Canada’s oil-rich western province of Alberta has voted to remain in the country. But its dispute with the federal government is far from settled: many Albertans believe Ottawa depends on their oil wealth while pursuing policies that undermine the industry producing it.
In the October 19 referendum, voters overwhelmingly rejected beginning the legal process towards a binding independence referendum. They were deciding whether to start a process towards another vote, rather than directly choosing independence. The result does not permanently close the issue. The disputes over energy, money and political power that brought separatism into the mainstream remain unresolved.
For readers outside Canada, the surprise may be that this challenge to Canadian unity came from Alberta rather than Quebec, the largely French-speaking province with a long-established independence movement. Canada’s federal government now has to contend with both.
A revolt decades in the making
Separatism has simmered in Alberta for decades without much real political impact. The economic damage Albertans associate with former Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s energy policies gave it new force.
Trudeau, who governed from 2015 to 2025, pursued restrictions on Alberta’s oil industry in the name of environmentalism. His remarks about the need to “phase out” the oil sands, the province’s vast deposits of heavy petroleum, gave Albertans a particularly clear reason to distrust Ottawa.
The oil-price collapse and changing investment patterns also contributed to the province’s difficulties. But federal policy compounded the damage and reinforced the belief that the government was deliberately constraining an industry central to Alberta’s prosperity.
Separatist sentiment intensified in spring 2025 when another Liberal federal government was elected under Trudeau’s successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney. His previous advocacy of Net Zero emissions raised concerns that Ottawa would continue subordinating Alberta’s economic interests to its climate agenda.
Carney, meanwhile, seems to have discovered realism under the pressure of national divisions and the need for Alberta’s wealth generation to strengthen the federal economy. He has partially reversed the previous approach and now promotes, with qualifications, oil development and pipeline construction. A proposed pipeline to the Pacific coast would open greater access to Asian markets and reduce dependence on American buyers.
Why the separatists lost
The recent, greatly expanded grassroots separatist movement was extraordinarily shambolic. Various, poorly coordinated groups and actors presented no convincing plan for how independence would work. They failed to address the fundamental questions of political and business uncertainty.
Prominent figures also faced serious financial controversies. Jeffrey Rath, a lawyer and legal counsel to the Alberta Prosperity Project, an organisation campaigning for independence, faced a claim alongside his firm for nearly CAD$109 million in alleged unpaid debt. The claim remained unresolved in the September reporting. Separately, CBC reported that a civil court had found Dennis Modry, a co-founder of the same separatist organisation, misappropriated money from elderly relatives and ordered repayment.
Foreign involvement added another complication. Separatist leaders met US State Department officials, although American officials said no commitments were made. Separately, researchers identified Russian-linked websites and online networks promoting separatist narratives. Those findings raise concerns about outsiders exploiting Canadian divisions without establishing that the movement itself was foreign-controlled.
Meanwhile, the campaign to keep Alberta in Canada was focused, well organised and backed by prominent political and business voices. Many Canadians also rallied around the flag because of President Donald Trump’s recurrent crude talk of making Canada a 51st US state.
That roughly a quarter of participating Albertans still supported beginning a process towards a separation referendum in these circumstances suggests the issue is not dead. Separatism is now part of Alberta’s political discourse. With a better campaign, it could return if the federal government again turns hostile.
An earlier confrontation still looms large in the province’s memory. In 1980, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father, introduced the National Energy Program, expanding federal intervention in the oil industry and seeking a larger federal share of energy revenues. Many Albertans remember it as an assault on provincial control over their resources. For them, the confrontations under his son repeated a familiar pattern: Ottawa exerting control over Western wealth while discounting Western objections.
The price of belonging
The financial grievance is substantial. A Fraser Institute estimate puts Albertans’ cumulative net contribution to federal finances over 2007/08–2026/27 at CAD$321.9 billion, including projections. In other words, federal revenues collected from Alberta exceeded federal spending and transfers received there by that amount.
Albertans’ anger towards Ottawa is therefore about more than symbolism. Many believe their wealth is welcomed while their priorities are ignored. Sharing prosperity is part of a federation. The objection arises when taxpayers believe the same government benefiting from their economic activity is restricting their ability to prosper.
Equalization, Canada’s system of federal payments to help provinces with weaker revenue-raising capacity provide comparable public services, is a particular source of resentment. The programme is funded from federal general revenues, including taxes paid by Albertans. Alberta’s provincial government does not send equalization cheques to Quebec. Nevertheless, Quebec receives substantial funding under the programme, while Alberta receives none.
Many Albertans see a perverse political arrangement: Quebec’s long-running independence sentiment earns attention and concessions, while Alberta’s contribution to the country is taken for granted. Unfinished business also remains from Alberta’s 2021 referendum on equalization. Some 61.7 per cent of participating voters supported removing the constitutional provision committing the federal government to the programme. That provincial vote could not itself change Canada’s Constitution, and the provision remains in place.
Besides the separation-process question, the latest referendum asked nine others concerning immigration, public services and provincial powers. Those results require care. Early indications that several proposals to change the constitutional balance would pass changed as counting continued, with the “no” side moving ahead. The referendum cannot be treated as a blanket endorsement of constitutional change.
Nor should rejection of particular proposals be mistaken for the disappearance of Western alienation: the belief that western provinces contribute to Canada’s prosperity but receive too little political influence or respect in return. If the federal government returns to ignoring Alberta and the West, the response is likely to be swift and sharp. Western nationalism will continue to simmer, ready for further outbursts if provoked.
A shift Ottawa cannot bottle up
The continuing economic and demographic rise of Western provinces has been described by Canadian journalists as the “Big Shift”. It points towards a rebalancing of political power away from the traditional eastern centres towards the West.
Indeed, Justin Trudeau’s Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, who governed for almost a decade, represented a constituency in Calgary, Alberta’s largest city. Seen in this context, Trudeau’s approach to Alberta was a return to an older pattern of federal control. Presented as environmental progress, it constrained an industry underpinning the rise of the West.
The attempt to bottle up that shift ran against Canada’s changing economic and demographic realities. The damage Albertans associate with the Trudeau years, a “lost decade” that risks remaining as unforgiven as Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program, helped turn a process of democratic rebalancing into a crisis.
There is a cultural divide behind the political confrontation. Eastern Canada’s political traditions were shaped in part by loyalty to the British Crown and a preference for paternalistic government. The traditions of the western prairie provinces place greater emphasis on pioneer culture, individual initiative, self-reliance and neighbourliness.
These are broad traditions rather than descriptions of every Canadian. But they help explain why the regions so often misunderstand each other. Many Westerners perceive an eastern arrogance towards a supposed backward periphery, valued for its resources but expected to accept a subordinate political position. Ottawa will not understand Western alienation if it refuses to examine its own contribution to it. If the East thinks the Western crisis has passed and normal service can resume, further upheaval is likely.
Quebec returns to the argument
Quebec, meanwhile, is yet again toying with independence. Its recent provincial election returned the separatist Parti Québécois to power, albeit without a majority of seats in the provincial legislature.
Quebec has conducted two independence referendums and came within a whisker of separating in 1995. Its nationalism presents Ottawa with demands very different from Alberta’s. While those seeking greater autonomy for Alberta want provinces treated equally within Canada, Quebec nationalists tend to see their province as a distinct nation whose relationship with the rest of the country requires special recognition.
The federal government therefore faces a hard job reconciling competing priorities. Concessions intended to satisfy Quebec can deepen resentment in Alberta, where taxpayers believe they are helping finance the settlement. With Alberta asserting its own demands more forcefully, those differences become harder to manage.
Canada has held together, but the disputes over energy, money and political power remain. Ottawa now faces competing demands from an alienated West and a Quebec government committed to independence. Satisfying one without further antagonising the other will require more than celebrating the referendum result.
Alberta’s separatists lost this vote. The grievances that sustained them remain. If Ottawa mistakes a decision to stay for permission to carry on unchanged, it risks giving the next separatist campaign a stronger case.
