What Ukraine Taught Me About Fake Independence
I didn’t expect a referendum question in Alberta to remind me of Donbas. In 2014, Russia recognized two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine as independent states. It was a legal stunt, something to point to later as justification for invasion. After that recognition, Russian tanks rolled across the border, and the world watched a manufactured secession become the pretext for a war that has now killed and displaced millions. Watching Alberta’s separatist movement gather signatures, what happens to a resource-rich, landlocked, newly independent territory sitting next to a much larger power that has shown that it is willing to use military and economic pressure to absorb it? Albertans deserve to hear it laid out plainly before they vote on anything.
How We Got Here
Alberta has flirted with separatism for decades, but the current moment has deeper roots than anything before it. The province has long argued it contributes more to federal taxes than it receives, a grievance that has emotional weight for people who feel Ottawa doesn’t understand their economy. That frustration hardened into an organized movement after the Liberal Party’s fourth consecutive federal election win in 2025, when Premier Danielle Smith came under mounting pressure from her own base to act. On February 19, 2026, Smith announced a referendum for October 19, 2026, eventually expanding it to ten questions, the tenth asking Albertans whether the province should remain in Canada or begin the legal process toward a binding referendum on separation.
A pro-separation petition organized by Stay Free Alberta claimed roughly 300,000 signatures, but its credibility was damaged after separatist groups gained access to a leaked voter database. A competing pro-Canada petition led by former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk was independently verified at over 400,000 signatures. In May 2026, the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta struck down the separatist petition because Indigenous nations had not been properly consulted, given the implications separation would have for treaty rights. Smith responded with a modified version of the question into the fall referendum anyway, a move that drew criticism from separatists and federalists alike.
A joint analysis from the Global Centre for Democratic Resilience, the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict, and DisinfoWatch found that Russian-aligned information networks, alongside other coordinated social media activity, had been amplifying Albertan grievances to fuel separatist narratives and undermine Canadian democratic institutions. It means the loudest voices pushing Albertans aren’t always Albertans at all.
The Donbas Playbook
To understand the Ukraine comparison, it helps to go through what happened there. Eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions had been simmering with Russian-backed separatist activity since 2014, with foreign funding, disinformation campaigns, and armed militias that Moscow. Then, in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, just days before ordering a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The recognition gave Russia a legal-sounding justification. It could claim it was defending newly recognized nations rather than invading a sovereign neighbour outright.
That playbook is worth naming because they aren’t unique to Russia. A larger power identifies a region with genuine local grievances. It funds and amplifies separatist rhetoric, often through online disinformation that’s difficult to trace back to its source. It waits for that discontent to harden into a referendum or a declaration of independence. Then it uses the instability, real or manufactured, as an opening to extend influence or outright control, framing the whole operation as a response to the will of the people.
None of this means Alberta’s referendum is a foreign plot in the way Donbas was. Still, the elements that made Ukraine vulnerable external funding of separatist sentiment, a border with a powerful state, and resources that America wants are all here too. That combination should give Albertans concern even if the analogy isn’t perfect.
What Albertans Actually Want
Here’s where the polling gets interesting. A January 2026 Research Co. poll found 31 percent of Albertans supported the province becoming fully independent, up nine points from mid-2023, while 62 percent opposed. On the narrower question of Alberta joining the United States outright, only 24 percent were in favour, with 72 percent disagreeing. Angus Reid Institute polling from February 2026 found that fewer than three in ten Albertans said they would vote to leave Canada if a referendum were held, while two-thirds said they’d vote to stay, and most of those “stay” voters said they held that position firmly.
The social media landscape tells a different story than the polling. One reason for that gap may be the online environment itself, since so many of the loudest separatist voices push American flags and American framing into a conversation that most Albertans aren’t having. It’s a useful reminder that a comment section is not the same as a representative sample.
Even among people who say they’d vote to leave, the appetite for actually becoming American is shakier. An Ipsos poll found that among the most committed separatists in Alberta, 70 percent said they would consider joining the United States rather than a fully independent Alberta. The same research found that three-quarters of Albertans who’d vote to stay in Canada said they would move to another province if Alberta separated, while only a quarter said they’d remain in a newly independent Alberta. That is the profile of a province deeply divided, with a plurality signalling they’d leave rather than live through the experiment.
What the Economists Say Would Actually Happen
University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe estimates separation would shrink Alberta’s economic activity by roughly twenty billion dollars, or about thirty-nine hundred dollars per Albertan. Economist Claude Lavoie points out that while an independent Alberta would collect and keep its own taxes, it would also have to pay for services currently provided federally, including national defence, embassies, border security, employment insurance, and the criminal justice system, and it would not automatically inherit Canada’s existing trade agreements with the rest of the world.
Geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan has argued that an independent Alberta would be squeezed hard, since its main exports, oil and grain, are priced in U.S. dollars, meaning that as a landlocked, currency-exposed exporter it would face rapid inflation and a shrinking labour pool. Even Alberta’s own business community is nervous. A March 2026 Calgary Chamber of Commerce poll of local businesses found that 83 percent believed separatist discourse itself, regardless of the referendum’s outcome, was already increasing the risk of recession and discouraging investment.
The Quebec Precedent Nobody Wants to Repeat
Alberta wouldn’t be the first Canadian province to flirt with leaving. Quebec did it twice, and the economic aftershocks are still visible in the map of corporate Canada. For most of the country’s history, Montreal was the main city, the financial and commercial capital. From before Confederation right through the 1970s, Montreal was the centre of both English and French Canada, the place where the railway to the Pacific was headquartered and financed, and where the country’s leading English paper was published.
Then came Quebec’s language legislation and the referendum era, and corporate Canada voted with its feet. Sun Life Financial made a very public exit to Toronto, taking roughly eight hundred jobs with it, while other major institutions like the Bank of Montreal shifted their operational centres east without moving their legal headquarters. Until that point, Montreal had been Canada’s economic capital, but the wave of corporate relocations helped hand that title to Toronto. The damage compounded over the decades, culminating in the Montreal Stock Exchange folding into its larger Toronto counterpart after the 1995 referendum.
The uncertainty itself was enough to rattle markets. In the run-up to both referendums, the Canadian dollar came under sustained downward pressure and interest rates climbed, while the Toronto Stock Exchange suffered one of its sharpest drops ever recorded ahead of the 1995 vote, with firms most exposed to Quebec’s political volatility taking the biggest hit. Quebec eventually rebuilt, growing its own homegrown corporate giants and its own investment institutions, but Montreal never reclaimed the title it lost. Alberta would be wise to notice that economic uncertainty doesn’t build a country.
The Brexit Lesson About Referendums
There’s a seductive idea that voters can use a referendum as a way to “send a message” to Ottawa without actually intending on full separation. Britain tried exactly this logic with the European Union. The pitch to voters in 2016 was that a Leave vote would force Brussels to offer better terms, that London held enough leverage to get concessions. Instead, the country got a genuine departure, years of trade disruption, and a diminished position in European affairs. A message vote doesn’t stay a message once the ballots are counted.
Alberta faces the same trap. A referendum designed to pressure Ottawa into pipeline concessions risks producing an outcome nobody campaigned for. Prime Minister Mark Carney, unlike Trudeau, has taken a more conciliatory tone on energy policy, and Albertans approve of how he’s handled the separatism issue so far, compared to those who disapprove of Premier Smith’s approach. Threatening to blow up the country’s economic future over a pipeline stops making sense the moment the federal government stops being an obstacle.
A lot of separatist arguments lean on the assumption that international law would force Canada to grant an independent Alberta guaranteed pipeline and rail access. That’s not quite how it works. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does grant landlocked states a right of access to and from the sea through neighbouring transit states. However, that right comes with specific terms of access, at what cost, through which corridors, that are set through negotiated agreements between the landlocked state and its transit neighbour, not by international law itself.
In practice, that means Canada would have a legal obligation to negotiate some form of transit access with an independent Alberta. It would not have any obligation to build new pipelines, approve specific projects, or hand over favourable terms. Canada could still impose administrative fees, insist on environmental conditions, or simply slow-walk approvals, while remaining compliant with international law. An independent Alberta wouldn’t have a legal right to cheap, fast access to the coast.
An independent Alberta would have exactly two plausible trading partners for its energy exports: a Canada it just left and a United States that would hold all the cards. Washington wouldn’t need to send troops or spend a dollar to get what it wanted from a landlocked Alberta. If Alberta ever found itself negotiating oil and gas prices with a single buyer who knew there was nowhere else to sell, it would be a price Alberta was told to accept.
A Path Forward Without Burning the House Down
None of this means Alberta’s frustrations are unworthy of a serious hearing. But there’s a wide gap between demanding a fairer deal within Canada and gambling the province’s economic future on an untested future next door to a rogue America. Albertans who feel unheard can push their provincial and federal representatives for equalization reform, for pipeline approvals grounded in environmental review, and for a national energy policy that reflects how much the province contributes. They can also stay skeptical of online movements whose loudest cheerleaders wave a flag that isn’t Canadian and whose funding doesn’t always lead back to Albertans.
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As a veteran of the two referendums I can echo unequivocally that Montreal became the husk of what it was and while the city has rebuilt somewhat it’s by far nothing of the eminence it once held. And while the grievances from our francophone community were real from my perspective we have overcome and I think better integrated as Quebecers and Canadians (again my on the ground opinion) For Albertans please listen that no matter how you slice this pie or rationale or argument, the filling is still brown and it’s not made of chocolate. Look to history here in Quebec and to Brexit. Let’s talk and not walk away from each other. Nice article. Thank you CR.
We lived the pre and post 1995 exit from Montreal to Toronto. Royal Bank had a split head office. They would quietly relocate departments down the highway, small enough moves that nothing hit the press. We relocated ourselves in 1996, months after the referendum. Value of our house dropped by 33%. Took a haircut. I loved living in Montreal, for its own joie de vivre as well as helping me understand Canada better. And the changes are undeniable.