Supporters of Alberta independence collect signatures at a roadside station. Photo by Jason Woodhead/Flickr.

Coverage of what CBC’s The Fifth Estate recently called “The Alberta Question” has oscillated between dismissing the prospect of independence as implausible and warning of the very real possibility that it could succeed. This is not unlike the historical episodes to which it is often compared: the 1995 Québec referendum (the “National Question”) or Brexit in 2016.

Reporting, conversation, and commentary have largely focused on the legal viability and implications of Alberta’s independence. While important, this laser focus conceals the importance of Albertan separatism’s “ugly underside” as part of a global far-right social movement aiming, as Harsha Walia recently argued, to “mainstream anti-migrant racism.” Alberta independence is a threat not because it might stage an unlikely upset—indeed, recent reporting has affirmed previous polling data showing that the question on separation is unlikely to pass if voter turnout is as high as expected. Rather, it is a threat because it normalizes and scales up organizing for white supremacist, anti-immigrant policies, laundering them through western alienation. This referendum is a tool for demonstrating and building the far-right’s power and organizational capacity in Canada. A lack of serious engagement with the ideological and social forces pushing this movement, particularly by mainstream media in eastern Canada, blocks understanding of on-the-ground political activity occurring in Alberta, and obscures its relation to a growing and global far-right movement.

Canada’s constitutional structure is not limited to the Constitution Acts of 1867 and 1982. It includes treaties between the Crown and Indigenous nations, affirmed in section 25 of the Constitution Act, 1982. Indigenous nations, scholars, and intellectuals have pushed back on Alberta independence, showing that in terms of this constitutional structure, rooted in treaties, the legal and constitutional viability of a sovereign Alberta would be questionable. However, this is beside the point for the separatist movement. They are more than happy to assert that one of the key reasons for Alberta independence would be the ability to illegally expand colonial jurisdiction. Here, separation itself is of a colonial mindset. As Jeff Rath of the Alberta Prosperity Project stated in The Fifth Estate coverage, reflecting on the 2021 federal vaccine mandate for travel: “Justin Trudeau says I’m no longer allowed to fly because I didn’t get vaccinated. I’m now a prisoner of Alberta. So, I turned to a friend one day and I said, ‘Okay, I guess if Trudeau won’t let me leave Alberta, I’m going to pick up my entire province and go.’” Separation relies on a sense of entitlement to the land, to own the territory of Alberta despite both those who wish to remain and those who respect the treaties that govern this land.

In a revealing speech, Cory Morgan, an Alberta separatist activist, lambasted “Laurentians” who want to tear down John A. Macdonald’s statue and make ‘us’ “ashamed to be part of this country.” Why would someone who truly believes in a sovereign Alberta, with a distinct national identity, care about being ashamed to be Canadian? The answer is that Alberta independence has very little to do with a distinct Albertan identity, and everything to do with what is, in fact, a nationwide surge in far-right politics. As Matthew Wildcat recently put it: “The danger of........

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