Albertans are very good at keeping things that damage their prosperity out of their province. Take rats, for instance. The vermin were designated an agricultural menace in the1950s and after 18 months of chemical warfare Alberta – which is the same size as Texas – was declared rat-free. Today a poison-laced buffer zone with Saskatchewan province and a vigilant population stops their return.
The leaders of the resurgent Alberta independence campaign have identified a new set of damaging pests to keep out: the federal government in Ottawa and its new ally the Chinese government. While they believe that Ottawa is taking too much of their money – Alberta is by far the largest net contributor to the federal purse – a central part of their campaign is focused on China, which they claim is moving to take over Canada and has a particular interest in their oil-rich province.
Separatists know they have a steep hill to climb to force a referendum later this year and persuade Albertans to actually leave Canada. But the reward, they believe, is worth the fight: independence would inspire other provinces to follow suit – it could be the fissure that shatters the entire country – and Alberta would be free to become the de facto 51st state of the US.
The Trump administration is certainly keen for the separatists to succeed. Campaign leaders have held three meetings with White House officials on trade and energy. Last month US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Alberta is a “natural partner for the US,” and welcomed plans by the separatists to build an oil pipeline to the US. A divided Canada and its attendant weakened negotiating position would also please Trump.
Critically, for both DC and the separatists, the fight is also a proxy war with Beijing. Canada, the Trump administration fears, is becoming a vassal state of China. Canada has a $57bn trade deficit with China and last month Prime Minister Mark Carney lowered tariffs on Chinese electric cars in return for tariff relief on agricultural exports. Trump warned that China would “devour” Canada.
Jeff Rath, legal counsel for the Alberta Prosperity Project that is pushing for independence, fears that next China will eat up Alberta’s oil industry. Only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela hold bigger reserves of crude than Alberta. A China state owned firm has already bought Canadian oil company Nexen Inc. and Sinopec – the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation – is purchasing Canadian oil companies.
“Albertans do not want their oil fields controlled by communist China,” he told me. “Anybody who’s seen the way that the Chinese operate internationally, whether it’s in Africa or Venezuela, knows this is the thin edge of the wedge. There’ll be a Chinese pipeline built by these Chinese companies without a doubt to provide a secure supply of oil to China. The choice for Albertans really is between China and America.”
Wrath was involved in all three meetings with the Trump administration in DC and says another is planned soon. Securing a US pipeline and thwarting Chinese aspirations would accord with Trump’s Donroe Doctrine of asserting US dominance in the Western hemisphere.
“Our discussions at our last meeting where we raised the pipeline issue got briefed as high as the level of the US Secretary of Treasury. We have a high degree of confidence that is also supported by the President. We’d like to have a pipeline that goes through Montana, Idaho, Washington, or Oregon to the Pacific Northwest to service California and the Pacific Rim sooner rather than later.”
But if the dream of a pipeline and independence is to be realized, first campaigners have to secure 177,732 signatures – equal to ten percent of the number of votes cast in the previous general election – to trigger a referendum. A recent survey found that 65 percent would either vote to stay in Canada or lean that way if a referendum on separation was held today – while 29 percent said they would vote for or lean toward leave. The referendum has been pencilled in for 19 October.
The independence campaign promises for 4.9 million Albertans are tempting: zero federal income tax – saving 35 percent in most pay packets, doubling of pension pots and tripling the amount of money for indigenous communities to eliminate poverty. “We’re probably one of the few provinces in Canada who within six to 12 months of becoming independent could turn in a surplus budget.”
Known as the Texas of Canada, Alberta stretches 760 miles from its border with Montana to the permafrost regions of the north, rich with oil sands that produce nine times more crude than Alaska. So as Carney turns towards the east, it’s perhaps understandable that ordinary Albertans – ranchers and farmers – are turning south to the US. They believe they share a closer connection with Americans than they do with the Chinese or even the residents of the liberal cities their oil reserves fund. They see themselves as already having a separate, more rugged and spirited, identity compared to their fellow Canadians.
“Albertans are hardworking people. We want to get up in the morning, take care of our families, earn a living to take care of our kids and our parents. We resent governments telling us which firearms we’re allowed to hunt with, what we can and can’t do on our ranches. The government of Canada now wants to issue birth certificates for every calf born in Alberta. How do you think that’s playing with the ranching community in Alberta?
“Right now we have a lousy deal from Canada. We don’t like people thousands of miles away from us that don’t like us and don’t understand us telling us what to do. Other Canadians are more easily led around. Albertans aren’t afraid of much, and we’re certainly not afraid of our business partners in the United States.
“We have no particular interest in developing or expanding a relationship with communist China when we could just continue being good friends and allies to the United States and expanding our business relationship.”
Opponents of independence have accused Wrath and other campaigners of treason. They say that Alberta’s economy would collapse without Canada to backstop it, investment would flee, the cost of setting up replacement federal services would be vast and that separatists aren’t to be trusted – they are in the pocket of oil and gas companies and would ruin environmental protections.
“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada there’s an old-fashioned word for that – and that word is treason,” David Eby, the premier of British Columbia, said.
Separatist sentiment is once again coming to a head 2,000 miles away on the other side of the country in Quebec – the movement failed most recently in 1995 by little more than a percentage point. The Parti Québécois is now leading handily in opinion polls and has racked up a series of byelection victories ahead of the fall provincial election. Party leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised to launch a referendum on Quebec independence if he wins power. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of would vote against independence, although there has been a recent uptick in support for independence among younger voters.
Wrath believes Alberta independence could trigger a domino effect. “If Alberta votes for independence, it makes Quebec’s departure from Canada a virtual certainty. Why would Quebec stay in Canada if they were no longer getting $15 bn a year from Alberta? They’d be using our money to bribe Quebec to stay in Canada for decades.” He reckons Saskatchewan could follow suit.
Wrath takes heart from the Brexit vote in 2016, just as he believes that Carney – who was Governor of the Bank of England at the time and accused of breaking his independence by arguing against Brexit – still suffers from PTSD over it. Carney’s intervention to warn that Brexit “was the biggest risk to financial stability,” ignited a firestorm of controversy with some crediting it with galvanizing support for Brexit. The looming threat, if at this stage only distant, of being involved in the breakup of two countries is apparently weighing heavily on him.
“He’s living the same nightmare all over again. I’ve heard from people that are close to Carney that he is experiencing a form of PTSD and being involved, to his mind, in potentially breaking up two countries.”
Will Wrath and the separatists succeed? The odds are stacked against them. But then referendums are notoriously unpredictable with often tumultuous campaigns that yield unexpected results. Albertans may come round to his way of thinking and decide the federal government and their newfound friends the CCP are the vermin they need to eradicate – or they may decide that the pests are Rath and co.
Wrath, a fifth generation Albertan, says jovially that without risk there’s no reward and the reward in this case is substantial: “How many times in somebody’s life do they have the opportunity to create a new country?”
