I woke up this morning to CBC's Jason Markusoff and The Toronto Star's Richard Warnica talking about Alberta separatism on the Front Burner podcast. As I listened to the discussion, I found myself getting increasingly angry at the fact that neither of the two speakers seemed to have a clue what is really going on, and were "puzzled" by the apparent lack of a full throated federalist campaign against the separatists.
There is an answer here, and it's not the one you think it is. If you are expecting a "Federal Prime Minister vs Separatist Premier" grudge match as we've seen in past Quebec referendums, you're misunderstanding the picture on the ground in Alberta.
The Federal Picture
Consider the picture from the PMO's perspective for a moment. On the surface, Carney has a bigger problem to worry about, and that is a US government is currently waging a trade war / annexation fight against Canada. Carney got elected on promises to fight back against this threat to Canada, and is riding high in the polls as he spends most of his time either signing trade deals with other countries or for that matter developing the policies and programs that will ultimately re-orient Canada's economy so that it is less dependent on a trading partner that has become unreliable.
Carney needs Smith to at least continue to make noises that she is willing to negotiate. The minute he takes up an explicitly anti-separatist position, he pushes her right into the separatist camp, and Carney knows this. In this regard, Smith has played a very clever game - she has done everything to enable the separatist movement within her party, while at the same time claiming to not be a separatist.
Anybody with eyes in their head and a brain to think with can see how she has positioned herself "on the fence" and can step either way depending on the moment. It's a bit too clever by half, and I'll talk about that in a bit, but in the current moment, Alberta separatism just isn't the "huge threat" for Carney that Trump and MAGA are.
What would happen if Carney were to take up a vocal anti-separatist position? First, he would give Smith the excuse she needs to be openly separatist - she could take anything he says and use it to claim it as proof that Ottawa is the reason Alberta has a tough go of it in Canada. Simultaneously, that would send a signal to Smith's allies in Washington to crank up their involvement in the who mess (remember, the separatists have been travelling to Washington quite regularly begging for support). Third, and actually in some respects more importantly on the federal stage is it would hand the CPC the card where they could claim that Carney was being "divisive" - which is exactly the kind of card that Poilievre has been angling to get for months.
For many of the same reasons that Carney doesn't react directly to Trump's provocations, he's not going to play into this trap either. He has other things he can do which are more effective than reacting to what amounts to goading.
The Alberta Picture
An outsider might be forgiven for wondering why there isn't a louder anti-separatist campaign in Alberta.
First, you're not going to see that from Smith. She's shown us exactly who she is, and who she is beholden to in Alberta UCP politics. She can no more be a "vocal federalist" than Carney can vocally attack the separatists, and for very similar reasons. The UCP has been subjected to not one, but two "takeovers from within", and is now fundamentally a separatist party. Smith knows this, and for as long as she can play the card that says "look, I'm using separatism to extract as much as I can from Ottawa" with the separatists in her party, she gets to stay leader. She cannot overtly call out the blatant lies the separatists are using in their campaign for this reason.
Second, because this referendum is being indirectly led by Smith - most of the pro-separatist leadership are significant UCP figures, but not elected politicians themselves, it means that the referendum campaign is somewhat disconnected from the day to day political rivalries. Any party that accuses Smith of being a separatist (she is) gets deflected with a well practiced line of "I support a sovereign Alberta in a united Canada". It's ugly, cynical politics, but it works from the point of view of "teflon politicians" like Smith.
Then there is the "on the ground" reality. Alberta separatism has never had more than a few percentage points of support. Full stop. The vast majority of Albertans look at the separatists and wonder what the hell they've been smoking. Right now, the separatists are polling in the 20-25% range, but that is mostly driven on the wave of populist support that arose with the "Convoy" in 2022/23. This is quite unlike Quebec's two referendums where separatist sentiment in that province had grown to nearly 50%.
Walk down the street in Calgary or Edmonton, and you'll find most people either think the separatists are bunch of blazing idiots or they just don't even want to engage in arguing with such stupidity. You'll notice that I have focused my statements here on major urban centres. Urban Alberta in general has a much different picture politically than rural Alberta. Rural Alberta is where you find much more support for separatism, the "Convoy", and frankly Trumpism. That means something.
Separatist Support
While you hear the odd breathless headline saying "OMG - the separatists are polling at nearly 30%", you have to remember that means that nearly 75% of the province doesn't support them ... at all. Sit with that for a moment.
Here's the thing, that "separatist" support isn't a monolith of people wanting to exit Canada. I would hazard a guess that the number of hardcore "leave Canada" types amount to about 5% of the population. Why do I say that? Because the last time Alberta separatists became a "big thing" in the 1980s, they barely managed to tilt one rural riding their way. One. Riding. I've seen nothing to suggest that the hard core "leave" support has actually changed. The rest of it is a mix of people who want to "send a message", and hangers-on who want some kind of political notoriety.
The "send a message" types don't really want to leave Canada. They might have a foggy notion that somehow Alberta is hard done to, or that some aspect of confederation needs to be rethought. Whether that is because they've bought into the misrepresentation of equalization, or some other hobby horse that percolates around Alberta politics, is unclear. I suspect that's probably about half of the separatist support.
The rest are hangers-on who either think it's "cool" to be supporting something disruptive, or in the case of a few, they are hoping for it to pay off in some way if the vote goes their way. Perhaps they think that a post-separation Alberta will become the 51st State, and they can suddenly travel to the US without any difficulty (not going to happen, but whatever).
In short, separatists in Alberta are a small, but very loud, fraction of the population.
The Political Campaign Calculation
Federally, there's very little upside to intervening directly. Carney is unlikely to gain support in Alberta from doing so (he's already riding at record high support in Alberta), and doing so would hand opponents a club with which to bludgeon him. He gains far more by working on trade matters and having a regular stream of announcements highlighting what he's doing in area he's strong in. Similarly, Poilievre isn't going to gain much either - the CPC doesn't have to campaign in Alberta to win all the seats, and focusing on Alberta separatism isn't going to gain him any points with voters in Ontario either.
Provincially, the political fight is between the UCP and the NDP. As I pointed out earlier, Smith's positioning slogan of "A sovereign Alberta in a united Canada" really makes it difficult for the NDP to land a solid punch. The NDP has relatively little to lose or gain by campaigning against the separatists. They've been doing some campaigning, but they have had little success being heard (there's a lot of reasons for this).
The UCP has a unique risk here, and it's one I have trouble assessing. The party has been subjected to two "takeovers from within" since 2022: Take Back Alberta (TBA) seized control of the party executive to oust Jason Kenney, and then in 2025 the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) repeated the pattern, turning the party into an unofficial separatist party. Party membership is usually relatively low between major election cycles, so it's very hard to guess what tensions may exist between factions of the UCP at this time. Smith has kept a lid on any caucus dissent simply by bringing the majority of her caucus into cabinet (money talks ...).
There are a handful of "grassroots" campaigns out there. I don't know how far any of them will get in terms of visibility between now and October 19. While most of those are being run by people with significant political histories in Alberta, they are distinct from the political parties themselves.
The political parties in Alberta seem to view this referendum as having limited value. For the most part, their supporters will have already made up their minds, and frankly the only party with a "risk" attached to it is the UCP.
Closing Thoughts
Fundamentally, the reason you are not seeing an organized, active campaign from the federalist side of the Alberta referendum picture is simply that there is very little political upside for the major players to get involved. The overall support for separatism in Alberta is weak, and frankly it's unlikely to move any political needles very much.
This does not mean that we can ignore it. The referendum questions themselves are enormously problematic, and need to be voted down. Voter turnout here is important, if for no other reason than to send Smith and the UCP a message that Albertans are not impressed with the game playing.
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