Counter-protesters walk through a crowd of Alberta separatists during a rally at the provincial legislature in Edmonton on Aug. 29.Amanda May Erickson/The Canadian Press
Tyler Dawson is an Edmonton-based editor for The Globe and Mail’s Opinion section. He is the author of The Republic of Alberta: An Idea That Won’t Go Away.
Well, here we are. On the precipice of the unthinkable.
After more than a year of Canada undergoing patriotic convulsions that would have been inconceivable at any point in recent memory, Albertans are being asked to vote on Monday about whether their province should continue to be part of Canada, or take further steps toward becoming an independent country.
Whatever the outcome, Alberta – and by extension Canada – will be permanently altered.
For 50-odd years, there has only been one major threat to Canada’s national fabric: Quebec. It was always that province, with its distinct language, culture and, at one point, a near-unifying faith, that threatened the Canadian experiment most distinctly. The other regional grievances that popped up – Alberta’s fury over the national energy program, the kneecapping of Atlantic Canada’s fisheries – were sideshows, consequential though they were, to the ultimate threat to national stability.
But much has changed in the past decade, and especially in the past few years. Whatever good intentions existed, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tenure brought Canada’s self-esteem to, surely, what must have been an all-time low. We were, he mused early on in his tenure, the world’s first “postnational state” with “no core identity, no mainstream.” Whatever else might be said about Mr. Trudeau, his time in power weakened a national identity that has never been as robust as it might have been. In such a diminished state, Canada was vulnerable to the compounding regional grievances – particularly in the West – that further put the future of our country at risk.
On Oct. 19, Albertans will vote on whether to hold a binding referendum on separation from Canada.Todd Korol/Reuters
In his 2007 book The Unfinished Canadian, journalist Andrew Cohen writes that the other countries Canada compares itself to “do not live in fear of falling apart.”
“This never goes away with Canada. In the last generation or so, every decade or so, our agents of division have tested our angels of unity.”
It’s an ineluctable fact of our politics. It’s just that now, Alberta’s grievances have become everyone’s problem. And for now – this depends a bit on where the Parti Québécois goes now that it’s won power – those of us in Alberta are the ones threatening to pull the country apart.
Happily, Canada has rediscovered itself – rediscovered, more importantly, its national pride. However much the country has been weakened – and will continue to be weakened – by the continuing trade war with the United States, Canada now finds itself in a better position to resist the forces that threaten to tear our country apart.
And that’s unarguably a positive. Because even if the separatists lose on Monday in Alberta – and every indication is that they will – there’s every likelihood that their movement becomes a permanent fixture of Alberta’s political culture.
In an ideal world, we’ll know soonish which side has won the vote – likely in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. It all depends on how quickly the hand-counted ballots can be tallied. But going into the vote, the polls are unequivocal: Separatist support peaks at perhaps 30 per cent of Albertans, and not much has shifted in their favour since the referendum was called in May. Though their leaders and influencers appear bullish and powerful online, the separatists are a small but loud minority of Albertans. That’s just the reality, and they’re likely to lose.
But the polling, which has been comforting for federalists, has engendered a certain laissez-faire attitude toward the whole thing. The separatists know they have to win Monday to keep their movement alive, or at least make a good enough showing that they can continue to exert pressure on Premier Danielle Smith to hold a proper referendum. The pro-Canada side, on the other hand, hasn’t shown much urgency. And Albertans, writ large, probably spent more time worrying about flooded basements during torrential rains this summer than the existential questions before them. This all suggests turnout will be unusually important on Monday.
Supporters carry boxes of signatures to submit for a separation referendum to Elections Alberta in Edmonton on May 4.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
For a while there, the separatists were little more than a curiosity, a collection of cranks from the back 40, united only in grievance and conspiracy theory with practically no relevance to the rest of Albertans, whom they were unlikely to ever convince in large numbers to join their crusade. But they kept chugging along. They held their meetings, they built up a membership, they spread the gospel. Eventually, they got nearly 280,000 signatures from Albertans calling for a secession referendum.
It’s not all that hard to see why they persuaded some people. The world is changing, and many feel that they’ve been left behind, that their communities are unrecognizable, that their lives didn’t work out quite the way they intended. It’s not hard to imagine blaming someone else – Justin Trudeau or Steven Guilbeault – or taking the next step of believing that everything would be okay if only Alberta was independent. It’s a fantasy, of course; independence would likely make life worse for Albertans, not better, but that’s part of what the separatists are selling, and it should be little surprise that some people are convinced.
And they finally found that they had institutional support.
Twice in 2025, Ms. Smith’s government changed the rules in ways that enabled the separatists. No matter her own views, and Ms. Smith does maintain she’s no separatist, her government made it far easier for the separatists to get what they wanted, not to mention ultimately calling the referendum, mainstreaming and legitimizing separatist grievances.
Keith Wilson speaks at the launch of independence organization Let Alberta Decide in Calgary on June 19.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
The public face of the separatism movement shifted over the summer, too. Mitch Sylvestre, the separatists’ carnival barker, seemed to recede from view, as did Jeffrey Rath, the boisterous lawyer who’s beset by legal issues of his own, in favour of the buttoned-down, persuasive-sounding lawyer Keith Wilson, who represented members of the self-described “freedom convoy.”
Separatism with a suburban face.
In the meantime, the pro-Canada crowd seemed to be lagging far behind. Despite promising in late May to campaign for the Remain side, Ms. Smith put no great effort into it other than trying to show, primarily through a deal to get a new West Coast pipeline built, that Canada could work for Alberta. Former premier Jason Kenney seemed to be everywhere all at once – posting constantly on X and appearing in the media to denounce independence. Former Alberta deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk, on his unity bus, traversed the province, ginning up support for staying in Canada.
Thomas Lukaszuk speaks at a Forever Canadian rally in Edmonton on May 23.Amanda May Erickson/The Canadian Press
Despite all this, there was but one significant pro-Canada rally over the summer: a concert featuring Jann Arden in downtown Calgary on Sept. 20. The Premier never held an address to the province to make the case for Canada. Among regular Albertans, the general attitude seemed to be some variety of: Well, this isn’t a real secession question, and at any rate the separatists are going to lose, so why fret overmuch?
It wasn’t until early September that the provincial government started up its advertising campaign, although it hardly made a compelling case for Canada. Ditto for the federal Conservatives, although Pierre Poilievre had appointed Dane Lloyd, an Alberta MP, as his point man on the file. They launched their Conservatives for Canada campaign, but it’s unclear what effect it’s had. Fortunately, following Globe reporting that showed some separatists had considered trading away Alberta’s resources in exchange for American support for secession, Mr. Lloyd found some outrage: “Nobody has the right to promise away Alberta’s birthright,” he told reporters on Parliament Hill. Ms. Smith, for her part, distanced herself from the characters in the story and called their moves “ridiculous.”
But what does any of this matter, right? Aren’t we just worrying about these things for nothing? The separatists are going to lose. All the polling points that way.
Fair enough. But the issue, going into Monday’s vote, is whether there has been sufficient urgency among Alberta’s federalists to defeat the separatist insurgency.
Because the separatists don’t need to win for the federalists to lose.
There is the temptation to say that the separatists of today ain’t your grandfather’s separatists. To that, there is some truth, though those that make the case tend to forget just how out-there some of the separatists in the 1980s were; Gordon Kesler, a separatist who won an Alberta by-election in 1982, opposed the metric system. There are those who will tell you that separatism found its sails full of wind just because of the way Mr. Trudeau, who in 2017 mused about phasing out the oil sands, treated the West. There are those who will argue that the separatist movement is simply a product of the global far-right, born from the grievances of the COVID-19 pandemic, with few roots other than conspiracy theory and xenophobia.
Neither view is entirely correct. Alberta has always had a streak of grievance. And it has nearly always had a secessionist streak, too. Just because today’s separatist movement is a product of unique circumstances, the power of social media and the various permutations of the global far right, does not divorce separatism itself from its roots in Alberta’s political history.
The problem before Ms. Smith now is that she has a sizable faction within her own party that supports separatism. Some polls even show majority backing for separatism among United Conservative Party supporters.
Given that, you have to wonder what the Premier does if the separatists have a good showing on Monday. Not a victorious showing, mind you, since that’s unlikely unless there’s a turnout collapse among federalists, but a good one. Say they get a solid 20 per cent or 30 per cent of the vote. The risk there is that they will have true staying power as a major constituency within Alberta politics. Already, they’ve vowed they’re not going anywhere.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP has a sizable faction that supports separatism.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Ms. Smith, leading a party that is officially a federalist party, will either have to accommodate this group of people somehow, or run the risk that the UCP fractures along federalist-separatist lines, or that those people migrate to one of the many small separatist parties, effectively gutting the coalition she needs to keep governing. The separatists, too, could continue to grow in power within the party.
There are three particular risks for Ms. Smith personally. The first: What does she do, even if the separatists lose, about holding an actual secession referendum? Even with a federalist victory, does she have enough power to stand up to the people in her own party and tell them their quest is done? She’s vowed that she will not hold another referendum, but can she hold that position indefinitely? The second is whether or not that conservative faction organizes in some fashion to try and oust Ms. Smith as leader, and replace her with someone more disposed toward the separatist side of the ledger. Already, there are murmurs they will give it a shot. And third: Does this affect Ms. Smith in the 2027 Alberta election?
You have to imagine that a competent opposition party would manage to turn Ms. Smith’s seeming approval of separatist agitating – though perhaps not her approval of their ultimate aim – into political dynamite. NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, long struggling to make a mark on the provincial political scene, seems to finally be catching a break, with polling showing his party neck-and-neck with the UCP. Whatever tack his party chooses to take in 2027, you can bet that separatism will be some component of their overall strategy. Ultimately, when on the hustings, Ms. Smith and her party are going to have to account for their kid-glove treatment of Alberta separatists. Or maybe they won’t – it sometimes feels like we Albertans would vote for a congregation of alligators if you put them under a conservative banner.
Whatever the answers are to these questions, it’s likely that separatism will be permanently embedded in Alberta politics, and therefore, in national politics; it’s likely it will maintain some sway within the conservative governing party. In Ottawa, politicians will have to take into account the threat of a potential secession vote down the road.
A man leaves an advance voting station during the Alberta referendum in Calgary on Oct. 13.Todd Korol/Reuters
But there is one potential scenario that leads to the separatist movement fading away.
The people involved in the separatist movement, or who identify as separatists, are not all committed separatists. This has not been a lifelong commitment for all of them. Certainly, those people do exist – they toiled in lonely fields for decades and showed a certain amount of admirable perseverance. But many came to it recently, as a natural next step after joining the Yellow Vest protests against federal energy and immigration policy, or after coming to believe that Canada had strayed too far from its values during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many are, in other words, transient in their views and political passions.
Who’s to say what happens next?
As but one example, the Alberta NDP could win the 2027 provincial election in Alberta. Hating Mr. Nenshi could be the next thing for many of these people.
The point is that there’s no guarantee the separatists out there won’t simply latch on to another political issue, discarding separatism as the core objective. If not, they will likely remain disruptive, a recurrent feature of Alberta’s political landscape.
Canada is, right now, perhaps stronger than it’s ever been. We are united against Mr. Trump, collectively seeking economic diversification and solutions to radically changing global trade dynamics. The Prime Minister enjoys astonishing popularity and therefore tremendous latitude in where he steers this country. Yet, there’s this separatist threat in the new locus of instability: the West.
It’s a strange situation. In the short term, the prospects of the separatists fading away isn’t particularly likely. They’ve come too far and done too much work to give it up now. And as the secession conversation becomes more mainstream, the rough edges will continue to be sanded off, the messaging tweaked, all in a bid to get this suburbanite separatism to a place where it’s palatable to more Albertans.
But the good news is that Canada’s strong, if battered. Alberta, in a strange twist, now has the political wind at its back in a way it hasn’t for years, with the prospect of a new pipeline ahead.
And despite it all, this remains a beautiful, if frustrating, place to live. Let’s hope the instinct to preserve Alberta, with all its faults, and the desire to build a better Alberta, is stronger than the drive to destroy Canada.