“Quitting is the easy way out — and Albertans are not quitters,” Poilievre said in a speech in Calgary on Friday, days ahead of a referendum in the province on whether it’s time to vote on leaving Canada for good.

“We don’t just take our ball and go home," Poilievre said.

"We don’t walk away. We stand and fight for what we believe in, and we reflect upon all that we have."

Albertans go to the polls Monday to vote on 10 questions. The key question asks whether the province should remain in Canada or hold a second, binding referendum on leaving Confederation.

Poilievre said countries like Canada are built, defended, reimagined and reinforced by generations honouring those who came before.

“Some even died (in wars) so that we can have the country that we have today," Poilievre said. 

"They had to be strong so that we could be free."

He reminded the crowd about the settlers who risked all to cross the expanse of Canada and make a province. “We owe it to them to stay and fight for what they sacrificed to build, to fight for Canada.”

He said he gets how people are unhappy with rising costs and with what he characterized as a lax justice system, an out-of-control immigration program, and federal policies that curtail resource development.

But he urged Albertans to see the bigger picture.

“To those people who are thinking about taking out their frustration on the current government by voting for separation in the referendum, I say this: Canada is more than a government.

“It is a people, a flag, a land, a history and a promise.”

Poilievre and Prime Minister Mark Carney are in the province making last-ditch appeals to Albertans to vote to stay in Canada.

Carney was set to visit Red Deer with Premier Danielle Smith on Friday afternoon and speak at an evening rally in Edmonton with the federalist group Forever Canadian.

Carney spoke Thursday at one of the group's rallies in Calgary, telling the crowd of roughly 5,000 that a vote against Canada is a dangerous bluff that could lead to years of lost opportunities.

He said frustrations in Alberta are real but that Canada is working in the spirit of co-operative federalism.

Polls have suggested a strong majority of Albertans will vote to stay, but leaders stress that voter apathy could open the door to a winning vote for separation.

Albertans have been voting by mail and, for more than a week, at advance polls in numbers that suggest the final count could set a record.

Smith called the referendum earlier this year.

She said bubbling discontent with past federal policies reached a boiling point with hundreds of thousands signing petitions for and against staying in Confederation.

She said a referendum is needed to resolve the issue once and for all and that she has voted for Canada to stay.

Critics, however, say Smith isn't resolving a broad-based grievance. They say she has instead inflamed and validated latent fringe separatist sentiment, rolling the dice on the future of the country, to appease hardliners in her United Conservative Party.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2026.

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