Adjacent to contemporary conservatism, western alienation has evolved since Preston Manning’s reaction to the Mulroney government in the 1980s and 1990s. One of Manning’s slogans was “the west wants in.” The contemporary western slogan is “we want out.” Political scientist Jared Wesley, drawing on the research of the Common Ground project on political culture in western Canada and the United States, offers this summary:

This is not the populism of agrarian protest that once defined the region. That earlier movement united religious folks, farmers, workers, and small business owners against … corporate monopolies, banks, and distant governments that controlled their lives. Through protests, cooperative movements, and unions, Westerners sought to democratize power and expand economic opportunity for people like them.

Contemporary western alienation takes on board a grievance more akin to the negative, exclusionary populism that currently prevails in the United States and elsewhere. Its target is new social, political and environmental norms associated with emergent identities that have substituted boundaries for what used to be boundless opportunity based on ownership of resource wealth. “Take Back Alberta” evolved out of the 2022 truckers’ convoy. It played an instrumental role in ousting Jason Kenney, former senior minister in the Harper government, and installing Danielle Smith as leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP). In Saskatchewan, the controversial group Unified Grassroots has grown in support while Premier Scott Moe is criticized for not denouncing it. Like Danielle Smith, he leads a party that has ties to a somewhat reactionary separatist movement.

A dangerous hybrid modelled on the étapisme – gradualist approach to independence – espoused by Quebec sovereigntists in the 1980s is emerging on the Prairies. Prairie étapisme is an anti-institutionalist brand of MAGA-style populism. Smith and Moe are just as ideologically conservative and partisan as Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney, but add Quebec political scientist Léon Dion’s “knife to the throat” strategy of holding the threat of separation over the rest of Canada. They are committed to working within the existing constitutional arrangements of Canadian federalism – provided they can get what they want.

The word sovereignty has become current in both provinces’ conservative governments. Both have passed legislation to protect provincial jurisdiction from federal encroachment: in Alberta, the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act in November 2022; in Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan First Act in March 2023. The intention in both cases was to raise the temperature to a boil if a Trudeau-style Liberal government was somehow reelected and maintained its constraint on oil and gas development.

Writing in the Tyee, Graham Thomson summarizes,

Smith inserted herself into the federal election campaign while also trying to stay out of it. She thanked the federal Liberals for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion while also accusing them of landlocking Alberta’s oil. She has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s incoherent tariff policies while also lauding him as a leader who makes “bold” decisions.

This strategy has remained on course despite Donald Trump’s reelection and despite his actual and threatened tariffs. Notwithstanding this radical change of context, Danielle Smith and Preston Manning thrust the idea of western secession into the federal election campaign.

Premier Smith’s adversarial stance has, if anything, intensified since Trump’s return. Upon entering office, Mark Carney signalled several major policy shifts including improved access to employment insurance, cancellation of the consumer carbon tax, a housing plan, a reduction in annual growth of government from 9 per cent to 2 per cent and a wide range of possible economic strategies, including an energy corridor and potential new pipeline construction to mitigate the effects of the trade war. Yet Smith was unmoved. She used her first meeting with the new Prime Minister on March 20 to present a list of nine demands, mostly relating to the oil and gas sector but also aimed at equalization:

• guaranteeing Alberta full access to oil and gas corridors to the north, east and west;
• repealing Bill C-69 (the unpopular 2019 Impact Assessment Act dubbed the “no more pipelines act” by conservative opponents);
• lifting the tanker ban off the BC coast;
• eliminating the oil and gas emissions cap, which is a production cap;
• scrapping the so-called Clean Electricity Regulations;
• ending the prohibition on single-use plastics;
• abandoning the net-zero car mandate;
• returning oversight of the industrial carbon tax to the provinces;
• halting the federal censorship of energy companies.

These are demands the Liberals “must address within the first six months of their term to avoid an unprecedented national unity crisis.”

The likelihood of such a crisis occurring was then greatly increased by the Smith government’s introduction – the day after the federal election to minimize scrutiny – of Bill 54, a package of democratic reforms that includes a proposal lowering the signature threshold for constitutional matters from 20 per cent of registered voters in two thirds of Alberta ridings to just 10 per cent of the people who voted in the previous provincial election. The bill also extends the signature collection period from 90 to 120 days for a citizens’ initiative or referendum. Tellingly, the legislation brought back corporate and union donations, and contained a number of provisions (banning vote tabulators, restricting access to the vote by eliminating “vote anywhere” provisions and increasing voter ID requirements) reminiscent of Republican voter suppression tactics in the United States.

Danielle Smith’s speech on May 5 expressed Alberta’s grievances about “the tidal wave of laws, policies and political attacks aimed directly at Alberta’s free economy” over the previous decade, and promised a referendum next year if the new lower threshold (of approximately 177,000 signatures) is met. Her forays into MAGA-friendly media outlets such as Breitbart News  and Ben Shapiro no doubt helped to blunt the impression of Canadian national unity and simultaneously sideline Prime Minister Carney’s careful, diplomatic rebuff to President Trump’s threats of annexation.

After Carney’s successful visit to Washington on May 6, right-wing media commentators in the United States began blowing on the embers of provincial separatism as the source of a possible consolation prize. Jeanine Pirro of the popular Fox News Show The Five speculated that Trump, ever the dealmaker, was sensing dissatisfaction in the provinces (“Alberta, Quebec and I think that there is another one”). Pirro mused, “All of this (negotiation between Trump and Carney) is just kind of, like, another discussion, but it’s really about those places that want to secede.” Her cohost Jesse Watters was more directly influenced by Smith’s efforts:

I think we want Alberta, because they’re the powerhouse. They have all the oil, they have all the minerals … They’re also conservative in Alberta, so it’s not a great, beautiful line like what you’d see (as a combined Canada with the U.S.) but it would just kind of look like a big Florida that would shoot up north. But it would give us access to the Arctic … There’s going to be a referendum, I don’t know if it’s going to be possible, but I like how he’s using the leverage. If these people want to go, just use that as a little pressure point to exploit them for concessions.

Alberta’s NDP opposition leader, Naheed Nenshi, is right to point out that Smith’s “dangerous dance with separatists” has not helped the trade war. She thereby did serious damage to Pierre Poilievre’s 2025 federal election campaign. Yet her hard stance against Ottawa continues to pay political dividends. The UCP’s vote projection has risen to 55.6 per cent, three points over their share of the popular vote in the May 2023 provincial election. Meanwhile, the New Democrats’ share has declined by 4.5 per cent to 39.6 per cent, notwithstanding the choice of the popular former Mayor of Calgary as their leader.

Moreover, the segment of public opinion in Alberta and Saskatchewan drawn to a separation referendum is significantly larger than just the fringe groups like the Alberta Prosperity Project led by Jeffrey Rath, or even the broader Take Back Alberta coalition. A recent Angus Reid poll showed that 19 per cent of Albertans and 15 per cent of Saskatchewan voters “definitely would vote to leave,” while a further 17 per cent in Alberta and 18 per cent in Saskatchewan “lean toward voting to leave.” Majorities of those in the “leaning” category  say they would be more likely to vote Stay if the federal government built an east-to-west pipeline, removed the emissions cap on oil and gas production and repealed Bill C-69.

But how many of these issues can be satisfactorily addressed within the stipulated, rather arbitrary, deadline? The part of Bill C-69 that most involved federal intrusion in provincial jurisdiction, dealing with “designated projects,” has already been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada. Is there no Impact Assessment Act needed? Exactly which pipeline proposals are most feasible (with the requisite Indigenous and private-sector buy-in), and have the approval of provincial governments in central and eastern Canada, is not yet clear. But most would be harder to come by for a landlocked and newly independent Alberta.

Equalization is still a source of friction, since Alberta, as the richest “have” province, has not received an equalization payment in 60 years. But even the majority of Albertans surveyed understand the need for such a program, and would be satisfied if the formula were merely tweaked to send fewer of their tax dollars to Quebec and Ontario. As for the demands to eliminate the emissions cap, the industrial carbon tax and the net-zero objectives in federal law, we must ask: is Canada still expected to fulfil its obligations under the Paris climate treaty, or is it not?

All these issues are amenable to the ongoing processes of intergovernmental negotiation and compromise. It is difficult to imagine how any of them, when placed under the right microscope, could be so infuriating as to drive Alberta out of Canada. Most people are betting on Canadian patriotism to win out over populist zeal. Nevertheless, recall the misplaced optimism of British Prime Minister David Cameron in calling the Brexit referendum in 2016, and the X-factor caused by oligarch media influencers south of the border. Add to that the real economic frustration caused by flat to declining average weekly earnings being experienced across the country (most of all in Alberta), and the potential exists for an unpleasant surprise in the referendum that now appears to be inevitable. And whatever those results are, expect Danielle Smith and Scott Moe to benefit politically from aggressively voicing regional grievances.