Alberta’s Separation Referendum — Who’s Going to Stand Up for Canada?

The referendum isn't the risk, the campaign is. With Dave Cournoyer

Alberta may be heading toward a referendum on whether to leave Canada entirely. And the people who should be most alarmed by that don’t appear to have a plan.

This week we sat down with Dave Cournoyer, — one of the most consistent and respected voices covering Alberta politics — to unpack how we got here, who’s driving this, and why the pro-Canada side should be worried about what comes next.

What We Covered

Alberta as Canada’s energy engine. The province produces roughly three quarters of Canada’s oil and gas. But oil and gas isn’t just an economic issue in Alberta — it’s cultural, it’s identity. When the federal government comes after that, the reaction is deeply personal. Dave walked us through how decades of tension between Alberta and Ottawa — from Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program in the early 1980s to Justin Trudeau’s climate agenda — created the conditions for what we’re seeing now.

How the separatist movement actually organized. Here’s what I’d forgotten (or underestimated): this iteration of Alberta separatism didn’t start with pipelines or oil prices. It started with opposition to COVID-19 public health measures. Groups like the Alberta Prosperity Project spent two to three years travelling rural Alberta, holding town halls, building lists, and organizing — well before they made separatism their headline issue. By the time they did, they’d already done the hard grassroots work. That matters.

The movement is no longer fringe. Dave made a point that stuck with me: Alberta separatism used to live exclusively in fringe political parties pulling tiny vote shares. Now, the separatist movement is increasingly ingrained within the governing United Conservative Party. Separatist-aligned activists hold constituency association presidencies. They openly booed Premier Danielle Smith at the party’s fall convention. The infrastructure has shifted from the margins to the inside of the governing coalition.

Danielle Smith’s impossible tightrope. Smith has positioned herself as supporting a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” — which, as Dave put it, is having your cake and eating it too. Her voting coalition includes both separatist-curious activists and pro-Canada conservatives. If a referendum happens, she’ll face enormous pressure to choose a side. That choice could make or break her political future.

The pro-Canada side’s leadership problem. This was the crux of Dave’s recent Substack piece — and the heart of our conversation. Dave identified three potential faces for a pro-Canada campaign: Thomas Lukaszek (who ran the Forever Canadian petition and collected 456,000 signatures), former Premier Jason Kenney (who’s been vocal but lost his political base), and NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi (who has the clearest political freedom to be unequivocally pro-Canada). The problem? Their relationships are fraught, and there’s no unified campaign infrastructure. We could end up with a three-headed monster where everyone assumes the other guy’s in charge.

Lessons from Brexit and Scotland. Andrew drew heavily on his experience with both UK referendums — and the parallels are uncomfortable. The leave side gets to run an aspirational campaign. The stay side almost inevitably ends up running a negative one, which gets flipped into “project fear.” A referendum legitimizes the question regardless of the outcome. And if separation loses 70-30, you’ve now quantified and galvanized a significant bloc with no political home. Scotland’s independence referendum was supposed to settle the question. It did the opposite.

Foreign interference is a real wildcard. Separatist leaders have claimed meetings with the US State Department. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has openly discussed Alberta separatism. Donald Trump would love nothing more than to be an epic disruptor on this file — and all it takes is a Truth Social post to dominate the news cycle in Alberta for days.

The Bottom Line

Dave put it plainly: if a referendum were held today, it would likely lose — the separatist side would pull 20 to 30 percent. But a referendum held 10 months from now? Nobody knows what the defining issue will be by then. Campaigns take on a life of their own. The separatist side is organized. The pro-Canada side isn’t — not yet. And that gap is the whole problem.

Alberta and Canada are worth fighting for. But someone needs to start fighting now.