It’s 2029. Three years ago, Alberta voted to separate from Canada in a highly-contested referendum. Now, the new state is struggling to get their ducks in a row.
Separatist leaders had promised Albertans that if the province became an independent state, it would become an energy superpower. They said Alberta’s oil and gas industry would grow to rival that of Saudi Arabia, and citizens would live in a tax-free state.
Instead, Alberta is struggling to finalize the details of separation. The new state is stuck in the bureaucracy of negotiating trade agreements with Canada, and businesses have fled the uncertainty. So have many doctors, and the province’s already weak health care system has collapsed.
This is, of course, an imaginary scenario. But it’s one that critics say could easily be a reality if Alberta chooses to separate from Canada and go it alone.
Separation on the ballot
In early January, Elections Alberta approved a citizen initiative petition put forward by a separatist group called the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP). Their question asks Albertans whether they would like the province to become an independent state.
The APP’s question had previously been deemed unconstitutional by an Alberta judge. However, in December the Alberta government changed citizen initiative laws to pass the power of approval from Alberta courts to legislature. The APP’s question was approved shortly after.
If the petition gets more than 178,000 signatures by May, a referendum will likely be held.
Disgruntled and Sidelined
Albertans have tossed around the idea of separating from Canada since the 1930s. In recent months, the idea has once again taken a large place in Alberta politics.
For Jaeger Gustafson, a Calgary health professional who ran in the city’s mayoral race last fall, the separatist movement shows just how frustrated Albertans are with their lot in Confederation.
“Albertans are marginalized within the Canadian political landscape,” he said in an interview with TheRockies.Life. “[They] want a fair deal with Ottawa.”
“We are subsidizing billions of dollars in industry in other provinces,” he said. “I don’t think that we can ever win when it comes to the political sphere.”
If Alberta separated from Canada, separatists argue, the new state would be rich. No federal regulations would stand in the way of Alberta expanding its oil and gas industry, and none of the province’s money would be sent elsewhere in Canada.
However even within the APP’s financial plan for an independent Alberta, contradictions are clear. They expect a larger oil industry to be able to cover the majority of an Albertan state’s finances while also stating that global demand for oil will decrease by the mid 2030s.
Proponents of unity have also been quick to poke holes in the APP’s financial plan.
Bad for Business, Bad for Albertans
When it comes to staying in Canada, Coaldale mayor Jack van Rijn told TheRockies.Life that he is a “realist.”
“I cannot see it ever happening,” he said of the idea of Alberta leaving Confederation.
Van Rijn was “quite proud” to be the first in Alberta to sign the Forever Canadian petition in August. The petition was organized to rally Albertans around national unity in response to the surge of separatist media coverage last year.
The Forever Canadian petition received over 400,000 signatures and was submitted to the speaker of Alberta’s Legislative Assembly on December 1. A committee must now decide whether to put the Forever Canadian question to a vote in the legislature or a referendum.
For van Rijn, signing the petition was a no-brainer. He sees separatism as a business venture bound to fail.
Alberta benefits in dozens of ways from pooling its resources together with Canada, he said. The Canadian dollar, easy inter-provincial trade, health care transfers and equalization payments, access to Canadian markets, national defense and security systems, and federal disaster response systems were among his list of reasons why Alberta benefits from remaining in Canada.
He said the province would have a “huge grocery list” of economic and political systems to set up if they separate from Canada.
“Who’s going to lend Alberta the money?” he wondered.
“People don’t understand that if they want to separate from Canada, it will be a generational exercise,” he said. “It’s not going to happen overnight.”
