Will Alberta Leave Canada?

Last night, Albertans voted on whether to secede from Canada. Sort of. It was not a binding referendum but one on whether to have another referendum on leaving Canada.

Albertans were given 10 questions relating to Alberta’s place within Canada. Question 10 asks for a future binding referendum: “Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

How did they vote?

As of now, 78 percent of voting areas have published results, with a total of 1,808,266 votes: 75 percent voted to remain in Canada.

• 1,370,046 voted to remain
• 438,314 voted for a referendum

Today is not Alberta’s Independence Day. In fact, it is looking like a major failure. But the damage has been done to unity and social cohesion. Why do some Albertans want to secede?

This western province of Canada formed in 1905. Alberta is Canada’s biggest energy producer, producing 83 percent of Canada’s oil products and holding 97 percent of Canada’s oil reserves in its northern tar sands. Alberta has had five straight years of a budget surplus, one of the few provinces not experiencing a recession. For most of its history, Alberta has been prosperous and independently minded.

Ottawa and Alberta have always clashed. Politically, federal politicians do not need Alberta to form governments: With a majority of the seats in Ontario and Quebec, eastern issues are always the priority over western ones. Within the current federal system, many Albertans feel their voice in democracy is not heard, which is a legitimate viewpoint.

Policy-wise, Ottawa’s modern “green energy” initiatives clash with Alberta’s oil industry. Nearly all environmental edicts from politicians in Ottawa adversely affect Alberta more than any other province. These same politicians abuse Alberta’s wealth. Equalization payments, a system in which prosperous provinces send money to those struggling financially, almost exclusively travel from Alberta to Quebec or the Maritime provinces. Equalization payments have been enshrined in Canada’s Constitution since 1984, although the practice started long before.

Alberta has not received an equalization payment since 1965. In 2026, equalization payments totaled $27 billion, with Alberta contributing $4 billion. Each Albertan contributed $802 to that pool, the majority of which will go to Quebec (estimated at $13 billion). Each province is given a hypothetical rating on revenue based on the national average tax rate; this is supposed to measure “fiscal capacity.” An above-average rating makes you ineligible for payments; below-average means you will receive a payment. This is offset by the federal government sending billions to each province to subsidize health-care services.

This is one persistent issue that has alienated Alberta from Ottawa, but there are many more. Many Albertans are upset over the Liberal Party’s tyrannical woke social policies and bureaucratic overreach. But there is also an ideological element that desires an entirely new philosophy on government. The Canada of today enshrines socialism and progressive values in its constitution and institutions. Many want to break away from this institutional capture.

But there are also many misconceptions about Alberta. It is not the bastion of conservative freedom. The Alberta Health Service is one of the most radical in the country (practicing eugenics in the 1930s) and was one of the most tyrannical during the covid-19 pandemic. Its two biggest cities, Edmonton and Calgary, have radical-left governments and large immigrant populations.

The separatist-independent movement has no central governing body or leader. It is a sporadic and loosely affiliated network of competing visions. Some groups include the Alberta Prosperity Project, Republican Party of Alberta, and the Independence Party of Alberta.

When Quebec tried to secede in 1995, it was led by the provincial government. The movement in Alberta is much different because it does not have the support of the establishment political parties. Conservative Premier Danielle Smith has allowed a referendum but does not support leaving Canada. All federal parties also oppose secession.

The only government that has supported Alberta’s secession (unofficially) has been the United States.

It has not been an easy path to this referendum. The Albertan government can use two different statutes to trigger a referendum: one requires a petition; the other is triggered by the province unilaterally.

Premier Smith chose the statute requiring a petition. A petition of over 300,00o signatures started the process. Why choose this route? This particular statute requires the referendum to abide by indigenous rights, meaning an independent Alberta would have to preserve the indigenous people’s current rights in a new nation, or at least consult them. This was not done, and in May, Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench used this clause to declare the referendum unconstitutional. It seems this was deliberate, allowing Smith to trigger a nonbinding referendum, which is what happened last night.

This is just a taste of the legal hurdles and obstacles used to block any secession movement in Canada.

Canada is no stranger to secession. Quebec’s French population has never accepted English political supremacy. Since the 1970s, it has created an organized secession movement in the Parti Québécois and the terrorist group Front du Liberation de Quebec. After decades of tension, a referendum was finally held on Oct. 30, 1995. Voter turnout was over 93 percent of the 4.7 million voters.

This was the question asked: “Do you agree that Québec should become sovereign, after having formally offered Canada a new economic and political partnership under the bill respecting the future of Québec and the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?”

The “No” option received 50.58 percent of the votes: the narrowest of margins. The separatist bullet was dodged, temporarily. The federal government asked the Supreme Court to establish a procedure and to clarify the legal issues surrounding provinces wishing to leave Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64MyonHjSb4

This created the Clarity Act (2000). Here is a brief summary:

• A province desiring to leave Canada amounts to a constitutional amendment.
• No province has the right to unilaterally leave Canada.
• There must be a clear majority resulting from a clear question.
• A vote to secede begins political negotiations to leave with all other provinces and the federal government.
• These “negotiations would be governed by the principles of federalism, democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law, and the protection of minorities.”

No province has ever voted to leave Canada, so we really have no idea how that process would work. However, the Clarity Act makes it a long, drawn-out process, and the Supreme Court and Canada’s Parliament would have opportunities to block a secession vote over legal ambiguities.

Another possibility is the intervention of foreign nations. What if Alberta voted to leave and the U.S. recognized Alberta before these negotiations finished? These are impossible questions to answer, but it shows the turmoil that could consume the country.

The Alberta independence vote was unsuccessful last night. Though many Albertans are upset with the state of their nation, they loved Canada before. The election result doesn’t mean Canada is united, but it does show that many in Alberta aren’t willing to walk out the door.

The late Herbert W. Armstrong explained in The United States and Britain in Prophecy that the British people descended from the Israelite tribe of Ephraim. The prophecies about Ephraim in the Bible apply to the British Commonwealth, including Canada.

The biblical book of Hosea is a message for modern Ephraim. Hosea 5:11 says, “Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked after the commandment.” Instead of following the principles of God’s Word in the Bible, Canada has been oppressed by sin and weak-willed compromise. Canada has broken judgment: Our government policies favor our enemies and criminals over honest working Canadians. A lot of this broken judgment, like equalization payments and tyrannical social policies, has caused the division in the nation.

Verse 12 says: “Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth ….” Several times in the Bible, God compares curses caused by sin to a moth gradually eating away the fabric of our nation. Our sins breed problems, moths, that slowly eat away at our prosperity and unity.

Separatism in Canada has been a moth, a curse, that is consuming our nation. Mistakes made at the outset of Confederation have never been corrected, and instead of seeking wise counsel from God’s Word, we have doubled down on sin as a solution. We continue to rely on ourselves for the solution.

The real solution is to separate from this evil world and return to God! We do not want independence; we want dependence on God! Hosea reveals the solution: “I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early” (verse 15). God will not intervene until we acknowledge our offense against God, and seek dependence on God!

Canada, including Alberta, still needs healing.

This is the solution we all need to seek: “Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. … Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth” (Hosea 6:1, 3).

God wants to shower blessings on us, heal us, and bind our wounds. But first we must seek Him in sincere, heartfelt repentance. To learn more about these important prophecies and how to seek God, read Hosea—Reaping the Whirlwind.