![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Smith-272.png\")
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith may be acting too much like a separatist for many Albertans\u2019 taste, but as far as Mr. Rath is concerned she\u2019s not acting enough like one (Photo: Alberta Government\/Flickr). <\/p>\nHappy Victoria Day!<\/p>\n
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith may be acting too much like a separatist for many Albertans\u2019 taste, but as far as Mr. Rath is concerned she\u2019s not acting enough like one (Photo: Alberta Government\/Flickr). <\/p>\n
Over the weekend leading up to our national celebration of Victorian rectitude, imperialism and class inequality, prominent Alberta separatist Jeffrey Rath took to the Internet appearing to advocate an internal United Conservative Party coup to remove Premier Danielle Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her sin, in Mr. Rath\u2019s obvious estimation, is that she\u2019s been working too closely with Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney and playing both sides of Independence Avenue in her efforts to keep the party\u2019s fraying coalition of outright separatists and traditional Canadian Conservatives in one piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His solution: The separatist cadres who now clearly control the UCP, but not quite yet either the government caucus or the provincial government, should dump her and replace her with a more ideologically acceptable leader and declare the party to be a separatist entity in the manner of the Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois.<\/p>\n
Arguably, this could either be a sign of Ms. Smith\u2019s increasing strength thanks to her latest deal with Mr. Carney, or of the separatists\u2019 increasing strength as the holders of most of the internal power positions in the UCP party bureaucracy. Or, perhaps, a bit of both.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms. Smith\u2019s strategy, as is well understood, has been to assert that only she can successfully keep the open separatists now embedded in the party, caucus and cabinet from scaring away electors accustomed to voting Conservative without thinking too deeply about what the party nowadays represents.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Kenney-224.jpg\")
Former UCP premier Jason Kenney was sent for the high jump by basically the same crowd now growing impatient with Premier Smith (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). <\/p>\n
Likewise, as the vessel of Preston Manning\u2019s strategy<\/a> of blackmailing the federal government into doing Alberta\u2019s bidding by threatening to become the 51st State, she is the only politician likely to be able to get away with perpetrating this political protection racket.\u00a0<\/p>\n Talk of an internal party coup, though, should be taken seriously because Mr. Rath, who is legal counsel and for all practical purposes the self-appointed spokesperson for the Stay Free Alberta petition\/Alberta Prosperity Project (SFA), is extremely influential within Alberta\u2019s separatist faction. It is not clear if he has ambitions of his own in the new Alberta he hopes to create, but it is easy to assume that he must.\u00a0<\/p>\n So when Mr. Rath was so blunt about what he thinks should happen next in a series of social media posts yesterday, we should pay attention. He speaks for many in the UCP.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPremier Smith had no mandate from her membership to sign the Carbon Tax MOU with Mark Carney,\u201d Mr. Rath posted<\/a> at one point yesterday. \u201cDanielle Smith no longer enjoys the confidence of the members of the UCP.\u201d If that\u2019s not a call for a coup, I don\u2019t know what is.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEnough is enough,\u201d he said in another post<\/a>. \u201cWe are a super majority of the party. Time to take it back from the Kenneyites.\u201d (The \u201cKenneyites,\u201d remember, basically purged the \u201cRed Tories\u201d from the UCP after former premier Jason Kenney engineered the double reverse hostile takeover of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Wildrose Party in the summer of 2017. This is an irony, since those Red Tories, had they still been around in any numbers, could have saved Mr. Kenney\u2019s bacon in the fall of 2022.)<\/p>\n Here\u2019s another, delivered Trump-style, in all caps: \u201cDANIELLE SMITH HAS LOST HER MANDATE TO LEAD THE UCP!\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Rath\u2019s message to the cadres<\/a> in the UCP\u2019s riding constituency associations: \u201cMAKE SURE TO ATTEND YOUR LOCAL CA BOARD AGM AND ELECT A SLATE OF PRO-INDEPENDENCE BOARD MEMBERS. CONTACT YOUR LOCAL APP OR STAY FREE REGIONAL LEADERS FOR GUIDANCE.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to work to replace every non independence board in the province,\u201d he said in part in another post<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n All these messages were posted on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, a place a lot of moderate Albertans nowadays sensibly eschew, if only to keep their blood pressure down. Someone has to look in there, however, and I\u2019m willing to take the risk so that the rest of you don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n If this was more than just an anticipatory outburst of exuberance in memory of the late grandmother of Europe\u2019s titled classes it suggests Danielle Smith\u2019s \u201cUnited Conservative\u201d coalition could actually be starting to fracture.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting that the separatists on social media are also infuriated by the possibility that when the pipe gets laid, it may not follow the route most of them prefer, that is, the one most likely to annoy the most British Columbians and First Nations along the way to Prince Rupert. (The British Columbia city of that name and the terminus of the Alberta separatists\u2019 imagined Danzig Corridor to the sea, that is, not the first governor of the late Hudson\u2019s Bay Co., just to be clear.)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, speaking of Independence Avenue, a metaphor lest you tried to look it up on Google Maps, Edmonton City Councillor Michael Janz yesterday announced he had applied on behalf of many of his constituents to rename the road in front of the Alberta Legislature \u201cForever Canadian Avenue.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Janz \u2013 councillor for Ward papastew, located just across the North Saskatchewan River from the Legislature \u2013 said the renaming of two blocks of 99th Avenue between 107th Street and 109th Street \u201cwill celebrate the largest non-partisan citizen movement in Alberta\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Forever Canadian petition collected signatures from Albertans who want Alberta to proudly remain a Canadian province,\u201d Mr. Janz explained in a statement. \u201cThis effort was prompted as a response to Premier Danielle Smith encouraging conversations about Alberta separation. The petition gathered 456,000 signatures and motivated more than 10,000 Albertans to volunteer in support of this work.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Janz, who is a tireless progressive activist not unprepared to be a gadfly if that\u2019s what it takes to accomplish something, was accompanied to an outdoor news conference<\/a> yesterday by Forever Canadian petition proponent Thomas Lukaszuk, a former Progressive Conservative deputy premier of Alberta.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Janz-4.jpg\")
Ward papastew Edmonton City Councillor Michael Janz at his news conference Monday (Photo: Dave Cournoyer). <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Lukaszuk-15.jpeg\")
Forever Canadian petition proponent Thomas Lukaszuk, a former PC deputy premier of Alberta (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).<\/p>\n