Alberta separatists rally outside the offices of Elections Alberta in Edmonton on May 4.Todd Korol/Reuters
Trevor McFadyen is an instructor at Capilano University’s School of Business.
Remember the story of a Prairie farmer who comes home to find his crops destroyed by hail, his house struck by lightning, and his wife running off with the hired hand? He shakes his fist at the sky and screams: “Goddamn the CPR!”
If you grew up in Alberta, you remember.
My family emigrated from what was then Prussia to Alberta in 1896, before it was a province. They homesteaded in sod-roofed huts. My great-grandfather remembered Fort Edmonton being razed after the construction of Alberta’s legislature building. My great-uncle served in the second session of that legislature.
My grandparents owned a business on Whyte Avenue; their name still adorns the Douglas Block. I grew up on a horse ranch in west-central Alberta, went to the University of Alberta, and began my career in Jasper National Park. My two Indigenous cousins have roots in Alberta spanning millennia.
As a child, I remember copies of Ted Byfield’s Alberta Report on coffee tables. The magazine railed against the “Laurentian elites” and helped weave Western alienation into the province’s culture.
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Ottawa dismissed Alberta and treated us with contempt. My family believed that. Many Albertans still do.
But there was always an intergenerational understanding: frustration with Canada was not the same as abandoning it. My family always believed Alberta’s role was to strengthen Canada, not rupture it.
Alberta’s separatist narratives don’t sound like the alienation of old; they sound like the vitriol that fuels polarization south of us. Foreign influencers and online networks are amplifying grievance and animosity online. The result is governance by rage and resentment. It’s a fairy tale that promotes revenge, while suggesting no real economic or social consequences.
Instead, reality looks like Quebec’s 1995 referendum. Political uncertainty weakened investment and accelerated corporate flight from Montreal. Economists estimated that separation would have cost Quebec’s GDP 10 per cent in the short-term and 5 per cent in the long-run (that’s $31- to $62-billion today).
The 2016 Brexit referendum reduced business investment by 11-per-cent over the three years following the vote, weakened long-term growth and triggered political instability (six prime ministers in 10 years).
When political risk rises, investors either flee or demand higher bond yields to compensate for uncertainty. Higher yields reduce bond prices and increase borrowing costs. Increased borrowing costs mean higher mortgage, business loan and consumer credit rates.
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Remember “jingle mail” from the 1980s? Imagine mortgage markets pricing in political instability and capital flight. Separatism would not be a political event; it would become a financial shock that Albertans would pay for.
Alberta’s economy is deeply integrated with Canadian markets; in 2024, it exported more than $70-billion in goods and services while importing nearly $75-billion.
Alberta needs integrated trade networks, labour mobility, federal infrastructure, investor confidence, national banking systems and constitutional stability. This is not an economy that can be detached from Confederation without severe disruption.
The unanswered questions are enormous. What currency would Alberta use? Who would regulate banks? What debt would Alberta inherit? What happens to pensions, treaties, trade agreements, pipelines and national parks?
“We’ll negotiate that later” is always the answer.
Economics won’t wait for negotiations to begin. Markets price risk immediately. The Calgary Chamber of Commerce acknowledges that Alberta businesses are already worried that separation will stifle investment. It’s great that Alberta has a new pipeline deal, but who will back it with separation blowing in the wind?
The separatist argument is that Alberta pays disproportionately into equalization and would be better off outside Confederation. Yes, Albertans pay more federal tax, because Albertans generally earn more, therefore contributing disproportionately. But Alberta receives substantial transfers back, like health and social payments. A 2021 report found that the province also received the highest per-capita federal COVID support in the country ($11,410 per person).
Ironically, Alberta’s fiscal frustration is largely self-inflicted. The province maintains ridiculously low oil and gas royalties – less than 20 per cent of total revenues in 2026. Norway captures roughly 78 per cent of petroleum profits through taxation, state ownership and its sovereign wealth fund.
Alberta has Canada’s lowest corporate tax rate and no provincial sales tax, leaving roughly $17-billion annually off the table.
What makes this maddening is that the “Alberta Advantage” is designed to attract investment. Yet Alberta’s separatists are willing to throw Alberta’s economy under the bus for nothing in return.
Alberta separatism increasingly resembles not a serious constitutional project, but a cathartic temper tantrum that threatens to implode and take Albertans with it.
My family helped build this province. They carried western alienation, but they would never have accepted what’s happening in Alberta now.