Just as Canada tries to exit one crisis, another one looms.
The country is finding its footing after a protracted political transition to a new leader, amid President Trump’s tariffs and sovereignty threats.
But now the western province of Alberta is laying the groundwork to hold a referendum asking voters whether they support seceding from Canada.
While the likelihood of such a divorce ever happening is slim — Canada’s Constitution would have to be amended, among other obstacles — the momentum to put the question on the ballot points to deep grievances bubbling to the surface. (Some Albertans actually prefer becoming a U.S. state).
Many Albertans have long felt disgruntled with their place in Canada’s federal system, which they see as unfairly limiting the province’s vast oil-and-gas resources while dutifully collecting taxes.
The province, often referred to as “Canada’s Texas” because its oil and politics, is home to a small but dedicated minority of separatists. Their voice has been amplified in part because of Mr. Trump’s calls to annex Canada and by the re-election of a Liberal federal government, which many in traditionally conservative Alberta view as hostile to their concerns.
(A longstanding secessionist movement in the French-speaking province of Quebec has lost steam in recent months. Its most recent referendum, in 1995, narrowly failed to win a majority in favor of breaking away from Canada.)
Just weeks after the Liberal Party’s re-election for a fourth term under a new, centrist prime minister, Mark Carney, Alberta is hurtling toward a referendum over whether to break away from Canada.
The key argument behind the movement is that Alberta is different enough from the rest of Canada, including in its conservative tilt and resource wealth, to go it alone.
In the aftermath of the federal election, conversations from the airwaves to the dinner tables have been dominated by talk of secession.
“If there was a referendum on it, I would not hesitate to say separation,” Bob Gablehaus said over drinks with friends on a pub patio in Bragg Creek, a hamlet in the Rocky Mountain foothills.
“I don’t like the way the Liberals treat Western Canada,” said Mr. Gablehaus, a retired government worker. “I think it’s unfair.”
Polling conducted before the April federal election suggested that about 30 percent of Albertans thought independence was a good idea if the Liberals secured a fourth term in office.
Historical surveys show that committed, hard-core separatists, rather than voters just seeking to vent frustration or responding to short-term factors, are significantly fewer.
But referendums can provide opportunities for people to vent, and sometimes form unexpected majorities — as Britain found out when it held its Brexit vote to leave the European Union.
A premier’s gambit
Danielle Smith, Alberta’s MAGA-style conservative leader, says she is not personally in favor of Alberta breaking away from Canada. She says she is seeking leverage to radically renegotiate Alberta’s relationship with the federal government in Ottawa, primarily to unshackle the province’s oil industry from regulations meant to address climate change.
But she has handcrafted the conditions that will likely lead to the referendum.
The province of five million residents, Canada’s fourth-most populous, is home to the country’s lucrative oil and gas industry, whose products are mostly exported to the United States.
Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promoted climate-focused policies like emission caps and strict environmental assessments over his decade in office. Critics say that these limited Alberta’s ability to fully extract and export its mineral and fossil fuel wealth.
Many Albertans accuse Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal government of holding them back, and see the change in the country’s leadership as Ms. Smith’s opportunity to grab the attention of the newly formed federal government.
She did not wait a full 24 hours after Mr. Carney’s election on April 28 to fire her opening salvo.
The next day, she introduced a bill, which the province’s legislature recently passed, making it much easier for a citizens’ movement to trigger a referendum.
“The federal government has taken hostile actions against Alberta and against the Constitution and against our right to develop our resources,” Ms. Smith said as she promoted the bill, listing nine energy laws she wanted changed to “reset” Alberta’s relationship with the federal government.
The new rules drastically lower the bar for constitutional referendum petitions, in part by slashing the number of citizens’ signatures required for a referendum, from 600,000 signatures to about 177,000. They also give petitioners an extra month to collect signatures, increasing the window from 90 days to 120.
It’s hard to overstate how central oil is to Ms. Smith’s move to engineer the conditions for a separation referendum.
“The world looks at us like we’ve lost our minds,” she said in an address to Albertans this month. “We have the most abundant and accessible natural resources of any country on earth, and yet we land lock them, sell what we do produce to a single customer to the south of us, while enabling polluting dictatorships to eat our lunch.”
“For Albertans, these attacks on our province by our own federal government have become unbearable,” she added.
Citizen groups have already collected thousands of signatures. Dennis Modry, a retired surgeon and a founder of a volunteer group leading a referendum campaign called the Alberta Prosperity Project, said it had gathered about 240,000 signatures.
“It’s a very serious turning point,” he said.
A new leader’s pivot
For Mr. Carney, talk of separatism is a problem he can do without as he tries to steer Canada to safer waters in the country’s rift with the United States under Mr. Trump.
But he knows how crucial the moment is for Alberta, and for Canada. Mr. Carney, a native of Alberta, has stepped carefully in his public statements, making sure not to come across as dismissive of the province’s resentment toward Ottawa.
“Canada is stronger when we work together,” he said this month following his first official visit to the White House. “As an Albertan, I firmly believe that you can always ask a question, but I know what I would respond.”
Mr. Carney’s own ideological preferences over the role of oil and gas in climate change are an important backdrop — and one he seems aware of, too. In recent years, after a career in central banking and the private sector, Mr. Carney became something of an evangelist for sustainable finance, investing and fund-raising for projects geared toward fighting climate change.
Mr. Carney has so far made generally pro-energy statements, although he’s not committed to implementing the pro-oil policies Ms. Smith is demanding.
Some are willing to give him a chance, for now.
“He changed relatively quickly,” said Doug Hayden, a real estate developer in Calgary who gives Mr. Carney and the Liberals credit for pivoting to the political center and ending an unpopular carbon tax on consumers introduced by Mr. Trudeau’s government. “These two parties probably have more in common now than they have differences.”
But it’s not just separatists who agree with Ms. Smith that Ottawa needs the shock that a referendum could deliver.
“Ottawa needs a wake-up call from Alberta,” said Sean Fuller, a tattoo artist in Leduc, Alberta. “Most of us feel like we are Ottawa’s piggy bank and we don’t get anything in return for that. Maybe, if there is enough political noise over here, maybe Carney’s new government will have to pay attention.”
Talk of a 51st state
Mr. Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st state has a small number of Albertans excited. For them, separation from Canada could mean joining Mr. Trump’s United States, which they think is better aligned with their values.
Beside complaints about not reaping the benefits of its vast energy resources, Alberta has diverged from Canada on culture-war social issues, especially regarding vaccines during the pandemic, with many accusing the federal government of imposing public health mandates that restricted their freedom.
That’s when Paulette McCulloch said she started understanding the case for Alberta to join the United States.
Ms. McCulloch, 83, moved into a motor home after her husband’s death and since the pandemic has been driving around shopping plazas across the province selling “Alberta, U.S.A.” mugs, baseball caps, flags and bumper stickers.
“We’re being abused badly,” said Ms. McCulloch, while her R.V. was parked on a buffalo ranch in Camrose, Alberta, where she had been invited by organizers of a group seeking to make Alberta a U.S. state.
“We’ve got to do something about it.”
Vjosa Isai is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Toronto, where she covers news from across Canada.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the country.
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