What the Heck is Happening in Alberta?

Over the past couple of months it's become clear that the usual discontent Albertans have with the federal government has morphed into something far more concerning. I lived in Northern Alberta for five years until 1984 and there was no love lost for Ottawa and especially Pierre Trudeau and his National Energy Program. But what is happening now is very different. 

In this post, I'm going to highlight several recent articles that cover different aspects of the current political scene in Alberta. 

For a starter there's this lengthy piece (gift link) from the Toronto Star:  "I went home to the heartland of Alberta independence. Even after covering Donald Trump for 10 years, I was still terrified by what I found." by James Maclennan. I included this as it was written by someone who grew up in Alberta and provides a good overview of the current separation campaign. The scary quote:

We like to imagine we are immune somehow from whatever it is that has torn the American polity apart so violently over the past 10 years, that what is happening there could never happen here. I promise you it can. In Alberta, it already is.

In this article Dean Blundell provides (in his words). "The Alberta File: How a Foreign-Backed Separatist Cabal Doxxed Three Million Albertans, Lawyered Up Against Treaty Rights, After Being Promised "500 Billion" From The Trump Regime: A definitive, on-the-record accounting of what the hell is happening in Alberta — and why every Canadian, every Treaty signatory, and every NATO ally should be paying attention."

Yes, he can be a bit long winded, but the article provides more history and context than most of the pieces I've seen in the major media and ties it to influence from the US and wider international disinformation campaigns. 

What is happening in Alberta in the spring of 2026 is a stress test of Canadian sovereignty conducted, in part, by a foreign power in friendly contact with a domestic separatist movement, lubricated by an algorithmically amplified information environment that pays Dutch YouTubers to tell Albertans separation is inevitable, organized through evangelical and convoy networks with documented histories of contempt for the state, and enabled by a provincial government that rewrote its own constitutional safeguards to accommodate the operation."

In The Leningrad Hot Dog Maker and the Destruction of Canada Charlie Angus takes a deep dive into the Russian disinformation machine and how it might affect Canada, even if there is no referrundum.

It won’t matter that the separatists don’t have the votes to succeed. They will drive false claims that the referendum was stolen or encourage a convoy of extremists to set up camp on the Coutts border to call for American help.

Imagine the hate that will be generated against First Nation people by online bots if the courts shut down the referendum.

The Donbas playbook is about weakening our nation and creating internal chaos. A full on hate storm is brewing. The Prime Minister needs to take this threat very seriously indeed.

Finally, Patrick Lennox of The Walrus asks How Did an Alberta Separatist Group Get Its Hands on the Voter List? There will no doubt be court cases arising from this and it will be interesting to see just how high up in the Alberta government they reach.

That 2.9 million voting-age Albertans have had their personal information circulating in the Maple MAGAsphere poses a massive public safety risk and exposes the October 19 referendum process even further to foreign influence from the global far right. We can safely assume that Alberta’s list of electors has been captured by agents of authoritarian regimes who wish Canada, as the last standing democracy in North America, all sorts of harm, unrest, and collapse.

The implications of this breach, which is likely the largest in Canadian history, will come into further relief in the coming days and weeks leading up to the referendum the UCP seems hell-bent to bring on.

That will do for now. I could have easily included sevral more articles, but the ones above paint a pretty detailed, and not pretty, picture of what's going on.