Will Alberta Leave Canada? Its Conservative Premier Pushes the Case

Alberta is a Canadian province where it is possible to witness the causes and consequences of a warming planet, its climate crisis, as well as the political confrontations it has provoked. As a result, secession in Canada is not just a “Quebec Thing” and Trump bluster is not without support. The Great White North is not coming apart, but rumblings are being felt on the Prairies.

Canadian voters retained the center-left Liberal Party in power in their country’s federal election on April 28. The Liberals captured 169 seats in parliament, but just two came from Alberta. The opposition Conservative Party captured 34 of Alberta’s 37 seats in the House of Commons, and went 13-for-14 next door in Saskatchewan. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own House seat in Ontario. As King Charles III delivered the Throne Speech this week, Poilievre is waiting for a byelection to return him to parliament — in Alberta.

The results bespeak a divided country, with shades of America’s divisions. Alberta is feeling left without influence at the national level. Even the cities of Calgary and Edmonton, where the Liberals garnered some support, returned Conservative MP’s.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is a right wing populist, and a secession referendum, in some form, is more than likely. “It will probably be spring of next year that we would put it to the people to decide,” Smith told a recent town meeting.

The Alberta government has set out a list of nine demands that would virtually strip Canada’s national government of all authority. The first demand, repeal of Canada’s carbon tax. “AXE THE TAX” was a Conservative battle cry and gospel to the petroleum economy. But Smith’s government would go much further. What does she want? In Smith’s words, “our jurisdiction over energy production, our jurisdiction over electricity production, our jurisdiction over resource production, our jurisdiction over food production.” 

Smith speaks of “strong and sovereign provinces in a united Canada.” The premier’s United Conservative Party, with rural roots, is a political home to secessionists. “I’ve drawn a pretty clear line in the sand” in dealing with Ottawa, says Smith. One problem: it’s more a movable wish list than a line. And she’s been on both sides of the line.

The premier is pushing legislation to make it easier to put a secession referendum on the ballot while insisting she doesn’t want to break up the country. Smith would give Alberta voters a chance to vent their anger, “much of which she has stoked,” in words of University of Lethbridge politics professor Peter Harrison.

Alberta is Canada’s oil patch, exporting 4 million barrels a day by pipeline, mainly to America’s Midwest. A massively expensive ($34 billion Canadian) tripling of the TransMountain Pipeline, stretching from Edmonton down to Burnaby just east of Vancouver in British Columbia, has opened a saltwater port for tanker-borne oil exports. That pipeline’s capacity is 890,000 barrels a day of bitumen crude oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta. Output from the expanded pipeline, not yet operating at full capacity, is supplying West Coast refineries in the U.S. as well as China.

We bear the potential environmental consequences. The oil-laden tankers pass through Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet, traverse Haro Straiit — the boundary between Canada’s Gulf Islands and our San Juans — and out through the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  It’s a passage through some of the world’s most popular and sensitive marine waters. 

The record of the Canadian Coast Guard in its pokey response to small oil spills is not reassuring. B.C. Premier John Horgan (and Gov. Jay Inslee) opposed the TransMountain expansion. Alberta briefly retaliated with a threatened ban on exporting B.C. wines.

The Alberta tar sands have boosted Canada to fourth place among the world’s oil producing nations. Yet, the province is also feeling the pains of human-caused global warming. Glaciers in the Canadian Rockies, the source of rivers that sustain Canada’s Prairie provinces, are rapidly shrinking. Warmer, drier spring weather has fueled vast wildfires. The fires have burned part of the national park town of Jasper, and these fires threatened, damaged, and forced evacuation of Fort McMurray, the center of Alberta’s oil patch.

Alberta is ferocious in its defense and advocacy of the carbon economy. Oil is its income, and coal is a primary source of its electricity. So far, the proposed deal offers no price breaks within Canada and no national strategy that would benefit Ontario and Quebec. Also, more pipelines would be fast tracked for construction across Canada’s most populous provinces.

On both sides of the 49th Parallel, right wing populists thrive on claims of persecution and demonizing those who disagree with them. The ire of the oil patch has been directed at Prime Ministers Pierre Elliott Trudeau and son Justin Trudeau. The elder Trudeau instituted a National Energy Policy and created a state-owned oil company in PetroCanada. The company motto — “It’s Ours” — riled advocates of Alberta sovereignty.

Under Trudeau II, the federal government pushed TransMountain completion and bought the pipeline. But Covid 19 vaccine mandates, pushed by Justin Trudeau, roused libertarian protest on the Prairies, resulting in a trucker blockade of a major border crossing and Danielle Smith’s spouting of anti-vaxxer nonsense.

The Alberta government indulges in conspiracy theories. It conducted a much-balleyhooed investigation of environmental groups opposing pipelines and tar-sands development, even if the results were inconclusive. A voice of the Canadian right, Preston Manning, made headlines in April with a warning that a vote for the Liberals could trigger recession in Western Canada, from the outskirts of Winnipeg to the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. 

Secession remains a long shot: Polls show a healthy majority of Albertans don’t want to break away. The “51st state” rhetoric from Trump has backs up in Atlantic Canada, Central Canada, Quebec, and Western Canada. 

New Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney grew up in Edmonton and is fully aware of the discontent. Opposition in the Alberta Legislature has a popular new leader in ex-Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi. An alumnus of Harvard’s Kennedy School, the popular Nenshi is a strong federalist.

The Calgary Stampede is coming up in July, an event where Canada’s political leaders are expected to show up, including the Trudeaus. Prime Minister Mark Carney will be in the spotlight, as he will have the trickiest ride of the event.

This story also appears in Cascadia Advocate.