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Published on: 01/05/2026 - 11:07

In the heart of Alberta, province of cowboys and tar sands oil, independence has reached a historic milestone. For the first time, a separatist movement claims to have gathered the 178,000 signatures necessary to organize a referendum to leave Canada. A vote is scheduled for October 19, a first in Canada since the Quebec referendum of 1995.

Behind this unprecedented mobilization for the independence of Alberta, in Canada, the Stay Free Alberta movement, led by lawyer and ranch owner Jeffrey Rath. With more than 7,000 volunteers crisscrossing the province at -11°C, its activists are driven by a resentment as old as Western Canada: that of a national economic locomotive despised by the "elite" in power in Ottawa.

Their key argument: the end of federal taxes, or “50,000 additional dollars per year per Alberta family,” assures Jeffrey Rath.

Conservative Prime Minister Danielle Smith, who has halved the threshold of signatures required to trigger a citizens' initiative referendum in Canada, recognizes a "growing movement" - almost a third of Albertans say they favor independence.

See also Canada vs Trump: the tone rises, border residents get organized

Double opposition to the referendum project

But the project faces double opposition. On the one hand, the federalist movement Canadians Forever, founded by former Alberta Deputy Prime Minister Thomas Lukaszuk, denounces unprecedented foreign interference after the American Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, publicly welcomed the separatist initiative last January.

On the other, the First Nations, whose treaties signed with the colonizing British Crown precede the very creation of Alberta. Chief Sheldon Sunshine of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation is challenging, alongside his peers, the constitutionality of electoral reform, which paved the way for the referendum. Nearly three million Albertans will have the last word in October.

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