thing other than fill his pockets.
It’s obviously the USA. Why would Carney upset his overlords?
So is like Alberta the Mississippi of Canada?
It’s more like the Texas of Canada.
Given the UCP just voted to rig the electoral map…more than ever.
Could merge well with Greater Idaho
The thing that really gets me is, Alberta doesn’t like how hard it is to build a pipeline that would run into other provinces, and how in the world is being a separate country supposed to help with that? Do they think building across an international border will be easier than building across an interprovincial one?
Alberta separatists are illogical and unwise - never underestimate the depths to which they have not thought about a particular issue. Unfortunately, this is equally true of the current provincial government as well.
Nah the separatists think that dealing with the US would be easier. By “dealing”, they mean annexation. Sigh…
I doubt they do much thinking
Can we use “separatists” instead of “albertans”?
The loudmouth morons are a very small percentage of Albertans. A lot smaller than Quebec’s loudmouth morons.
Quebec separatism would still end poorly for everyone, but at least they have access to the ocean.
Quebec separatism would good bad, but at least they have a chance of France bailing them out. The USA would not be kind to Alberta, the USA does not extend constitutional legal protection to its territories.
My Albertan friends are natives. And I am pretty sure they don’t want to separate. It is only the white non-native conservatives there that mostly want to separate.
Actually, it isn’t even most of them. I live in rural AB, there’s a lot of anger over the separatists shitting on the legacy of our grandparents that fought and died for Canada.
I just found this video from CBC. https://youtube.com/watch?v=NXafC7tlqt0
The amount of fuckwits with Facebook around here is just depressing, and that’s where this bullshit is getting to them.
The obvious answer is the pipeline would go through the states.
