In 2014, Russia began its assault on Ukraine using disinformation and manufactured separatism in the Donetsk region. The playbook was clear: stoke local grievance — some with at least a thin connection to reality — create the illusion of grassroots support, manufacture and amplify the fiction of a persecuted people wanting out. What followed was not independence but eight years of war, a full-scale invasion in 2022, and now the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
We are watching Chapter One of that same playbook unfold in Alberta.
Danielle Smith’s government is allowing the spread of a separation movement built on manufactured ambiguity — just as the Ukrainian government failed to take the threat seriously 12 years ago. After two failed independence referendums in Quebec, both based on vague questions, the Clarity Act was passed in 2000, giving shape to the 1998 Supreme Court decision and requiring that any referendum to dismantle Canada be based on a “clear answer to a clear question.” In 2026, Alberta’s referendum poses no question at all. It asks only whether Albertans want a future referendum — on a form of separation no one has yet defined. It’s political division dressed up as democratic process.
Worse, the movement is being actively amplified by American interests aligned with the Trump administration. In May, Elections Alberta uncovered a massive data breach that exposed the names, addresses, and phone numbers of nearly three million Albertans, funnelled through an app built by separatists and powered by American companies with direct ties to Republican operatives and wealthy Trump supporters. This is a template copied from Russian interference operations: gather voter data, micro-target populations, amplify division, destabilise. In Ukraine, “independence” for Donetsk and Luhansk quickly led to their illegal absorption by Russia.
Alberta independence isn’t all a foreign plot. Populists often ask valid questions, and that’s the case here. Why did Canada target our oil and gas sector while failing to reduce national consumption? Why did we leave a mature economy to struggle, despite the huge and growing need to find sources of democratic energy to replace Russian and Iranian petroleum products? These are fair questions. But the answer isn’t separation. The answers are partnership, investment, and a national resource strategy that treats Alberta as central to Canadian security and prosperity.
Let’s be clear about what Alberta means to this country. Alberta’s resources are not a negotiating position. They are its foundation. For a decade, Alberta asked Ottawa to invest in resource development. It was ignored. Now, with Europe cut off from Russian oil and gas, we are belatedly recognising that Alberta’s resources are a strategic weapon for democracies under pressure. This realisation should have happened in 2014. That delay is on Ottawa, and the consequence of that delay is that the populists have seized legitimate grievances and twisted them into demands for separation.
Against this stands the majority of Albertans. Take Thomas Lukaszuk, who speaks for them. A former Conservative deputy premier, he has gathered over 456,000 signatures on his Forever Canadian petition. He is an optimist who believes Alberta can be fixed, but not in isolation. He understands that Alberta’s future is inseparable from Canada’s.
The Clarity Act exists because Parliament understood something essential: if a country is to allow referendums on its own dissolution, there must be a floor. A clear question. A supermajority threshold. Fifty per cent plus one isn’t sufficient to break up a country — it’s only just enough to change a bylaw. Canada’s constitution already requires seven out of ten provinces and a national majority to amend itself. It is not unreasonable to ask for a similar — or higher — bar before we dissolve it.
So let’s make this explicit. Any referendum on provincial independence must require a two-thirds majority. That is not anti-democratic. It is the only democratic standard that makes sense. You do not allow a country to be destroyed by a bare majority, especially when foreign actors are actively working to manipulate that vote.
Smith says she is fighting for Alberta to remain in Canada. If that is true, then she must reject this process. She must end the ambiguity. She must make clear that separation is off the table. And she must work with the federal government — finally — to build the resource partnership that should have existed since 2014.
The past is not negotiable. The future is. But only if we stop wasting time.
Dominic Cardy is the leader of the Canadian Future Party and a former Member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick and provincial cabinet minister.
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