“Canada’s Texas is threatening divorce, and it could eventually become the 51st state,” crows the ultraconservative think-tank behind the Trump administration.
The free people of Alberta are about to take a vote.
It’s Canada’s fourth-largest province, both by size (about 411,187 sq mi) and population (5 million).
It’s home to North America’s iconic Rocky Mountains, where crystal clear glacial lakes are scattered across forested landscape.
Its dinosaur fossils are a valuable window to the past, while its fossil fuel deposits are … valuable.
The fourth-largest oil reserve on the planet gives Albertans high employment, higher-than-average incomes, and a younger population.
It also means it contributes much more to the federal budget than Canada’s other nine provinces and three territories do.
Just like Western Australia.
This is resented by many local politicians, big business lobbyists, media pundits and members of the public.
They ask: Why should they subsidize their eastern overlords?
Just like Western Australia.
Now, Alberta gets to decide if it really wants out.
An October referendum will ask: Should we quit Canada?
Strong and Free
“For decades, many people there have felt that the rest of Canada – particularly the federal government in Ottawa – has been drawing disproportionately on Alberta’s prosperity,” write British constitutional academics Richard Brant and Professor Nikos Skoutaris.
Some 700,000 Albertans signed petitions in recent years calling for a vote. These were declared invalid in an Alberta court for ignoring indigenous treaty rights.
But the noise they generated prompted the provincial government to ask the question properly.
It’s been on Albertans’ minds for a while.
It all started in 1980.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau took control of local oil prices and raised export taxes on the industry.
So the multinational oil companies took their business to tax havens elsewhere. Alberta’s economy tumbled, unemployment soared, and national revenues collapsed.
It took just five years for the controls and taxes to be lifted.
Many Albertans fear these bad times are back.
Climate policies. Pollution restrictions. A carbon tax.
Then there’s a push to restrict oil pipeline construction across private and public land.
Some Albertans think they can go it alone. That they can become a landlocked petro-state nestled neatly between North America’s two great nations.
Others think the grass really is greener on the other side. Why not become the 51st member of the United States of America?
President Donald Trump, after all, will welcome them with open arms …
As will the US oil industry.
Drill baby, drill
“Much of the rest of Canada, especially in the east, sees Albertans as toothless rednecks since Alberta is by far the most conservative province in Canada,” argue US Heritage Foundation economic analysts Peter Onge and Erwin Antoni.
“More importantly, Alberta is by far the richest province in Canada, thanks to roughly 160 billion barrels of oil, or about three times the reserves of the entire United States.”
The Heritage Foundation is the think-tank behind the Trump Administration’s policies. It laid out its dreams for a deeply conservative agenda in its Project 2025 manifesto.
“Now imagine all that extra production in the United States, yielding not just energy independence or even energy superiority, but energy supremacy.”
Earlier this month, US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra shared a social media post by President Trump again labeling Canada his “51st State”.
It just served to stoke the flames of cross-border tensions that have flared since the mercurial 47th President of the United States took office in January last year.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, however, insists his provinces are not for sale. He’s not going to cave to Trump’s trade-war pressures. And he knows Canada is fairly low on the White House’s list of potential invasion targets.
President Trump is more interested in annexing neighboring Greenland. And Cuba. And possibly Mexico.
But Alberta may take a shortcut.
And a vote to join the US would solve all of President Trump’s economic problems at once.
So MAGA’s lobbyists are actively stirring the pot.
Cord Cutting
“If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that they’d become a state,” President Trump declares.
There’s a lot in it for him.
He’s already sniping at Prime Minister Carney over that nation’s “technical recession”.
At the same time, he knows the economic powerhouse of Alberta could single-handedly save his own flailing economy. And he’s keen on that idea.
Prime Minister Carney calls the referendum a “very dangerous bluff.”
And he’s already fielding President Trump’s threats of annexing the whole country.
So, will the Albertan vote decide the fate of two of the Western World’s greatest democracies?
Canada has no constitutional law addressing secession. It doesn’t allow it. It doesn’t prohibit it.
But the Canadian Supreme Court was spurred into action by a similar 1995 move by the province of Quebec. (Its controversial secession vote failed to reach a majority by just 1%).
The court ruled that a province could not decide to leave on its own.
The rest of Canada must also get a say.
Decisions, decisions
Other disgruntled populations are watching with interest.
Scotland has a strong independence movement. As does Wales. Then there’s Spain’s Catalonia region. And the United States’ own California.
Even Western Australia has the Westralian Secession Movement (founded by the late mining magnate Lang Hancock).
“Each faces its own version of the same tension: the democratic impulse to let people decide, and the legal and political reality that separating from a larger state is never as straightforward as a ballot paper makes it look,” the constitutional experts assess.
Many Albertans appear to foresee this.
While advocates are loudly enthusiastic, the idea is not yet catching on.
A June poll suggests that pragmatism is kicking in.
The Canadian Supreme Court requires a “clear majority” for any secession to be accepted. It also established a referendum process for making this decision.
Only one in five voters indicates they want to initiate that process.
After that, Albertans would also have to decide: Go it alone? Or join the United States?
Canadians would have to decide: Do they really want Alberta?
And how?
“It seems like the more that people contemplate this being real — the act of voting — we see the support for separatism softening,” Ipsos told local media.
“What it shows is that people who really want Alberta to stay in Canada are really strongly motivated to vote for that.”
