Alberta sovereigntists and supporters gather outside the Legislature following the federal election victory of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government and the tabling of new independence-related legislation by Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP government, in Edmonton, in May, 2025.Artur Widak/Reuters
The Brexit referendum was supposed to succeed by failing. Things did not go according to plan.
There’s a lesson here for Alberta and Canada, as the province heads for a likely Albexit independence referendum later this year.
But before we talk about the future, let’s revisit an unhappy past.
Former British prime minister David Cameron wanted to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the European Union, and the threat of a vote on Britain’s continuing membership in the EU was seen as a helpful negotiating tool. Mr. Cameron had also been subject to years of referendum pressure from his party’s fringe, which he wanted to mollify.
If all had gone as planned, Britain would have extracted a better deal from Brussels, while the Euroskeptic wing of the Conservative Party would have been crushed for a generation in a Brexit referendum defeat.
Mr. Cameron walked the country to the edge of the cliff in the hope that voters would recoil from the abyss.
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The surprise victory of the “Leave” side instead ended Mr. Cameron’s political career. And the better deal with the EU went into the dustbin, while his successors were forced to negotiate the country’s exit from the bloc.
British politics, instead of being moderated by the referendum, was radicalized. A decade later, the erstwhile Conservative fringe, now a party known as Reform, has split from the Tories – and leads the polls.
A strategy of appeasing the fringe while scaring the center into concessions blew up. Britain’s economy took a permanent hit, since Brexit meant erecting barriers to trade with Europe, the country’s main trading partner.
Which brings us to Albexit.
Premier Danielle Smith may not be in favour of leaving Canada, but she has used the threat to try to extract concessions from Ottawa. And to satisfy those in her party who feel otherwise, she passed legislation making it easier to trigger a referendum. The old threshold was high — signatures from 20 per cent of voters provincewide, plus 20 per cent in two-thirds of ridings. The new threshold is a number equal to 10 per cent of voters who cast a ballot in the last election.
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The group Stay Free Alberta is holding rallies and passing around a petition calling for a referendum on becoming “an independent state.” It has until May 2 to gather 178,000 signatures.
It’s a low bar. Albertans will almost certainly be voting in an independence referendum later this year.
Like Brexit, Albexit has big blind spots.
Remember how the Feds bought the Trans Mountain pipeline, and paid tens of billions of dollars to expand it, over the objections of British Columbia? Would Canada have done that for an independent Alberta? Obviously not.
The Carney government wants to boost Alberta oil production and enable at least one more pipeline to the Pacific – over the objections of B.C. Would Canada do that for a foreign country? No.
And it’s worth recalling that the Keystone XL pipeline to the U.S. was delayed for years by the American regulatory process, killed by the 44th U.S. president, resuscitated by the 45th, delayed some more, and killed a second time by the 46th president – all over Canada’s objections.
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It made Canada’s pipeline review process look like they were moving at the speed of Formula One.
As Britain discovered, independence means that folks on the other side of the new frontier are also independent of you – and your concerns.
The good news is that Alberta separation has historically been a distinctly minority taste. That still appears to be the case.
A recent Pollara poll found that just 19 per cent of 1,000 Albertans surveyed said they would vote in favour of independence. A Research Co. poll of 703 Albertans found that only 17 per cent were strongly supportive of the idea, with 14 per cent moderately supportive.
But once it gets rolling, a referendum campaign can be unpredictable. Quebec’s 1995 referendum is an example. A strong majority of Quebeckers have always opposed outright separation, yet a charismatic leader, a heavy diet of fairy tales and a feverish atmosphere nearly carried the Yes side to victory.
Albexit support could benefit from a left-right dynamic, where the “remain” side gets branded as the choice of left wingers, New Democrats and Liberals, with independence identified as the conservative choice in a right-leaning province. Unless most of conservatives are unequivocally on the “remain” side, it could spell trouble.
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That said, I’m confident that most Albertans will vote for Canada. I’m less confident about how the White House will vote.
The mere existence of an Alberta independence movement is an opportunity for U.S. President Donald Trump to make mischief, to jump into the campaign, to claim that the vote isn’t fair, and to bluesky on Alberta as the 51st state.
He could claim, as he has done with Greenland, that incorporation into the U.S. is strategically necessary, regardless of how Albertans vote. All that land, all that oil.
For those hoping Mr. Trump will simply ignore Canada, that is unlikely. Talks on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement will take place this year, which means Mr. Trump is going to be hearing a lot about Canada.
He already has a motive. He is about to be presented with an opportunity.