Alberta’s key separatist leaders often seem propelled by pure hatred of Canada.
Consider this blast from Jeffrey Rath, one of the key figures.
After the premier’s meeting in Ottawa last week with Prime Minister Mark Carney, he said on X: “Notice that Danielle Smith hasn’t publicly told Mark Carney to butt out of the Alberta independence debate.
“Foreigners like Carney have no business telling Albertans what to do.”
The prime minister is a foreigner?
Born in Fort Smith, N.W.T., Carney was raised in Edmonton from the age of six.
He was an avid hockey player. His dad was a professor at the U of A.
How Albertan can you get?
But I’m falling into the separatist trap here.
The leaders think a good secessionist soldier must first prove absolute loyalty to Alberta.
Increasingly, to do that they must also demonstrate contempt, even hatred, of Canada itself.
One more time, here’s a key quote from David Parker, who is implicated in the leak of election list data.
“Nothing is more laughable to me than the idea that Canadians think we are going to wait for them to tell us whether independence is ‘legal’ or not.
“We have America backing us, you fools.”
This is dangerous, delusional language, meant to sow division.
David Parker is shown at the UCP Annual General Meeting in Calgary on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023.
But no separatist movement without a detailed, credible road map on separation from Canada will ever convince common-sense Albertans.
One can comb Alberta separatist online material without finding any clear prescription for this historic upheaval.
The separatists have for months now been in touch with Parti Quebecois Leader Paul St‑Pierre Plamondon, who has a serious chance of winning the next Quebec election.
It’s not clear they learned anything.
Plamondon, like every separatist PQ leader before him, recognizes that Canada does not just cease to exist if a province declares independence.
The current PQ position is referendum first, then a declaration of independence, then dealings with Canada on a new arrangement.
Plamondon is a hardcore separatist, no doubt of that. But he says an independent Quebec would always be a “friendly neighbour” to Canada.
In his view, Quebecers would still have Canadian citizenship, as well as dual citizenship. Trade and travel across Quebec borders would continue as usual. He sees a kind of European Union trade model.
I talked to Plamondon for 90 minutes when he was in Calgary last September. He made it very clear that Quebec must go but did not have an unfriendly word to say about Canada.
Plamondon’s position is close to the separatism platform that barely lost the 1995 referendum. Since then, the PQ has done deep studies and analysis of a split with Canada.
Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon holds a press conference in Montreal on Thursday, April 16, 2026.
Quebec separatism has evolved since 1980, when then-PQ leader Rene Levesque wanted “sovereignty-association” with Canada. There was to be a common currency.
Levesque recognized the many personal ties people have across provincial boundaries. He did not want to sever those bonds.
His question lost by a wide margin. Later separatist leaders became more nationalist. The 1995 referendum campaign was bitter and emotional.
But never did any of these separatist leaders — 10 of them since the 1970s — imagine that an independent Quebec could somehow live on dreams and pure hostility to Canada.
Nor did they think they could ever win over Quebecers without facing up to that mammoth complexity of separation.
Quebec has nearly 4,000 kilometres of ocean-access coastline, including the St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay.
Alberta has none. No province is less likely to thrive as an independent state.
There is only one way Alberta leaders’ contempt for Canada makes any sense.
They don’t think they need Canada because, as Parker says, “we have America backing us.”
Only joining the U.S. could give an independent Alberta the access and protection it would need to survive.
If that’s the game, there’s no need to show any respect for Canada, or offer a serious blueprint for separating.
Mark Carney is no foreigner. I wonder about these separatist shills.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald