The separation referendum mess we find ourselves in today has a trail back to the origins of Canada.
We need to hear the separatist voice, including those of us outside Alberta. If we don’t listen, we will not have the tools to build a solution. Those who insist that Albertans created the problem alone and it is theirs to fix are taking a huge gamble.
The impetus for Prairie Separatism
When Alberta’s oil industry reached scale in the early 1970s, just as the OPEC embargo hit, Ottawa moved in fast and wrapped its policy fingers around the industry.
The grip was tight from the start — domestic price controls in the 1970s, and an export tax that penalized sales to Alberta and Saskatchewan’s main customer, the United States. Then came the National Energy Program in 1980: Ottawa moved into direct ownership through Petro-Canada and began regulating investment rules for everyone else.
The movements that followed
The moves by Ottawa fed a string of western separation movements: the Western Canada Concept (founded in 1980), the Western Independence Party (founded in 1987), and the Western Block Party (founded in 2005). The movement never disappeared — it splintered, regrouped, and persisted for decades.
A fire was lit under the Alberta and Saskatchewan separation movements when the B.C. government came at the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) with, in the words of the day, ‘every tool in the toolbox’ — including a court challenge that led the Federal Court of Appeal to temporarily overturn the project’s initial approval and forced the federal government to buy out the original proponent. Northern Gateway had been approved in 2014. The Federal Court of Appeal struck it down in 2016. Ottawa declined to reapprove it — and the project died. Then came the West Coast tanker ban (Bill C‑48) in 2019. The Impact Assessment Act (Bill C‑69) followed — understood across Alberta and Saskatchewan as the ‘no more pipelines’ bill.
Agree or disagree with those policies and actions, there is no denying they fueled the separation movement that culminated in Wexit in 2019. Rather than remain an outside movement, Wexit’s leaders chose to work within mainstream politics — a decision that reflected just how deep the alienation ran. Many believed the movement could be managed and contained from within the system. As Premier Kenney discovered, it could not.
Today, politicians and commentators have strong views on Premier Smith’s decision to hold a non-binding referendum on separation at this time. As a caucus-management tool, it is hardly new — parliamentary leaders have used similar tactics for various purposes for centuries. The more important question, in the moment, is what the referendum tells us about the state of western alienation, not whether the tactic was shrewd or reckless.
Where does Ottawa’s approach over these fifty years or so really stem from? It has to be something more. What drives the Central Canadian establishment to believe it has the need — or the right — to control one resource in a way no other resource is controlled anywhere else in the country?
Is it the way Alberta became a province?
Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba were carved out of Rupert’s Land, the territory owned and administered by the Hudson’s Bay Company. This era saw the rise of the Métis people. In the years prior to Canada assuming control, settlement was light, consisting of HBC employees and Americans who moved freely between the Prairies and the Great Plains — hunting buffalo and ranching.
As the buffalo hunt ended, ranch land on the Canadian Prairies became more available and less expensive than on the American plains. American ranchers stayed and put down roots. They were followed by farmers — many of European descent, others from religious communes — who had been settled in America before moving north, drawn by the fertile soils and the promise of land.
Both the Canadian Pacific Railway and Ottawa actively recruited from the American states directly.
Most migrant families had lived for up to a century under the American constitutional system. They brought with them two broad political traditions: a culture of individual initiative and frontier independence, and a parallel tradition of communal resilience and isolation. Together, those traditions formed a potent mix for populist politics on the Prairies.
Not just about Prairie populism
The colonies of British Columbia, Upper and Lower Canada, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia had all lived under British common law and institutions for generations — Quebec being the exception, where British authority permitted French civil law to remain. Confederation followed after a series of negotiations and votes in their respective legislatures.
This was in contrast to the Prairies and much of B.C. Rupert’s Land had been governed by the Hudson’s Bay Company for longer than Canada has existed. British Columbia is different. Southwest B.C. negotiated and voted to enter Confederation in 1871. The rest did not — and the only federally negotiated treaties were in the Northeast
After the transfer in 1870, Ottawa divided the territory into administrative districts for what would later become Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. When Alberta and Saskatchewan entered Confederation in 1905, it was by federal statute alone — without negotiation or a vote of the people who lived there. (Manitoba’s story is one to tell on its own.)
It is understandable that Ottawa in 1905 did not view provinces that had not emerged from British colonies in the same light as those that had. That outlook shapes Central and Eastern Canada’s view of the West today, and British Columbia is often ignored because Central Canada’s focus has always been on Europe and the United States.
Where to go today
The way forward requires the acceptance that Canada’s provinces do not share the same origin story. But all have the same constitutional right to manage their own resources.
Today, the opportunity to reset the relationship with Indigenous Peoples within Confederation has never been greater. The economic challenge has never been greater. Nor has the need to build the economy pragmatically while addressing climate change and the environment more broadly.
There is broad agreement that resource and export industries across the country — aimed at markets to the east and west — depend on the build-out of Canada’s ports. A separatist referendum in Alberta cannot be allowed to derail that effort.
Federal and provincial leaders have to get on with nation-building, despite the distraction.
This is the opportunity — like no other — to demonstrate that Canada works.
The western resource sectors — Indigenous project proponents, workers, communities, management, and investors — are all demanding that the cynicism stop and the sincere work start.
Jim Rushton is a 46-year veteran of BC’s resource and transportation sectors, with experience in union representation, economic development, and terminal management. Reach him at [email protected].
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