Not Canada, but Alberta – That’s Where the Wealth Is

Trump talked about making Canada the 51st state, and there’s more to the idea than first meets the eye.

By F. Andrew Wolf, Jr.| May 25, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags:  Articles, Opinion, Politics

My Take - They talk about all these conservatives in Alberta, but the problem with that is a Canadian conservative is more like RINO's here in America.  And this last vote shows they fail to think!  It's my view any Canadian province that's allowed to leave Canada and become a U.S. state will in effect become a Trojan Horse for liberals.

  However, if this gets into play what first should be done is demand Alberta become an independent nation, just like Texas.  After we can see how they run their government, statehood can be talked about.  

It's my view America isn't in need of any more states.  Let Canadians fix Canada, or not!  Canada has problems, and it's their problems, there's no need to make them our problems.  RK

Thousands of Albertans have been holding rallies and signing petitions to vote for separation from Canada. The Liberals just achieved their fourth consecutive win in the country that Donald Trump wants to make the 51st state. The people of Alberta have a long-standing complaint – Ottawa treats them unfairly while reaping enormous economic benefit from oil and gas resources. While the call for a “divorce” from Canada is not new, it has regained momentum in the wake of the election.

The US President should pay attention to these rumblings. Number 51 should be the province of Alberta – it makes more sense for America economically than Canada – especially now with the latter’s reinforced political resentment towards the president.

According to a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute, 3 in 10 Albertans would vote to leave Canada. Jeff Rath, a Canadian constitutional lawyer and advocate for Alberta’s separation from Canada, will soon lead a delegation of like-minded Albertans to Washington, DC, for meetings with senior Trump administration figures.

Joining forces with the US could make sense for both countries; Alberta holds the third-largest oil reserves in the world, trailing only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Moreover, it sits atop rich deposits of coal, lithium, and other critical minerals that America (i.e. Trump) is actively seeking.

Rath’s plan to meet with White House officials has also caught the attention of high-profile voices on the American right. Conservative advocate Charlie Kirk posted a video in March of Rath agitating for annexation with the remark: “Okay, if Alberta wants to become the 51st state, that’s a decent idea.” Elon Musk agreed.

The western province could hold a public referendum on breaking away from Canada next year if a citizen-led petition gets the required number of signatures, Alberta Premiere Danielle Smith said Monday.

Alberta, with a population of roughly 5 million, borders on the US state of Montana and is a key driver of Canada’s economy. It’s the leading producer of fossil fuels for the nation, accounting for 84% of total crude oil production and 61% of total natural gas production in 2023. In 2024 Alberta was second only to Ontario in terms of GDP growth, while its per capita GDP is the highest of all of Canada’s provinces.

Trade with the United States made up 89% of the province’s exports in 2023. Last year alone, Alberta exported $156.3 billion south to the US. Crude petroleum made up the majority of those exports, totaling $113.4 billion, or 73%.

Nationally, the US is Canada’s largest foreign customer, accounting for $595 billion in 2023 – 89% of total exports – according to ATB Economics.

Yet it’s the data just presented that works against Alberta’s secession – Ottawa will be loathe to permit such action. It will not want to sever from its sovereignty much of the wealth responsible for the Canadian economy.

This means nothing will happen without US influence, US capital, and considerable attenuation of Trump’s rhetoric. But it would be a good fit along with Greenland. Just as the latter provides access to the Arctic, Alberta offers abundant natural resources and a conservative populace.

Although the province is considered a conservative stronghold, under Canada’s decade-long Liberal leadership, Ottawa has blocked pipelines, canceled multiple oil and gas projects, and introduced a carbon tax – policies that Smith described as “anti-energy, anti-agriculture, and anti-resource development.”

Only one province has ever held referenda on separating from Canada: Quebec, in 1980 and 1995, both of which showed a majority of Québécois preferred to remain – but only after a huge and caustic political upheaval.

The bitter feelings can be traced back to the 1980s, when then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program tried to centralize control over Albertan oil. Albertans, who had enjoyed an economic boom thanks to high oil prices, felt as though their natural wealth was being pillaged by Ottawa, which lowered prices to benefit poorer Canadians. Although the program was ended by Trudeau’s Conservative successor, Brian Mulroney in 1985, the wounds never fully healed.

Recently, Smith’s government has introduced legislation to lower the threshold for referendums initiated by citizen petition. In order to pass the threshold, a petition would need about 177,000 signatures.

But leaving is not as easy as voting in favor of a referendum. Albertans will need political and economic support from the US if separation is to occur followed by statehood.

For Discerning News Hounds

Canada’s constitution does not allow unilateral separation. Following the unsuccessful referenda on separation in Quebec, the federal government enacted the Clarity Act in 2000. The act stipulates that the national parliament’s House of Commons determines if the referendum on a province’s independence demonstrates “a clear expression of a will by a clear majority” of the provincial population.

As the saying goes: the Devil is in the details.

The outcome of the recent election has heightened long-running tensions in conservative regions. In Alberta, the Conservatives won 34 out of 37 seats, and similar dissatisfaction has been observed in neighboring Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

Let us not forget that prior to Donald Trump’s rhetoric about “Governor” Trudeau and the “51st state,” Canadians were looking to the Conservative Party to rescue an economy that Trudeau and the Liberals had run into the ground. Let’s see how long the “knee-jerk” reaction of the electorate remains before Canadians realize they overreacted and that Alberta has a legitimate point that happens to coincide with America’s national security interests.

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Andrew Wolf, Jr. is director of The Fulcrum Institute, an organization of scholars dedicated to the classical liberal tradition. He has also been published stateside in American Spectator, The Thinking Conservative, and American Thinker, as well as abroad in International Policy Digest, Times of Israel, and The Daily Philosophy, among others.

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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

Canadian premier sues Trudeau and government over 'unjustified' Emergencies Act

by Luke Gentile, Social Media Producer February 21, 2022

Canada's premier of the province of Alberta, Jason Kenney, filed suit against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the nation's federal government, citing the nature of the Emergencies Act as "unjustified in the circumstances," according to a Saturday announcement.  The suit seeks to stymie Trudeau and his government from implementing the Emergencies Act to end the "Freedom Convoy" protests, according to a report............To Read More...

Alberta's Tryst With Destiny

By Peter Zeihan and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui  Visit the archives to re-read and share

Local politics, even at the national level, are rarely a focus for students of geopolitics. Personalities play too big a role in the mishmash while local outcomes often play too small a role globally. Local affairs take up an outsized amount of oxygen in terms of local media coverage and public opinion, yet things usually keep chugging along, be the results good, bad or indifferent.

The key word there being “usually”.

The Canadian province of Alberta held elections yesterday (April 16) that have been on our radar for three years, and the implications of their results are anything but usual.

Alberta is a quirky place. Strong economic growth, a robust energy sector, and center-right political leanings have defined Albertan politics in recent decades—trends broadly disconnected from the reputation and reality of the rest of America’s northern neighbor.

Within that disconnect lies the problem.

Alberta has long been the Canadian province suffering from the largest “gap” between the monies it pays into national coffers compared to what it gets back in terms of federal spending. The rest of Canada has shown its appreciation by consistently stymying the energy industry that forms the backbone of the Albertan economy with everything from carbon taxes to blocking transport routes for the landlocked province’s crude to reach foreign refineries. For the most part, the rest of Canada doesn’t even use Alberta’s crude themselves, deigning to invest in refineries capable of processing Alberta’s tar sands crude, opting instead for lighter, sweeter imports.

If you think hamstringing a region’s economic growth while depending on its tax payments is a less-than-tenable long-term strategy, you’re not alone. While more people are aware of Quebec’s…independent streak, plenty within the Albertan political mainstream have had enough. And thanks to Quebec’s long-standing political wrangling to wrench itself free, any future Albertan separatist referendum would be perfectly legal.

Which gets us to the current state of play. The province’s conservative-leaning voters staunchly backed the Progressive Conservative majority governments from 1971 to 2014, to the degree that after some elections there wasn’t even an opposition in the local legislature. But in 2015 in-fighting within the conservative house generated a political split. The Wildrose Party ran separate from the Progressive-Conservatives in the 2015 elections on a ticket of fiscal conservatism, healthcare reform and direct election of the province’s senators. The fissure split the conservative vote down the middle, enabling the New Democratic Party—a party that is most definitely not of the center-right—to seize control of the Albertan government for the first time.

In a near textbook example of how geopolitics forms politics rather than the other way around, the NDP and premier Rachel Notley quickly went to work not only adopting many of its predecessor conservative government’s policies, but went to the mats with both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and neighboring British Columbia over all things energy-related, most notably on pipelines. (Obviously, going to the mats here is relative. For a self-styled, Green/Leftist party to support oil sands in any measure is a big shift. Notley went so far as to embargo British Columbian products.)

It was fun while it lasted. Just as a political spat among the center-right brought the NDP to power, a recent fracturing of the center-left in Alberta combined with a healing of the rift on the right has now escorted it out. While the counting continues, it appears a reunited Conservative-Wildrose alliance—operating under the banner of United Conservatives—now hold at least 62 seats in the 87 seat parliament according to Tuesday night’s provisional results. With victory cemented, many Albertans now look forward to a fundamental shift in the provinces’ fortunes.

The awakening will be a rude one.

The United Conservatives are running on public dissatisfaction against carbon taxes, a lack of pipelines, and an unequal system of taxation by a federal government many Albertans see as being not only out of touch and unhelpful but actively working against Albertan interests.

Alberta’s new government will take the issue of a carbon tax to court.

They will lose. Canada’s provinces lack the legal standing to challenge the central government on such topics, or more accurately, Ottawa has means of enforcement that bypass legal challenges.

Alberta’s new government will sue to allow the Trans Mountain Pipeline to cross British Columbia and so enable Albertan Tar Sands to reach the Pacific.

They will lose. Even if Alberta wins the case, BC will still find a means—with the unofficial blessing of a green-leaning central government—of preventing the pipe’s construction.

Alberta’s new government will push back against the federal government’s heavy reach into Albertan coffers.

They will lose. With Canada’s population aging into mass retirement, transfers from Alberta to the center will increase.

Alberta’s new government will attempt to redefine the relationship between Edmonton and Ottawa in an effort to carve out more policy and financial autonomy

They will lose. Trudeau’s shiny, Instagram-able veneer aside, his ruling Liberal Party faces what is shaping up to be horrific national election in October. Collapsed positions vis-à-vis the Americans on trade has gutted Liberal support in Quebec, British Colombia has outflanked Trudeau to the left, Alberta’s Prairie Province neighbors have never been strong Liberal territory, and Ontario is slipping into a decidedly non-leftist populism. Trudeau needs Alberta’s tax dollars to hold Canada together, and any concessions to Alberta would immediately be demanded by other provinces. What Alberta is asking for is quite literally an end of Canada. Even if Trudeau wanted to give ground (and he does not), he absolutely cannot.

Something’s gotta give.

This Alberta Question has two possible outcomes.

The first is an Albertan collapse.

Economically, the province’s strength is resource extraction. Without a significant change in how Canada functions, the Albertans inability to bring their crude to market leaves them staring down an economic depression Greek in depth while also facing ever higher financial extractions from Ottawa. It is enough to hollow out Calgary on the scale of Detroit. As a government town, Edmonton wouldn’t do much better.

Politically, Alberta’s United Conservatives face an impending litany of defeats on absolutely every issue that they say matter to them. Barring impossible shifts in Ottawa’s position, a repeat of the sort of infighting which brought the NDP to power in 2015 is all but guaranteed.

All that needs to occur to guarantee the rudderless and hopeless outcomes of this option is that the Albertans continue to do what they’ve done for the past decade: hope things get better and hope what they say matters.

Outcome Two requires a sharp break with convention, as it is nothing less than Albertan secession.

The logic of Alberta leaving Canada is difficult to deny. If the rest of Canada remains hellbent on cramping the Albertans’ style, why not quit the Canada Show? Alberta isn’t dependent on the federal government’s financial handouts like other provinces. It has an energy sector, public infrastructure, educational system and workforce that has drawn plenty of international investment interest on its own. Negotiating export pipelines directly with the United States would be infinitely easier than with other Canadian governments, especially since the U.S. Gulf Coast is home to the only concentration of refineries in the world that can process Albertan heavy crudes. The money the Albertan government would save by not having to underwrite the rest of Canada would be gob-smacking.

But just because secession solves a bunch of problems doesn’t mean the Albertans are chomping at the bit to make it happen. No one in the Albertan public space is using the “S” word just yet. None of the major parties campaigned on separation, either in 2015 or 2019, but that doesn’t mean that the topic isn’t about to dominate provincial political discussions.

The United Conservatives now face a truly weird combination of factors: a complete lack of ability to get anything they want from within the Canadian system, and the utter ability to leave that system. It isn’t that anyone in power in Edmonton is agitating for independence, but it will become obvious very soon that discussions of and processes towards independence are the only thing Albertans are actually in charge of.

We’ll save the implications of at-this-point-still-theoretical Albertan independence for another time. Even if the incoming Albertan government were dead-set on a secession referendum—and they are not—simply going through the motions to achieve that end will take a few months.

But as a teaser consider that Alberta by itself is the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, Canada is the tenth-largest economy, and the bilateral American-Canadian bilateral trade relationship has been the world’s largest for the bulk of the past two generations. One way or another, all things Canadian are now firmly on our radar, reaching up to the level of importance of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, the ongoing Japanese and Russian resurgences, and the pending European and Chinese disintegrations.

For Canadians everywhere, that alone should be terrifying.

 

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