Opinion by Jamie Sarkonak
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National Post
A rally and counterprotest for the Alberta separatist movement drew hundreds of people to the Alberta Legislature on Saturday, May 3, 2025.
In a livestreamed address Monday, Premier Danielle Smith indicated that, though she doesn’t support Alberta’s separatist movement, she will certainly use it as leverage in negotiating a new deal for the province. It’s a bold strategy, but it’s hard to see it playing out.
What the premier wants is not independence, but a new “binding agreement” between the feds and the province that makes a number of guarantees — land corridor and seaport access for energy exports, an end to net-zero constraints (including plastics regulations, EV mandates and corporate climate disclosure requirements), the repeal of the Impact Assessment Act, and boosted per-capita equalization payments equivalent to those received by B.C, Ontario and Quebec.
She also demanded that the feds promise to never place export taxes on Alberta resources without the province’s consent — a demand no doubt in response to the trade war. In January, polling showed that 82 per cent of Canadians supported slapping export taxes onto oil exports to the U.S., and 72 per cent support in the Prairies; Smith has strongly opposed export taxes on oil throughout the trade war.
That’s all fine and good; provinces demand things all the time. But in Alberta’s case, the premier is inflating the expectations of her followers by making a few unmeetable demands, and preparing to channel the resulting anger and disappointment into doomed dealmaking efforts that, at worst, will harm the country’s conservative movement overall.
Take the first insurmountable obstacle: equalization reform. Since 1957 , the federal government has used the taxes it’s constitutionally empowered to collect to support the budgets of less-prosperous provinces. Currently, the formula is designed to excuse Quebec’s refusal to be a team player in Canada’s broader energy economy (Quebec’s hydro revenues don’t count towards the province’s revenues, which results in the province receiving far more federal welfare than it should). With a federal Liberal minority government, we shouldn’t expect that to change.
Related video: Doug Ford dispels talk of feud with Danielle Smith, maintains he's against Alberta separation (Global News)Duration 2:37
Albertans make more money, pay more in federal taxes and thus contribute more per head to the federal pool of funds than the rest of the country. The provincial government can’t do anything about it any more than the feds can direct the province’s funding of individual school boards within its borders. That’s why Alberta’s first run at changing equalization by former Alberta premier Jason Kenney didn’t go anywhere, and why subsequent province-level chest-thumping won’t help; for reform to work, it will take a reform-friendly government in Ottawa — say, a Conservative majority willing to wean anti-energy Quebec from the federal welfare teat.
Smith runs into similar jurisdictional hiccups in demanding port access and cross-country corridors. These are ultimately matters of federal jurisdiction. Now, if this country had competent people running it, it would be aggressively working to get more interior products out to the coast, ideally opening new ports in the process. But alas, that’s not what Canadians voted for. Asking for it is one thing, but Canada’s highest “binding agreement,” the Constitution, says that ports and interjurisdictional transport are the federal government’s business.
It’s not all bad — the premier is absolutely right to fight potentially unconstitutional laws, which she has done vigorously. The challenges to the Impact Assessment Act and Clean Electricity Regulations are underway, and the fight on federal plastics regulation has already been won. Threatening more challenges and then backing those words up with court filings is what should be done. But there are other fronts on which she has no chance in winning — and that’s where separatist flirtation comes in.
It was an obvious tactic by Smith to advance legislation that eases the way of citizen-driven referendums onto the ballot. Doing so transfers the thorny decision of whether to put independence on the ballot from the premier to a political process over which she has no direct control but which she designed knowing full well that a certain group would be using it. Responsibility is diffused, and “democracy” can always be invoked to defend it.
The best a referendum can do is start up the Alberta independence process, which, if successful — and that’s unlikely — would be a disaster for the ensuing nation. Any qualms about tidewater access would be dwarfed in the post-separation scenario (separatists would point to a United Nations treaty that in theory opens the way to port access for landlocked states, but that’s no guarantee for favourable port access). Threatening to secede when independence gets you even farther from your current demands is simply unserious.
The same goes for arguments for U.S. statehood, by the way. Alberta’s frustrations with its confederation deal — too few MPs in the House of Commons; too few senators — trace back to its late addition to the federation and the lesser leverage that came with. It’s delusional to expect that the U.S. in 2025 would offer a better entrance bonus to this majority-Democrat-leaning province.
Alberta should be treated better, but Quebec-style fight-picking with Ottawa isn’t a winning route. Yes, Quebec throws separatist-tinged tantrums to get what it wants, but it comes across as bratty and spoiled. Yes, the federal government, in turn, comes across as a bad parent, giving the province the equivalent of candy for its bad behaviour. But the separatist movement doesn’t offer a fix; that’s going to take electing a federal Conservative government with the guts to put Quebec in its place.
Alberta’s tantrums, led by its minority of secessionists, will only cultivate an eyeroll-inducing victim complex that sours the entire country towards our province. Taken further, it will potentially threaten both the United Conservative Party’s unity in Alberta and the prospects of a Tory victory in a future federal election.
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