In Canada’s Alberta, national unity is on the ballot

The threat to Canada’s sovereignty from US President Donald Trump has dominated the election campaign, but the country also faces a challenge from within. Some western Canadians, fed up with a decade of Liberal rule, are openly calling for separation.

Standing in front of a crowd of about 100 squeezed into a small event hall in the city of Lethbridge, Dennis Modry is asking locals about Alberta’s future.

Who thinks Alberta should have a bigger role in Canada, he asks? A dozen or so raise their hands.

Who thinks the province should push for a split from Canada and form its own nation? About half the crowd raise their hands.

“How many people would like Alberta to join the US?” Another show of support from half the crowd.

Mr Modry, a retired heart surgeon, is a co-leader of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a grassroots organisation pushing for an independence referendum.

The possibility of a split has long been a talking point in this conservative-leaning province. But two factors have given it new momentum: Trump’s comments about making Canada the 51st US state, and the subsequent boost that has given the Liberal Party in the polls ahead of Monday’s federal election.

Mr Modry told the BBC the separatist movement has grown in recent months – driven in part, he believes, by the president’s rhetoric.

“We’re not interested in that”, he said. “We’re interested in Alberta sovereignty.”

Jeffrey Rath, however – a lawyer and rancher from Calgary who is another of the project’s co-founders – was not as dismissive of Trump’s 51st state suggestion. Although he agrees independence is the priority, he could see a future where Alberta joined with the US.

“We have a lot more culturally in common with our neighbours to the south in Montana … (and) with our cousins in Texas, than we do anywhere else,” he said.

Previously on the political fringes, the possibility of a unity crisis is now being discussed out in the open.

In an opinion piece for national newspaper the Globe and Mail, Preston Manning – an Albertan considered one of the founders of the modern conservative movement in Canada – warned “large numbers of Westerners simply will not stand for another four years of Liberal government, no matter who leads it”.

Accusing the party of mismanaging national affairs and ignoring the priorities of western Canadians, he added: “A vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for Western secession – a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it.”

This sense of “western alienation”, a term used to describe the feeling that the region is often overlooked by politicians in Canada’s capital, is nothing new. For decades, many in the oil and gas-rich prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskachtewan have bemoaned how they are underrepresented, despite the region’s economic significance for the country as a whole.

That resentment grew under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, which brought in environmental policies some Albertans view as a direct attack on the region’s economic growth.

National polls suggest the Liberals, now under the leadership of Mark Carney, could be headed for their fourth consecutive win come election day on Monday. That it could come in part because of a surge of support in Ontario and Quebec – the eastern provinces where so much of the population is concentrated – only adds to the regional divide.

Judy Schneider, whose husband works in the oil industry in Calgary, told the BBC she would vote “yes” in an independence referendum.

She said she didn’t see Carney, who spent much of the last decade away from Canada but was raised in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital, as a westerner.

“He can come and say ‘I’m from Alberta,’ but is he?” Ms Schneider said.

An independent Alberta remains an unlikely prospect – a recent Angus Reid poll suggested that only one in four Albertans would vote to leave Canada if a referendum were held now. A majority of Canadians, however, feel the issue should be taken seriously, a separate Nanos poll indicated.

Political analysts say the divide will pose a challenge to the country’s next prime minister, especially if Carney wins. And even a victory for Calgary-born Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre would “not solve the imbalance that presently exists between the East and the West,” Mr Modry, the activist, said.

That wider sentiment has pushed Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who leads the United Conservative Party, to strike her own path in trade talks with the US, while other provincial leaders and the federal government have co-ordinated their efforts closely. She even visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

In Canada, Smith has publicly warned of a “national unity crisis” if Alberta’s demands – which centre around repealing Trudeau-era environmental laws to accelerate oil and gas production – are not met by the new prime minister within six months of the election.

While Smith has dismissed talk of outright separation as “nonsense”, critics have accused her of stoking the flames at such a consequential time for Canada’s future.

Even those within the separatist movement have different ideas on how best to achieve their goals.

Lorna Guitton, a born-and-bred Albertan and a volunteer with the Alberta Prosperity Project, told the BBC in Lethbridge that her aim was for the province to have a better relationship with the rest of Canada.

She described the current union as “broken”, and believes a referendum, or the threat of it, will give Albertans “leverage” in future negotiations with Ottawa.

But Ms Guitton also dismissed any notion of it becoming a 51st US state.

“They’ve got enough of their own problems. Why would I want to be part of that?” she said. “I would rather be my own independent, sovereign province, or a province with a better deal in Canada.”

At his ranch outside of Calgary in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Mr Rath has a different view.

As he tended to his race horses, he spoke of the political and social attitudes of free enterprise and small government that are shared by Albertans and many Americans.

“From that perspective, I would see Alberta as being a good fit within the United States,” he said.

He is currently putting together a “fact-finding” delegation to travel to Washington DC and bring the movement directly to the Trump administration.

Many voters in Alberta, however, dismiss the notion of independence altogether, even if they agree that the province has been overlooked.

Steve Lachlan from Lethbridge agrees the West lacks representation in Ottawa but said: “We already have separation, and we need to come together.”

And the Liberals are not entirely shut out from the province. Polls suggest that Alberta may send more Liberal MPs to Ottawa than in 2021, partly due to changing demographics that led to the creation of new ridings in urban Edmonton and Calgary.

James Forrester, who lives in the battleground Calgary Centre district, told the BBC he had traditionally voted Conservative but has leaned left in recent years. This time, he will vote Liberal because of the “Carney factor”.

“I feel he’s the best guy to deal with Trump,” he said. As for the separation sentiment: “I’m not worried about it.”