Alberta Separation and Market Sovereignty
Op-Ed by David Laycock
August 18, 2026
“The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the AWNA.”
Something genuinely dangerous and undemocratic is hidden behind Alberta separatists’ feelings of grievance towards our federal government, their startling ignorance about Canadian political, constitutional and fiscal realities, and their voodoo economics: an intention to destroy the social contract between Alberta citizens and government.
This social contract has its origins in an 18th-century democratic idea that real sovereignty requires more citizen control, direct or indirect, over the circumstances of their lives. Since World War 1, majorities of citizens in western countries have demanded policies that re-distribute power and opportunity from those with privilege to average citizens. These policies have provided quality public education and health care, old age pensions, affordable housing and, in recent decades, environmental protection. By the 1970s, all provinces collaborated with the federal government to fund social program spending and environmental regulatory action.
When the Reform Party rode the Trojan horse of western alienation into Parliament in 1992, many observers mistook its electoral success simply as a challenge to Canadian federalism and the federal party system. But the challenge was also to the post-war Canadian social contract’s balancing of corporate economic power and public, democratically accountable power. This balancing has served widely supported goals of enhanced equality of opportunity and social justice for all Canadians within the framework of a moderately regulated market economy. In stark opposition to these goals, the Reform Party, the Conservative Party and the UCP have modeled their vision of a good society on the free-market capitalism championed by Ronald Reagan.
Detaching sovereignty from a social contract committed to reducing economic and social inequality is the through line from the Reform Party to the UCP’s “Sovereign Alberta in a United Canada,” and ultimately to advocacy of Alberta separatism. In the intended market sovereignty, the proper job of the state is to “get out of the way,” as Pierre Poilievre is fond of saying, and let markets (that is, corporations) solve all economic and environmental problems. Separatists and the UCP leadership share a vision of Alberta’s future in which magical market forces will bring prosperity to all, while vastly diminished public institutions will abandon reducing social inequality and limiting environmental damage while enhancing support for corporate objectives.
The full costs of this libertarian fantasy to ordinary Albertans have not been carefully reckoned, by either separatism’s proponents or its most prominent critics. Separatists in government would slash taxes on corporations and high incomes, then take a DOGE-like chainsaw to Medicare, a wide range of social services, public education, environmental regulations, workplace health and safety, and union rights. This MAGA-aligned Alberta government would supervise a massive transfer of wealth and political power from lower- and middle- to upper-income Albertans and foreign businesses, while allowing domestic and foreign corporations to inflict immeasurable damage on Alberta’s environment. The current UCP government appears to have no qualms about these dimensions of the separatist project. Since its election in 2019, it has done much to advance this agenda, while never honestly outlining such intentions during election campaigns. This undemocratic silence about ideological goals and broad policy objectives also hangs over both the Smith government’s package of referendum questions and the Alberta sovereignty movement.
In the coming referendum debate, Albertans need to see the perversity of using direct democracy to undermine the social contract underpinning life in Alberta and Canada. From Preston Manning through Danielle Smith, the tag team of western alienation and a mirage of popular sovereignty has provided cover for an agenda of unbalanced market sovereignty, enhanced corporate power, diminished state capacity, increased social inequality, and environmental destruction. There is no evidence that more than a tiny minority of Albertans want such a future either within or outside Canada. The oligarchic rule, grotesque inequality, and environmental carnage ushered in by Donald Trump should make Albertans think twice about the inspiration for, and destination of, Alberta’s sovereignty movement.
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David Laycock was born in Calgary and grew up in Edmonton. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. Among his publications are Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies, 1910-45, and The New Right and Democracy in Canada. He recently co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Ideology Analysis.