WASHINGTON, D.C. — Could they really break up Canada?
In recent months — and as recently as last week — separatists have been wooing the Trump administration for support for an independent Alberta. They plan to continue those discussions with the U.S. State Department, and one Alberta Republican even plans to take the campaign further south, to Latin America, to rustle up support for the cause. The idea is to have friends with open chequebooks if (they say “when”) their efforts lead to a “Yes” vote.
Back home, the bid for Alberta independence saw a victory on Monday that could soon lead to a referendum: Elections Alberta approved a referendum question proposed by the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP). Following months of legal wrangling over the APP question’s constitutionality — a fight rendered moot by the provincial government’s passage of Bill 14, which greenlights citizen initiatives despite questions of constitutionality — it has won a chance to gather signatures for a potential referendum.
Their question? Do you agree that the province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?
APP co-founder Jeff Rath and his colleagues, pointing to momentum, are doing what they can to prepare for success.
“I think it’s important that we put the building blocks for success in place to make sure that when Alberta’s negotiating its independence from Canada, it can do so from a position of strength,” Rath said, detailing his recent meetings with U.S. officials in Washington.
Having the White House on speed dial, after all, could be handy.
From America, with love?
Rath said that he and Dr. Dennis Modry, APP’s CEO, were in the American capital last Tuesday, meeting with officials at the Department of State. They discussed how the U.S. could support Alberta independence.
“One of the things that we’d like to see is U.S. recognition of Alberta as an independent country immediately upon a successful referendum,” Rath said, reiterating what he’s told National Post in recent months.
While no formal agreements have been made, the discussions also focused on the possibility of conducting a financial health study — Rath mentioned major brands like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs — to line up substantial financing.
“We were talking about introductions to officials of the U.S. Treasury,” Rath said, pointing to a feasibility study to secure a $500 billion line of credit.
This, he said, “would allow Alberta to negotiate its departure from Canada from a position of strength.”
Rath said the discussions also focused on the possibility of building two pipelines, post-independence, with one going through the Midwest to the Gulf Coast and another through Montana or Idaho and Washington to the West Coast. The plan is to double down on oil exports to and through the U.S., and Rath is excited to see such plans come to fruition without being hampered by federal red tape.
Such discussions are a bit premature, according to Cameron Davies, the leader of the Republican Party of Alberta, but he can see the logic in working on additional pipelines with Washington.
For now, he’s focused on getting to a referendum, but he said it “makes a lot of sense to have different options for pipeline access to the West Coast.”
“If Canada wants to continue to fight over access to Tidewater even after Alberta is an independent nation, then why wouldn’t we have a discussion with the United States about having a pipeline, either through Oregon or Washington?” he added.
The APP and Davies have generated headlines this year about their trips south and attempts to secure a pledge for U.S. recognition of an independent Alberta, frequently reaching out to journalists to discuss their every move. Rath believes this is helping feed the momentum for the movement he claims he sees back home.
“I think it’s extremely helpful,” Rath said about the headlines regarding potential U.S. support. “People want to know what an independent Alberta’s going to look like, and they want to know that we’re going to be successful.”
Andrew Hale, a senior policy fellow at Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., does not think it’s appropriate for U.S. officials to meet with separatists from any Canadian province, but he understands why they have.
“Obviously, I can see why the Trump administration people would do so to maybe just prod the (Prime Minister Mark) Carney government and maybe upset them a bit.”
But Hale said wooing U.S. support could backfire in Alberta, owing to the anti-American sentiment generated by President Donald Trump joking about Canada becoming the 51st state and launching a trade war.
“(Trump’s antics) ensured the Liberal party, which had less than a five per cent chance of winning the general election (under Trudeau), had a second chance,” Hale said, pointing to how Liberal political operatives told him they couldn’t believe their luck, which they attributed to Trump, earlier this year.
“I can’t see how President Trump or his administration’s interference in domestic politics can help anyone in Canada, whether it be separatists or anyone else.”
Davies said he didn’t know how news about his U.S. trips and discussions this year were impacting public opinion back home, but he did say he plans to expand his international support efforts. In early 2026, he has trips planned to both Argentina and El Salvador.
“I think it’s helping to raise the conversation about what is happening, and it’s forcing people who may not be aware of what’s happening to start looking into it, and to become aware that we’re a province of nearly five million people that is talking about leaving one of the G7 nations … and forming our own independent republic.”
Can independence really prevail?
Rath and Davies claim to have seen polling numbers in favour of independence as high as 45 and 52 per cent in recent months, but they failed to share more information or links to any such polls, other than less-than-scientific social media surveys.
Earlier this year, it looked like support for secession was growing. Angus Reid’s April 2025 surveys showed separatist sentiment in Alberta at around 30 per cent.
Innovative Research Group’s surveys, meanwhile, reflected a slight softening in separatist support last summer, after the federal election, which means the numbers are likely somewhere south of 30 per cent.
Most analysts believe separation remains highly unlikely, but separatist leaders are unfazed. They believe a referendum campaign would quickly raise these numbers. Even former Alberta politico Thomas Lukaszuk, who founded the Alberta Forever Canada campaign earlier this year to halt the independence movement’s efforts and ensure Alberta remains in Canada, fears the separatists could break through.
When asked whether a separatist referendum could be successful, Lukaszuk said, “Yes, I do.” But that’s not because there are enough separatists in Alberta, he added.
“I agree with all the polling that the number of people who are seriously considering separatism is no higher than 20, maybe a maximum of 25 per cent,” he said.
“But the problem with referenda is that a lot of people frivolously check off on a referendum as a ‘Yes’ because they want to send some kind of a message,” he added, claiming that even Brexit won because of the protest vote.
Lukaszuk never intended for his campaign to lead to a referendum question; he’d hoped Premier Danielle Smith would pose his question — “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?” — to the Alberta legislature instead, putting the issue to rest. Instead, Smith’s government made it easier for the APP’s referendum to happen, so Lukaszuk is now switching gears.
“We need to pivot our Forever Canadian campaign from a signature-gathering campaign into a fully fledged referendum campaign,” he said, noting that it’s now “obvious the premier is going to call a referendum in the new year.”
When asked whether Smith is likely to call a referendum on separation in 2026, her office simply pointed to the law.
“Alberta has a citizen-initiated referendum law that allows concerned citizens to put forward policies for referendums,” Smith’s press secretary, Sam Blackett, wrote by email. “If there is support for independence, that process is the proper avenue for citizens to bring it forward for all Albertans to have a say on.”
Elections Alberta’s decision to approve the APP’s question means Rath and his team have until early January to appoint a financial officer and begin collecting signatures. They will then have four months to get 180,000 signatures, he said.
If a referendum is held on separatism and even if, however unlikely, a “Yes” prevails, the legal matters are far from over.
Putting a pin in the constitutionality question only sidesteps the issue, according to Adrienne Davidson, assistant professor of political science at McMaster University.
“It may not be necessary for a question to be constitutional,” she wrote by email, noting that it was just the legislative requirement previously set out by the Citizen Initiative Act.
“But at some point, a referendum like this will have to contend with the fact that it undermines Indigenous treaty rights in Canada.”
That alone may not halt the march toward independence, Davidson admitted. But any successful referendum would place an obligation on both the government aiming to secede and the federal government “to work with Indigenous nations to preserve their rights as the Constitution stipulates.”
In other words, a referendum on separation may happen, and it might even succeed, but then the real legal wrangling begins.
— With files from Rahim Mohamed
National Post
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