"Even 20 percent [of Alberta poll respondents in favour of separation] is double what it was 20 years ago."

"If we continue to be just a piggy bank for the Liberal party, support for leaving [Canada] will continue to go up."

"Despite everything my generation did -- the Alberta baby boom generation, which I was in the middle of -- our 'West wants in' initiative has failed."

"I think we're more vulnerable today to predatory and destructive federal policies than we were in the 1980s."

Ted Morton, former Alberta energy minister

 

"Alberta has no voice in the Senate or in the House [of Commons]."

"It doesn't matter what we do, we have no voice. We're under-represented."

"The system is set up for us to fail." 

Mitch Sylvestre, head, Stay Free Alberta

Mitch Sylvestre, head of the group Stay Free Alberta, is shown on Monday with boxes of petitions being delivered to Elections Alberta. The group wants to trigger a referendum on whether Alberta should separate from Canada, however, ongoing court battles have temporarily trapped the bid in limbo. (Alice Burgat/Radio-Canada)

 

Of the entire Alberta population, despite the resentment most of Albertans feel toward the manner in which the long succession of mostly Liberal governments in Ottawa has off-handedly treated the province, only 20 percent currently support the prospect of separating from Canada, according to recent polls. Previously that number was lower. A Pollara Strategic Insights survey a month ago found 27 percent of respondents in favour of making Alberta independent from Canada, while another 15 percent responded "yes" to sending a message to Ottawa of Alberta discontent in its role in Confederation.

 

According to Ted Morton, an early supporter of the federal Reform Party that was merged with the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper, much of the anger from Alberta can be attributed to failed efforts to readjust the Canadian federation to balance western interests; through initiatives such as the Reform Party's "the West wants in" campaign, to successive attempts by Alberta premiers to thwart Ottawa's federal power over the province.

 

From energy policy to Senate reform, through the courts and in the House of Commons, Western conservatives have attempted to challenge the federal government to no avail; each of those efforts were summarily rebuffed. The 2015 election of Justin Trudeau emphasized Alberta's dismal progress; the Trudeau government was viewed as actively hostile toward the oil and gas sector. Nonetheless the province transferred a net $244 billion between 2007 and 2022 in taxes to the federal government, according to the Fraser Institute.

 

Supporters carry boxes of signatures to submit for a separation referendum to Elections Alberta Monday May 4, 2026. Photo: AP

 

An organization called Stay Free Alberta submitted a petition to the electoral office of Alberta this week, having collected over 300,000 signatures from Albertans who could visualize the province separating from Canada. Representing well in excess of the 177,000 signatures (10 percent of the population) required to potentially force a referendum vote on the issue in October. The signatures must go through a verification process by Elections Alberta, whose completion could take months.

 

Should the referendum proceed in October, and should a majority of Albertans vote to leave, negotiations between Alberta and the Crown to determine the terms of a potential separation would take place. Alberta has a population of five million people and that has gained them no more than seven senatorial representation seats in the Senate of Canada. New Brunswick with its population of 900,000 has 12 senate seats, while Quebec has 24 senators with its population of nine million. Clearly, there is much awry in those numbers. 

 

If Albertans are looking for justification for their pro-independence move, the issue of hundreds of billions of dollars the province has transferred to Ottawa as a result of its oil wealth over the decades is one very good one. The federal government's environmental policies have served to choke off Alberta's fossil fuel industry; another. Likewise, Ottawa's out-of-control immigration rates and fiscal spending leading to endless multibillion-dollar deficits represent other issues worthy of discontent. 

 

Part of our work is a proposed carbon capture and storage network and pipeline  Photo location NAIT

 

Despite these setbacks, Alberta's economic productivity (gross domestic product output on a per-person basis) continues to outpace all other provinces, a major boon for the federal economy, while Canada elsewhere is mired in a productivity crisis. Alberta's royalties are set to rise against the backdrop of the Iran-conflict oil price upward spiral; its equalization payments doled out by the federal government to lesser economies in Atlantic Canada and Quebec are indispensable. 

 

Yet continued neglect of Alberta by the federal government will convert that indispensable to dispensable, advantaging no one at all. Little wonder that Alberta separatists are tired of being mired in the situation of the milch-cow that continues to be fettered by federal incompetence born of indifference to fair dealing. 

 

Christina Lake, Oil Sands Alliance

 

"Spend time in Ottawa and out East, and it's not even that there's a hostility toward the West, although I think some westerners think there is one. It's kind of worse than that. They don't even think about the West, we're not even a concern or a consideration."

"You can understand why they didn't respect the West [a century ago]. It was only about three or four percent of the national population." 

"But things have changed, and that comes full circle to my frustration."

"We're still working under a system that, in a lot of respects, reflects the values of 100-some years ago, when it was founded, rather than the much different dynamic today."

Cory Morgan, author, The Sovereigntist's Handbook: Charting the Course to Western Independence