Commentary
In just over a week, Albertans will vote on whether their provincial government should hold a referendum on whether the province should seek independence from Canada.
There is zero chance of it passing.
Albertans will overwhelmingly reject the advancement of the cause of separation within the nation’s most prosperous province. It has been 61 years since it was a “have not” province in receipt of equalization payments designed to ensure residents of all provinces enjoy relatively equal quality health care and education.
Since then, Alberta has contributed an estimated $600 billion more to the nation than it has received, the current pace ranging around $20–$24 billion a year. The Fraser Institute estimates the value of Alberta’s contribution to be equal to $1,000 annually to every taxpayer in Canada’s other provinces and territories.
It has done so despite an attempt by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1981 to seize control of the oil industry via the National Energy Program and an effort by his son, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, through a variety of means, to halt the growth of fossil fuel industries.
Alberta’s history of grievances goes back to its foundation as a province in 1905. It and Saskatchewan were carved out of the Northwest Territories as two provinces rather than one because politicians in Canada’s dominant domains—Quebec and Ontario—were nervous that a single large province would be capable of challenging their power and influence. The two provinces were also born children of a lesser god, having been denied access to the resource rights and revenues enjoyed by other provinces for their initial two decades.
Resentment grew during the Great Depression and the “dirty thirties” as eastern-based banks mercilessly—or so legend has it—foreclosed and Alberta defaulted on its debt in 1936, failing to redeem bond issues worth $3.2 million.
There have been other issues that over the years have been the cause of resentment. One, of course, is Canada’s profoundly unfair Senate structure which is based on ensuring Maritime provinces combined, and western provinces combined, would each have a number of seats equal to those granted to Quebec and Ontario individually. Thus there are 54 senators from all provinces east of Ontario, which has 24, and a mere 24 senators (six each) from provinces west of Ontario. There are 11.7 million Canadians living east of Ontario, and 12.7 million west of it.
If that isn’t frustrating enough, the senators are appointed. Alberta has tried changing that by holding Senate elections only to have federal governments ignore the results, the sole exceptions occurring when Canada had Conservative governments. Given that Albertans have historically voted Conservative both provincially and federally, it’s not hard to see how this would irritate the polity.
Then there’s the fact the federal—typically Liberal—government appoints Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench judges. I could go on, but by now you probably catch the drift.
Little wonder then, that a not insignificant minority of Albertans, maybe 15–20 percent, have persistently held to the belief the province would be better off on its own while many others felt that way from time to time. The latest rise in separatist sentiment, for instance, followed the re-election of a Liberal government in 2025 after a decade of what a great many people viewed as the relentless pursuit of aggressively anti-Alberta policies under Justin Trudeau.
And yet, for all that, Albertans remain staunchly Canadian. The federalist cause has no doubt been enhanced by the nation’s general sense of being under siege economically and psychologically by the recent U.S. protectionist policies. And the separatist cause has been harmed by a general lack of cohesion and unified leadership.
The joint efforts of Premier Danielle Smith and Trudeau’s replacement, Prime Minister Mark Carney, to take the edge off the animus towards Ottawa have also been effective. They have managed to cobble together a West Coast pipeline proposal and deemed it a project worthy of accelerated regulatory approval as a project of national importance. And, just last week, Smith with some delight noted that the feds had appointed two new judges after having worked with the province concerning their selection.
So the result of the Oct. 19 vote on whether to have a vote on whether to vote on Alberta’s continued participation in Canada is a foregone conclusion. The people of the province will reject the idea.
But it’s far too early to say that the matter has been dealt with. The pipeline and the judicial appointments are due to the attitudes of one man: Carney. Almost the entire Liberal caucus that supported Trudeau’s efforts to handcuff Alberta’s efforts to enhance it and the nation’s prosperity remains in place. The institutional barriers in terms of appointments and equal, elected representation remain.
Yes, a single pipeline has had prime ministerial holy water sprinkled upon it, but it is years from being built and a suspicion lingers that, once the province rejects a separation referendum, Ottawa will resume its historic tendency to view Alberta less as a promise and more as a threat to its traditional Laurentian oligarchy.
It would be unfortunate should those suspicions be confirmed. Because all Albertans have ever wanted is the freedom to succeed, a welcoming embrace, and an end to the smug condescension with which they believe they’ve been treated.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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