I live in a bubble in Calgary, and am from Montreal originally. Despite that, I saw lines of people waiting to sign petitions for separation in smaller cities. People who were happy to have their photos taken while they are signing petitions for separation from Canada.
There are some cultural factors in Alberta which draw it closer to the US than to Ontario and Quebec. Libertarianism, pro-fossil fuels, differences wrt firearms, differences in attitudes to crime and punishment, etc... The perception is that previous compromises around these items are slowly frayed to appease voting blocks in other provinces (mostly Quebec).
Then, the dirty reality; the Canadian economy has never been "great", at least in my lifetime. Nearly my whole class at university wound up going to the US, because one couldn't get a decent paying job in Canada in a lot of fields. Even our current prime minister did a ton of his work abroad. If separating (IE: joining the US) was only an economic question, only a tiny elite would support remaining a part of Canada.
The question Alberta separatists wish to ask is much less dishonest than the Quebec separation question in 95, which leads me to believe they are much more confident about their success. I wouldn't rule it out.
That might be the rhetoric, but separation means joining the US. The experience of landlocked country would be one of getting taken advantage of by every country around it.
There is a good 20% of people in Alberta who would vote for separation today. Take a close look, they aren't voting to be an independent country surrounded by a hostile country around it and a superpower that hijacks oil tankers to the south.
It is a stupid idea because the level of changes that would have to happen to everything would be much, much more than people realize. But Brexit has shown us that people will vote for stupid things if they are sold by trusted-but-dishonest actors
Then Danielle moved the goalposts to make it easier for the Independence folks:
Signature collection period: January 3 to May 2, 2026
Number of signatures required for a successful petition: 177,732
(10% of the total number votes cast in the 2023 Provincial General Election).
I feel that neither justifies 2 generations of separatist blackmail, and the use of holocaust terms for constitution failures between two Quebecois men (Lesvesque and Trudeau) is inappropriate — but completely and utterly unsurprising for the overwrought self-pitying elite of the province. Moreover, it is no surprise that Quebec rejects the constitution but simultaneously uses the Not Withstanding clause to block language and religious rights. It is like the bully in Doraemon — what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine.
That said I do grudgingly admire Lesvesque and felt he was much better than all of his successors. You could tell he had a philosophy of a Quebec that could be an actual nation, not merely a collection of childless people who spoke French and simply emulated France.
There is no Lesvesque in Alberta and that is why Alberta will never be a nation; only a gas station for the US. Still, if the only thing people value is income maybe that's the better outcome.
There are some cultural factors in Alberta which draw it closer to the US than to Ontario and Quebec. Libertarianism, pro-fossil fuels, differences wrt firearms, differences in attitudes to crime and punishment, etc... The perception is that previous compromises around these items are slowly frayed to appease voting blocks in other provinces (mostly Quebec).
Then, the dirty reality; the Canadian economy has never been "great", at least in my lifetime. Nearly my whole class at university wound up going to the US, because one couldn't get a decent paying job in Canada in a lot of fields. Even our current prime minister did a ton of his work abroad. If separating (IE: joining the US) was only an economic question, only a tiny elite would support remaining a part of Canada.
The question Alberta separatists wish to ask is much less dishonest than the Quebec separation question in 95, which leads me to believe they are much more confident about their success. I wouldn't rule it out.