In the past year, leaders of Alberta’s main separatist organization have travelled repeatedly to Washington, D.C., for quiet meetings with senior American government officials in the Treasury and State departments. They’ve reportedly discussed everything from adopting the American dollar to building an independent Alberta military.

These highly unusual interactions — which prompted Canada to warn the Donald Trump administration to respect Canadian sovereignty — are unfolding just as a new Angus Reid poll shows 29 per cent of Albertans would vote, or are inclined to vote, for separation if a referendum were held today.

This is a clear minority, but it’s also an indication of some discontentment. The more interesting question is why a province that has long been among Canada’s richest feels so hard done by that some are willing to contemplate breaking up the country.

Read more: What if Alberta really did vote to separate?

Alberta defies the usual template

Andrés Rodríguez‑Pose, a professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, argues that populist eruptions are rooted in regions suffering persistent economic decline, demographic loss and a pervasive sense that they have been “left behind” in a globalized economy.

In Europe and the United States, voters in deindustrialized regions have used the ballot box to punish political leaders for abandoning them. The core grievance is material and territorial: my region is poorer, ignored and slipping further behind.

Alberta does not fit that template.

Its economy has grown faster than any other province since 1950, and it still sits near the top of Canada’s income and employment league tables, even after oil price shocks.

In fact, a central anomaly of Canadian federalism is that Alberta’s economic heft far exceeds its population and representation in Ottawa, feeding a sense of under‑recognized importance rather than marginality.

Alberta is not a place that “doesn’t matter” economically; the........

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