Donna Kennedy-Glans: Alberta’s grievances have nothing to do with MAGA

On Sept. 3, the New York Times published a guest essay by Edmonton writer Curtis Gillespie under two stacked headlines: “Trump Isn’t Just Trolling Canada. He’s Helping Push It Apart,” and “MAGA Is Feeding a Separatist Surge in Canada.” It is part of a Times series called “The New World Disorder,” about countries adjusting as America steps aside. Alberta is the exhibit.

Sign In or Create an Account

Gillespie opens his column describing a United Conservative pancake breakfast during the Calgary Stampede. Premier Danielle Smith arrives in Lone Star boots, a Stetson and a Texas bolo. He reads the outfit as a nod south. He hears her contrast Albertan grit with Ottawa’s mandarins and tie “newcomers” to soaring government costs. Then he finds what he came for: groups such as Albertans4Freedom and United Alberta flags, the “bald-faced” separatist, talk of an independent Judeo-Christian nation, and a push to vote yes on Oct. 19 to a question that would start Alberta down the path to leaving Canada.

Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.

By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

The next issue of Channel Israel will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

Smith, he writes, has given that impulse a new life without quite endorsing it. Donald Trump and MAGA, he claims, are “unmistakable strands” of the conversation. The president’s greatest gift to the cause, Gillespie concludes, is not a cheer for independence. It is the habit of talking about Canada as weak, broken and beholden.

This is the image of Albertans many American readers now have: a MAGA annex in cowboy clothes, already pulling away.

I live in Calgary. I have been writing about this file for the National Post all year. The separatists are real. They are organized, they raise money, they use targeting tools and they are not going home if they lose on Oct. 19. I have sat with Keith Wilson; I have stood on my own porch with a Stay Free Alberta canvasser; I intend to vote Option 1 — that Alberta remain a province of Canada — and I am not complacent. None of that makes Gillespie’s portrait true.

What Gillespie gets wrong is the engine.

The Times piece treats MAGA as the cause and Alberta as the symptom. That flatters Washington and insults the people who actually live here. Western alienation is older than Trump’s first campaign, older than Smith’s premiership and older than the separatist groups Gillespie noticed waiting for pancakes at the Stampede breakfast.

Albertans have been arguing with Ottawa about energy, equalization, and respect for decades. The grievance is that this country still treats a “have province” like an ATM and then lectures it for producing the deposits. You do not need a MAGA cap to feel that. You need pipelines that don’t get built, and a federal government that talks about nation-building while its rules remain hostile to what Alberta sells.

Smith has given the independence question a new life. That is fair to say. She pushed a vote onto the October ballot. She has been careful not to campaign for leaving, and she has said she will campaign for Alberta to stay. That is a more complicated premier than “Trump-friendly in a bolo tie.” It is also why the real contest is not the hard separatists Gillespie came to photograph. It is the soft ones.

Monte Solberg’s “Vote to Stay” operation is hunting about 100,000 conservatives who think Option 2 is a warning shot at Mark Carney — force Edmonton to start the legal process toward a binding secession vote, send Ottawa a message and stay in Canada anyway. They believe they are being tactical. Solberg thinks they are playing with fire. So do I. The people writing white papers for an independent Alberta need those voters. A protest “yes” is how a minority becomes a process. Gillespie’s essay barely has room for that distinction, because a protest vote inside Confederation is less useful to an Alberta-has-gone-MAGA thesis than a cowboy apocalypse.

Polls have been stubborn. Most Albertans still say they will vote remain. Support for starting down the independence road sits in the low-to-mid 20s, with another slice tempted to use the ballot as a blunt instrument. That is a serious minority. It is not “a separatist surge,” if surge means the province is packing to leave Canada. It is a province arguing with its country. Quebecers will recognize the difference, even if midtown Manhattan does not.

The other flattening is economic. Pieces like this leave a hollowed-out aftertaste even when the sentences are more careful. Alberta is strained; housing has cooled and trade risk is real. Boom and bust is in the muscle memory of Alberta. It is also still an economy that has been outgrowing the country, with energy, agriculture and a growing industrial and data-centre footprint. Calgary is not a ruin. Edmonton is not a ruin. Fort McMurray is not a costume. If you only cover the breakfast and the flags, you miss the reason the argument exists: Alberta still produces a disproportionate share of what Canada sells to the world, and it is tired of being told that fact is an embarrassment.

Trump matters here. Of course he does. He talks about Canada as weak, even annexable. Some independence organizers hear opportunity in that. Smith has had to manage U.S. tariffs on the oil and gas that pay Alberta’s bills. Gillespie is right on one narrow point: contempt from Washington makes it easier to claim Canada cannot protect itself, let alone treat Alberta fairly. Grant him that; then put it in proportion. What built this movement was not a speech in Washington. It was years of federal policy that made staying within Confederation seem like an unfair bargain.

Carney is not Justin Trudeau; Smith told me this spring, the working relationship is different. Yet that has not retired the file, and a pipeline handshake will not retire it either. The independence movement is more professional than it was. It will turn the next fight with Ottawa — tariffs, a stalled pipeline, or another federal lecture about how Alberta should behave — into an argument for leaving.

I am a Canada-first Albertan. I want this country to work for my children and grandchildren. I also will not pretend the old Confederation formula still feels honest from here. Clifford Sifton, who filled the Prairie with settlers, built a West that was supposed to enrich the East. That formula is exhausted.

A century later, the question is whether we can write a formula that works for the next century. This is the adult version of Oct. 19. Not whether Alberta has become a MAGA annex. The question is whether Canada can evolve through mutual respect or whether it will keep daring a “have province” to take its ball and go.

Gillespie found a political caricature at breakfast and called it the story of Alberta. The creature exists, but the province is larger. If American readers take one correction from Alberta, let it be this: we are not leaving because Trump winked. A minority wants out; a larger group wants to rattle the cage; most of us still want to stay and rewrite the deal. The danger is not that the Times discovered a hidden MAGA republic. The danger is that a loud minority, a careless “yes” and a foreign essay become the only Alberta anyone abroad can see.

I will vote to remain. I will keep listening on the doorstep. And I will not outsource the explanation of this place to a narrative that needs us to be America’s disorder.

National Post

This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.