Alberta Referendum: Separatist Movement Faces Defeat but May Not Be Over

Cory Morgan has spent more than 25 years fighting to make Alberta, Canada's oil-rich province, an independent country. On Monday, Albertans will vote on the question for the first time. But even if the result is "no", Morgan says he will keep pursuing it to the end.

"I will respect the will of the voters," he told Al Jazeera. "If they decide now is not the time to go down that road, then so be it. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop."

Morgan, founder of the advocacy group Pathway to Independence, is among a group of longtime separatists who have taken an idea once dismissed as fringe and put it on the ballot. Monday's provincial referendum asks Albertans whether they want to pursue a future binding resolution on the independence question.

What are Albertans voting on?

Monday's ballot offers two choices: remain part of Canada, or begin the legal process to hold a future referendum on secession. Voting for the second option does not mean Alberta becomes an independent country immediately. Any province seeking to secede would first have to go through complex negotiations with the federal government in Ottawa, other provinces and the Indigenous peoples living in and around Alberta.

Some separatist organizers have leaned on that distinction to encourage people to vote for the referendum, even if they do not necessarily want independence. "The separatists are strategically savvy and their leaders have used that ambiguity, that lower threshold, to entice people to vote not to leave, but to send a message to Ottawa that Albertans need to be heard," said Jared Wesley, a political science professor at the University of Alberta.

Data collected by Viewpoint Alberta, a University of Alberta research initiative, shows two-thirds of voters who support the referendum say they do so for strategic reasons, to send a message to Ottawa. Morgan calls these "reluctant separatists", people who have "reached their limit" and simply want Ottawa to pay attention.

However, Prime Minister Mark Carney has warned Albertans about this strategy. "Don't be fooled by the idea that you can 'send a message' with your vote," he said at a pro-Canada rally in Calgary on Thursday. "This is not a game of poker. A vote against Canada is a dangerous gamble that will lead to years of deep division and great uncertainty."

Polls suggest the pro-independence side is unlikely to win, with four in five residents of the province saying they want Alberta to remain part of Canada.

What is driving the separatist movement?

Monday's referendum has been decades in the making. Separatists have long argued that Alberta, home to the world's fourth-largest proven oil reserves, sends too much money to Ottawa, subsidizing the rest of the country while getting too little back. They are also aggrieved by federal energy policies they say limit the province's oil industry's potential.

For Morgan, the discontent traces back to the 1980s, when the government of Pierre Trudeau, father of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, introduced the National Energy Program. The program used price controls, taxes and ownership regulations to keep Canadian energy affordable while shifting much of Alberta's revenue to Ottawa. It has since become a central symbol of "Western alienation", a term describing the sense of being marginalized in Canada's westernmost provinces.

Those tensions resurfaced decades later under Justin Trudeau, who began his term in 2015. His climate policies, including a national carbon tax and emissions caps, drew opposition from Alberta's oil industry. "We've been arguing about the same issues for 50 years," Morgan said.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts say protests against health restrictions mobilized a new generation of conservative activists, breathing new life into the Alberta separatist movement. In 2025, under growing pressure from separatist groups, the government of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith made it easier to launch referendums, helping put the independence question on the political agenda.

For Wesley, the timing has less to do with growing public support for independence than with pressure from within Smith's ruling United Conservative Party, where members are more pro-separatist than Albertans in general. "We have a referendum because Danielle Smith wanted us to have a referendum," Wesley said. "She is looking to solve internal party problems by throwing a question to the broader public."

Despite calling Monday's referendum, Smith says she opposes the independence effort and announced on October 14 that she had voted against secession. "In my view, now is not the time to give up hope in our country, not when we have fought so long and come so far," Smith said in a social media video.

Could defeat make the movement stronger?

Smith's political gamble has drawn comparisons to Britain's 2016 Brexit referendum, in which then-Prime Minister David Cameron called a vote on whether the country should leave the European Union in order to settle a divisive debate within his Conservative Party. Voters ultimately chose to leave the bloc, causing years of political turmoil.

But Ian Cooper, a political scientist who grew up in Alberta and now lives in Ireland, says a more useful comparison may be Britain's other referendum in 1975, when British voters overwhelmingly chose to stay in what was then the European Economic Community. According to him, that vote did not stop those who wanted Britain to leave. "The pro-Brexit activists — before anyone called it Brexit — were really playing the long game," he said. "It took them 25 years, but they eventually got there."

Cooper argues that even if Alberta separatism is clearly defeated, separatists could take a similar approach, pursuing the issue over the long term to gain standing and support. "My impression is that they really are sincere believers, and that it is genuinely driven by ideology," he said.

If the separatists lose on Monday, Morgan says they will need to look closely at why they fell short and work to build a stronger case for independence in the future. He does not believe the underlying grievances can be resolved by working within the Canadian system or by electing a more sympathetic federal government.

Carney, who grew up in Alberta, acknowledged at Thursday's rally that "the frustrations many Albertans feel are real". He added that Ottawa had made people in the province feel "as though our resources are not our own". The prime minister has tried to improve relations with Alberta amid an ongoing trade war with the United States, including a pledge to build a new pipeline to Canada's west coast and major infrastructure projects.

Morgan concedes that for those who were only seeking more leverage in Ottawa, "clearly the movement has worked". "We've had more goodwill from a federal prime minister in the past year than in the previous 10," he said. "But the problem for people who are committed to independence like me is that nothing changes within the system." Prime ministers come and go, he added. "We are only one election away from another hostile government."

Why do the other referendum questions matter?

The independence question is just one of 10 questions on Monday's ballot. Other proposals include restricting temporary residents' access to health care and education, and allowing Alberta to choose its own judges. Smith is encouraging Albertans to vote in favor of the other nine proposals, arguing they will give her more negotiating power in Ottawa.

"Many Albertans I talk to tell me they want to send a message to Ottawa, and I think the best way is to give us a strong endorsement on the other nine questions," she said on social media.

If Albertans back those proposals but Ottawa refuses to budge, Cooper says the movement will have a new argument that meaningful change within the current system is impossible. "Embedded in the other nine questions are the seeds of a future referendum," Cooper added.

What could keep the movement alive?

Not everyone agrees, however, on whether the separatist side can emerge from the vote as a unified force. Wesley explains that people are drawn to the separatist cause for many reasons. If independence does not feel like a realistic prospect, there may be less to hold that group of activists together, he said. They could turn their attention to other conservative issues, such as immigration.

Other experts question whether the Alberta separatist movement, bound together more by economic grievance than by a shared cultural identity, can endure as a movement the way one has in Quebec. Just two weeks ago, the largely French-speaking province elected the separatist Parti Quebecois, which has promised to hold a third independence referendum after Trump leaves office.

Morgan argues that Alberta has a distinct culture, shaped by generations of people who moved to the province seeking prosperity. "The kind of person who is attracted to do that tends to be highly individualistic," he said. "They want the opportunity to step out and succeed or fail on their own. And that in itself creates its own kind of culture, even if it is not as long-established as in a distinct region like Quebec with its language differences."

Even if Albertans reject secession, he believes the movement has succeeded in forcing Ottawa to take the province's grievances more seriously. "Hopefully some people understand that eventually something will have to give," he said. "So whatever the result... I at least hope they have served as a wake-up call for many."