Jun. 21, 2026 "U.S. tariffs go easy on Alberta. That lets separatists go harder on Canada": Today I found this article by Jason Markusoff on CBC:
Several factors have triggered concern in some corners of the country about the role the United States may play in Alberta’s upcoming referendum on separation.
They range from a Trump cabinet secretary’s remarks,
to administration meetings with separatists,
to the spectre of U.S.-based foreign influence campaigns.
But what if the biggest lift Washington gave to the independence movement was done in plain sight
and through official policy channels,
even though it was likely inadvertent
and an indirect boost?
We’re talking about tariffs
— or, namely the lack of them against the province now eyeing a divorce with Canada.
The economy-rattling trade penalties have bound many Canadians together against a perceived common external menace.
But because Alberta’s industries are largely unaffected by the tariffs that are hitting other regions hard,
separatists have perhaps been able to harness public frustrations against an internal foe,
rather than a foreign one.
Let’s unpack this.
Fueling the way
When U.S. President Donald Trump initially threatened and applied various duties on virtually everything the United States imported last year,
one of his first broad exemptions was on oil and gas products that comply with the North America trade agreement, as most do.
That benefited U.S. refiners that rely on Canadian crude,
and forestalled the sort of fuel price shock Washington was averse to
(before Trump’s Iranian incursion).
But this also brought huge relief to the trading neighbour next door,
given that oil is by far Canada’s largest U.S. export.
Of course, nowhere would a major tariff shock to oil be felt more than Alberta, the key oil-producing province.
The second-largest export industry in Alberta?
It’s agriculture, which was also exempted from tariffs.
While Alberta’s trade economy has proceeded largely footloose and tariff-free,
that isn’t the case elsewhere in Canada.
Consider key industries in other big provinces:
Quebec aluminum,
Ontario steel and automobiles,
British Columbia lumber.
“Despite Canada as a whole facing tariff pressures,
the challenges are fairly different depending on the region,”
said Salim Zanzana, an economist with RBC Economics.
His team has laid out how large those disparities are.
The effective tariff rate being paid by Alberta is close to zero,
compared to a rate 18 times larger in Ontario
and 23 times larger in Quebec.
Trade policy experts Carlo Dade and Sharon Zhengyang Sun recently co-authored a paper highlighting the differing impacts of Trump’s tariff regime around Canada.
The paper, for the New North America Initiative at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy,
notes that Alberta’s gross domestic product is the most reliant on U.S. exports,
but has among the least exposure to sectoral tariffs.
Tariffs in Alberta, particularly on lumber,
still affect about $1 billion of provincial exports,
an impact likely most felt in specific parts of the province, the report notes.
But the blast zone is wider and deeper elsewhere in Canada.
“That has Ontario rightly running scared and that puts forward the larger question for the challenge to the federation,” Dade said.
While other premiers have ventured south of the border to decry the mutual detriments of tariffs,
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been in a position to argue for
stronger trade ties
and market expansions.
She sat for a podcast interview in September with U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra.
Last week she urged others not to “panic and freak out with ads and overwrought commentary” in response to Trump’s periodic threats
— which might be easier for a premier to do when large swaths of their jurisdiction’s key factories have not been imperiled when Trump makes good on some of his threats.
While most provinces have continued to block U.S. liquor sales,
Alberta lifted its ban back in June 2025.
It was joined only by Saskatchewan,
whose major potash sector was also exempted from U.S. tariffs.
Alberta’s more relaxed attitude toward the United States extends beyond public policy.
While Canadian travel to the U.S. has taken a major hit since the tariff threat began last year,
that drop isn’t universal.
It hasn’t been nearly as much of a phenomenon at Calgary’s largest airport.
The number of Canadians travelling back to Calgary International Airport from the U.S. in May was down by 8.2 per cent
compared to where it was in May 2024, before Trump’s presidency.
At other major Canadian airports, the figure was down 30 per cent or more.
Put together, Albertans have less urgency for sudden Canadian unity in the age of “51st state” rhetoric.
And that’s where agents of Canadian disunity can step in.
Without much of a threat to defend against from outside Canada,
that may have freed up Albertans’ frustrations to be channeled within Canada,
toward a generations-old target for their ire.
Premier Smith has more routinely bemoaned federal policies than U.S. ones,
although she maintains she’s a federalist.
The separatists take it even farther, questioning the purpose of Canada altogether.
Jeffrey Rath, one of the most prominent separatist leaders, has routinely adulated Donald Trump and berated Prime Minister Mark Carney in the same social media posts.
And consider this exchange captured on video last week at a park outside Edmonton, where Derek Smith, who hosts the pro-independence podcast Unacceptable Fringe, was handing out separatist lawn signs.
He and a man from the nearby village of Onoway got into a discussion about Trump.
“What has he done that bad that everybody hates him so bad?” the visitor said.
“He says it like it is
and people don’t like it
and it’s too bad,”
Smith replied.
“I wish we had somebody like him running our country. We’d have jobs.”
Would they be wondering why Canadians dislike Trump if they were living in a different province,
where they might know people hurt by shuttered truck assembly lines,
or unsure how long subsidies can keep them going at the aluminum smelter?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/analysis-us-tariffs-impact-alberta-separatism-9.7242585
Jun. 24, 2026 "Half of Calgary Chamber members would consider leaving if Alberta separates: poll": Today I found this article on BNN Bloomberg:
A poll commissioned by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce suggests
almost half of its members are prepared to move their businesses out of Alberta
if the province votes to separate from Canada.
Probe Research conducted the online survey of 137 chamber members between June 8 and June 22.
The poll comes as Albertans prepare for an October vote on 10 referendum questions,
including one on whether the province should remain in Canada
or begin the process of holding a separation referendum at a later date.
Forty-eight per cent of respondents said they are
very
or somewhat likely to relocate
if the separation process moves forward,
while 39 per cent said they are unlikely to do so.
Thirteen per cent are unsure.
“I actually looked at that number and my eyebrows went up and I thought,
‘That is a significant number
and that would be devastating for Calgary,’”
said Deborah Yedlin, president and CEO of the chamber.
Nineteen per cent of respondents reported slowing business expansion plans within Alberta,
while 15 per cent are actively looking to relocate.
Almost two-thirds of respondents reported that talk of separatism is already having a negative impact on their businesses,
while around three-quarters see no tangible benefit from a break from Canada.
Ninety-one per cent said they are closely following the referendum discussion.
Alberta has long benefited from its reputation of being an
entrepreneurial,
low-tax
and resource-rich place
to do business,
Yedlin said.
“But businesses make their decisions based on
certainty
and confidence
and this will undermine all of it
— no certainty and no confidence,”
she said.
“Whatever Alberta advantage we had will disappear.”
The Chamber also commissioned an analysis from University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe, which found
one in three Albertan workers
— around 900,000 people
— would be exposed to disruptions in trade
with the rest of Canada
and international markets.
Drawing from the impacts of the United Kingdom’s split from the European Union, Tombe is also estimating
a six per cent hit to Alberta’s gross domestic product per capita if the province separates,
along with a reduction of 175,000 jobs
and a $62-billion cut to the provincial economy per year.
A working paper published in November of last year by the U.S.-based National Bureau of Economic Research found that by 2025,
Brexit had reduced the U.K.’s gross domestic product by six to eight per cent
compared to what would have been the case
if it had stayed in the EU.
Investment slipped by an estimated 12 to 18 per cent,
and employment and productivity each by three to four per cent,
the paper said.
The British Chambers of Commerce has calculated that trade deals the U.K. has inked since Brexit have clawed back just one-tenth of the four per cent GDP loss the Office of Budget Responsibility predicted in 2020 would be caused by the split within 15 years.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who has said she counts herself in the “stay” camp,
shared some preliminary math for startup costs at a news conference earlier this month.
The province has also commissioned an
economic study
and tabbed an expert advisory panel on the potential costs of quitting Confederation.
An independent Alberta would have
to take on its share of Canada’s national debt,
along with NATO commitments to defence spending
and programs like Old Age Security and the Child Tax Benefit.
And then there’s the infrastructure for
a national pension program,
employment insurance
and border control.
Trade agreements would need to be renegotiated.
Alberta would need its own
postal service,
along with regulators for
telecoms,
railways
and banks.
All told, Smith said transitional costs could tally up to around
$400 billion,
with $25 billion to $50 billion in ongoing annual costs.
Separatist leaders disagree, saying an independent Alberta would come with no more
than $5.7 billion in startup costs
and would post surpluses once tax revenue stops flowing to Ottawa.
The conversation around separation also needs to transcend the economic arguments, as important as those are, Yedlin said.
“There are reasons for people in Alberta to feel like
they haven’t been heard
and to feel they’ve been taken for granted from a federal perspective.
And my response to that is,
‘That’s true.’ I grew up in this province, too,”
she said.
But she said the relationship with Ottawa has shifted,
with a memorandum of understanding signed last year on a wide array of
energy matters,
including a path forward for a new west coast oil pipeline.
“Let’s build on what we’ve established
and how we’ve changed the trajectory of what’s possible.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 24, 2026.
