Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party never mentioned the prospect of an independence referendum in the last election campaign, and voters never gave them a mandate to pursue one. But that hasn’t stopped her from pushing the province into a polarizing separatist debate, one that’s already attracting attention — and almost certainly interference — from foreign powers. Worse, it might all be a useful distraction from her real political objective: turning Alberta into America’s 51st state. 

After all, while Albertans were collecting signatures for their respective petitions — first the pro-Canada side, and now the separatists — Smith’s government has been rapidly advancing a set of policies and priorities that effectively make the province more American and less Canadian. She began by importing US-style culture wars around transgender youth, LGBTQ-friendly literature in schools and the supposedly corrosive effect of DEI measures. She also forced most Albertans to pay for access to the COVID-19 vaccine, an approach that feels more at home in Florida than Canada.

Smith repeatedly made common cause with some of Conservative America’s leading culture warriors, from Ben Shapiro and Christopher Rufo to Tucker Carlson and the Praeger Institute. She embraced and endorsed their arguments around free speech and the ostensible dangers of “wokeism,” claims that are in obvious tension with Canada’s own constitutional architecture and its more........

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