Lessons For Next Time: How To Manage Alberta Independence

Smith And Moe Show Two Paths

I guess she gets points for honesty?

Everyone with a working brain understands that Danielle Smith is doing her weird “I don’t want to leave Canada but we’re making it easier to put a referendum on the ballot” routine for political reasons, trying to keep together a divided party. An Angus Reid poll Thursday has 65% of UCP voters at the last election “definitely” or “lean[ing] towards” voting to leave Canada if there was a secession referendum. Party management is a problem in that world, and so Smith admitting she’s facilitating this referendum to ensure an explicitly separatist party doesn’t fuck her and re-split the Albertan right.

As far as it goes, making a 2026 referendum happen, watching it lose, and then turning 2027’s election back into something closer to a “normal” election about taxes and oil and managing Ottawa is probably their best option out of a fairly bad set of them. If Smith truly embraced a Captain Canada role some form of right wing, separatist party would elect Nenshi. If she comes fully out for separation Nenshi flips the rest of Calgary as business looks to him and the NDP as the stability candidate. But to say it explicitly is wild.

It’s a political gift to Naheed Nenshi, who has sucked ass. (Fun story, actually - I was in the process of writing a fairly scathing piece on his leadership with some private polling data that had been leaked to me in December, but then Chrystia Freeland resigned and all hell broke loose on the federal scene so I never got around to running it.) It’s also one for Mark Carney, if he’s smart enough to take advantage of it. And it seems like he understands it.

If Carney wants to show that he’s willing to engage in good faith with the Premiers who engage with him in it, then he needs to show a willingness to engage with Scott Moe. Ford, Houston, Legault, and whoever replaced Dennis King out on PEI are not seen as conservative enough, and frankly Houston and Ford were more helpful to the Liberals than the Conservatives during the federal election so deals with them won’t do Carney’s bipartisan credentials much good. It’s Smith or Moe if he wants to do it.

Smith is going out of her way to make dealing with her more painful, pissing off Liberals and progressives and lacing any potential concession from the Feds as a victory for hostage taking as political strategy, a precedent I don’t think the Feds want to indulge. So, if you’re Carney, how do you handle Smith? By showering Moe, the unrepentant asshole, horrible Premier, and all around scumbag that he is, with whatever he wants, and showing Albertans that threatening separation isn’t the way to get results.

The decision for the First Minister’s Meeting to be in Saskatchewan in early June is a powerful symbol, and the kind of thing that does show that Carney is concerned with being seen to engage constructively with politically hostile provinces. It’s not a shock that Moe and Carney will disagree viscerally on most issues, but Moe has been a team player and never played his politics above the national interest. And he should continue to be rewarded for it as a matter of good governance. The fact it’ll also fuck Smith? Well, that’s just a nice touch.

If Carney proves that he’s not a Central Canadian elite only working with governments he agrees with or that have marginal seats he needs to win, then Alberta’s whole case for independence will deflate, like a balloon popped. The best way to show that is to make nice with Moe, and then have Albertans wonder why they’re the ones not getting anything. Because, let’s be real, it’ll be hard to maintain “wEsTeRn SoLiDaRiTy” and an Ottawa versus the West mentality when Moe, Kinew, and Eby are all getting transit projects built and key resource development projects approved by the Feds.

Bending over backwards for Smith is an intolerable proposition while she’s pushing for independence, and while there will have to be some collaboration Alberta should get the least help while they flirt with breaking up Canada. But the way to actually kill the idea is not by giving in to their lists and demand and trample on provincial rights in BC and other provinces, but by setting a principle that constructive engagement gets better results than separatist twaddle. Now, that principle would have to extend once the PQ wins the next election, if they do, in Quebec, but it would also be a decent sign that we don’t treat Quebec separatists better than we do Albertan ones.

Danielle Smith wants the benefit of our goodwill while stoking the flames of separatism. The best way to show that it doesn’t work is to reward the odious, extremely conservative Premier that didn’t sell us down the river and isn’t having a national meltdown because Poilievre lost. It’s unpleasant to say anything nice about Moe, but it’s very clear that he has done what you should want a Premier of the opposite political persuasion to the Feds to do - advocate for his province, keep his disagreements in house, and not be an unrepentant ass. As a consequence, there’s now a win-win relationship on the table for Carney and Moe. Both men would be smart to take advantage.