Separatists in Alberta are ramping up a petition campaign aimed at triggering an independence vote in the western province that has long complained its economy is being held back by the rest of Canada.
Volunteer canvassers are hoping to collect by 2nd May approximately 177,000 signatures, or 10 per cent of the province’s registered voters, the threshold required to launch a citizen-led referendum on separation from Canada.
While unlikely to result in an independent Alberta, the campaign poses a challenge to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s efforts to show a united Canadian front in the face of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats to annex the country.
In the picturesque town of High River in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a slow trickle of residents stopped by a quiet strip mall on a recent Thursday morning to sign their names to the independence petition. While some expressed personal admiration for Trump, most said joining the United States was not their goal – they want Alberta to be its own country instead.
A politically conservative province that produces most of Canada’s oil and gas, Alberta is home to long-running resentment among many that successive Liberal governments in Ottawa have hamstrung the industry’s profitability with onerous environmental regulations.
Jeff Rath, the firebrand spokesman for the Alberta Prosperity Project group that supports independence, says the separatist movement is gaining pace. He confirmed he and other activists met with US State Department officials in Washington in January to get a sense of how the US administration would respond to an independent Alberta.
Rath said he floated the idea of a new oil pipeline from Alberta to the United States – which he said US officials responded to positively, noting their concerns on Ottawa’s plans to sell more energy to China.
“The only thing we’re interested in is a free and independent Alberta, not statehood,” Rath said.
