The Canadian province set to vote on becoming a breakaway country

Push in Alberta to break away from Canada and form a new country As he walks around his cafe refilling coffee and delivering baskets of gravy-laden poutine, Christopher Scott wears his politics on his T-shirt. "Free Alberta!" the shirt declares. The Whistle Stop Cafe's signature dish is the "heart attack burger", which boasts eight beef patties and various other meats. A MAGA baseball cap rests on the cafe's jukebox, but on this side of the US–Canada border, the acronym stands for Make Alberta Great Again. The cafe has become a meeting point for Alberta's separatists, who are pushing for the province to break away from Canada and form a new country. The movement is exposing deep fractures inside one of the world's most stable federations and shares striking similarities with Western Australia's historical secession attempts. Cafe patrons stop Scott to shake his hand. "Nice to meet you. We're fans," one says. Scott, who founded the pro-separatist group Let's Talk Alberta, hopes enough of those fans will vote in an upcoming referendum that could set Alberta on the path to independence. "The facts point to an independent Alberta being far superior to what we're experiencing right now," Scott told the ABC. "So I don't have a crystal ball, but I have hope." Alberta is a province of vast skies, endless prairies, towering mountains and abundant oil and gas fields that have made it one of Canada's economic powerhouses. Those natural resources provide for high employment and high incomes. They also generate a lot of money for Canada's federal budget, a factor that is fuelling the separatist movement. Scott feels like the province is being forced to subsidise a country that neither respects nor represents them. Like Australia, Canada has a federal system where funds from wealthier provinces are redistributed to other regions. The idea is to spread the country's wealth and enable each province to provide similar public services. According to the conservative Fraser Institute, Alberta contributed over $CA300 billion ($304 billion) more to the federal government than it got back between 2007/08 and 2026/27. "Albertans aren't exercising their sovereignty and it's costing them billions of dollars," he says. The business owner has become a prominent voice in the movement. He spent two decades working in the oil industry before buying the cafe in 2019, only to be ordered to close the following year due to the COVID pandemic. He kept the cafe open despite public health orders, and it became a rallying point for Albertans opposed to pandemic restrictions. It led to his arrest and a short stint in jail. "As I was laying in a jail cell for three days for the crime of protesting government policy and doing so on my own property legally, that kind of changed things for me," he says. "I came to the conclusion that Alberta independence is necessary and inevitable. "Not just for economic reasons or policy and things like that, but because it's an opportunity to rewrite the rules from the people's perspective instead of the governing party's perspective." Echoes of Brexit Support for the movement has gone from a small fringe minority to up to 30 per cent of the population, according to some polls. On October 19, Canada will learn whether those polls reflect reality. The vote is technically a referendum on whether to hold a referendum. Albertans will be asked whether the province should remain in Canada or whether the government should begin the legal process required to hold a binding vote on separation. Alberta's Premier, Danielle Smith, says she personally opposes separation but she believes Albertans should have a democratic opportunity to express their views. "Those who are unhappy with Confederation are not fringe extremists and must be listened to," she said in May. Separatists say the premier could also be in for a shock result akin to Brexit in 2016, when British voters defied the polls to break away from the EU. Scott says many separatism supporters are too nervous to declare how they'll vote publicly. "Many people find it difficult to talk about this because it's like, 'What's my boss going to think?' or 'What are my customers going to think?'" he says. It's not just the pro-separatists who are invoking Brexit. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was governor of the Bank of England during the Brexit vote, has reminded Albertans of the turmoil that followed. "They're still, 10 years later, trying to undo what people didn't think they were voting for but what they ended up having," Carney has said. The province's former deputy premier, Thomas Lukaszuk, says that argument should be a powerful motivator. "When you think you're going to win, a lot of people tend to be passive and not vote, so I'm reminding them of what happened in the UK with Brexit," he told the ABC. "They woke up the next day and said, 'What have we done?' … and now their economy is in shambles and they're on their seventh prime minister in 10 years." 'Opening the gate for Donald Trump' Lukaszuk has been driving an old motorhome, decked out in maple leaf decal, around Alberta on a "unity tour". The former politician grew up in communist Poland. Now he heads up the Forever Canadian group and says spreading the message is his way of "giving back" to Canada. For him, the most troubling aspect of Alberta's separatist debate is not the prospect of Alberta leaving Canada, but the growing interest in the idea from south of the border. Alberta separatists sparked controversy earlier this year by meeting with US State Department officials three times, in a move strongly criticised by the premier of neighbouring British Columbia. "To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada — there's an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is 'treason,'" David Eby told reporters earlier this year. The US's interest could run deeper than Donald Trump's trolling of Canada as the "51st state". US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a conservative news network in January: "I think we should let them come down into the US, and Alberta's a natural partner for the US." And in June, the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation think tank published an article provocatively declaring "Canada's Texas is threatening divorce, and it could eventually become the 51st state". More than 240,000 people have now put their name to a petition calling for the US ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, to be declared "persona non grata". The petition accuses Hoekstra of undermining US–Canada relations and normalising Trump's "51st state" taunts. At a Forever Canadian event in the town of Diamond Valley, long-time Albertan Mary Papais echoed the fear on many people's minds. "I believe that they are opening the gate for Donald Trump," she told the ABC. "Donald Trump wants into this province, he wants the resources that are here, and he will take them and he could [not] care less what any Albertan felt or thought." The separatist movement is also facing strong opposition from Indigenous leaders, who say separation would affect their treaty rights, which were signed with the Crown, not the province. They also fear the debate will fuel racism and deepen divisions in Alberta. "[This] is really another step to try and eliminate First Nations," Piikani Nation chief Troy Knowlton told the ABC. Earlier this year, First Nations groups took the issue to court, successfully arguing that Alberta had a duty to consult them before allowing the separatist petition to proceed. The premier pushed ahead with the non-binding referendum anyway, but cited the court ruling for preventing a direct vote on separation. "I told her this to her face: where you're going to fail in separatism, you're going to succeed in division," Chief Knowlton says. "First Nations are under attack right now because of what they opened the door for." Parallels with Western Australia The debate in Alberta has drawn comparisons to Western Australia. In 1933, angry over the perceived unfairness of the federal system and the distribution of the state's vast natural resource wealth, WA voted overwhelmingly to secede. Its petition was ultimately rejected by the British parliament. Tanya Clemens, a fourth-generation Albertan farmer who supports separatism, sees clear parallels. "Western Australia voted yes to secede from Australia, but the difference is that they didn't have a legal pathway," she says. "They had the democratic mandate, but they didn't have the legislative mandate to be able to do that. "Canada has a legal pathway." Like Scott, the cafe owner, Clemens was also motivated to get involved in the separatist movement during the COVID pandemic and what she saw as government overreach. The mother-of-two says the biggest hurdle for many Albertans is that they still have a deep love of Canada, even while being critical of the way the country is run. "I have [the] Canada maple leaf tattooed on my shoulder and grew up with an ideal of what Canada was and loving it and singing the anthem and having a very deep patriotic spirit to it," she says. "It's tough for people to move past that and realise that you can still love Canada and want better for Alberta." When asked what she would do about her maple leaf tattoo if the referendum was successful, Clemens says she would probably add an Alberta flag beside it. "People have asked me if I would remove it. Heck no. I do love Canada and I love the people of Canada."