Alberta Voices

Alberta separatists default to the following argument: Canada lost $1 trillion in capital flight, manufacturing is going south of the border and our GDP per capita is lower than some of the poorest regions of the United States. Because of these factors, we'd be better off as our own country.

They're missing important context, though. The same RBC report that said we lost $1 trillion in capital flight pointed out that Canada's become significantly more attractive to foreign investment under Prime Minister Mark Carney. Manufacturers predominantly say that tariffs, trade uncertainty and dependence on U.S. markets are what's driving them to leave Canada, which is more due to White House policy decisions than anything else.

Canada's GDP per capita is much lower than the United States, but our median wages and quality of life are higher.

But never mind the caveats that separatists miss. Even if everything mentioned above was unambiguously true, Alberta separating from Confederation still wouldn't be justified.

Separatism is only rational if there's a high likelihood that it'll improve the status quo. In Alberta's case, it's far more likely to be a disaster.

First and foremost, adding another international border to Alberta would increase trade uncertainty and barriers. Even if we assume that the United States would allow perfect free trade with an independent Alberta (which is unlikely, given that a love of tariffs is the only policy position President Donald Trump has been consistent on), the rest of Canada has no reason to give us a favourable trade agreement after we just spat in their face.

This is precisely what happened to the United Kingdom after Brexit, where to this day they're still negotiating better market access with the European Union. The result has been catastrophic: by every measure, the U.K. is poorer, more fragile, more isolated and less productive.

The fact that Canada suffered from significant capital flight under former prime minister Justin Trudeau is deeply unfortunate, but it will only get worse if Alberta separates. As the Calgary Chamber of Commerce notes, Alberta's economy depends heavily on access to goods, people, capital and infrastructure from other provinces and territories, plus support from federal institutions. Replacing all of this will be impossible.

If you want to understand why nearly half of Chamber members are planning to leave the province if we so much as begin the separation process, that uncertainty and loss of trade is why.

Economically, separation is far worse for the province than even the overly pessimistic depiction of the status quo that separatists paint. But it would be terrible politically as well.

Separatists aren't wrong when they say that Central Canada has outsized influence within the federal government. They ignore, though, that Canada is one of the most decentralized states in the world, particularly in the G7.

They also ignore that the most likely outcome of separation is annexation by the United States. We would lose the legal protections against federal overreach that are a core part of Canadian federalism, and which have been used by provincial governments to defend their constitutional authority many times before.

In other words, if you think federal overreach in Canada is bad, just wait until your head of state thinks they have unilateral control over the entire national government.

Conservatives since the time of Edmund Burke have warned that changing the status quo can make things worse. Albertans should take that message to heart in October.

The stakes quite literally couldn't be higher.

Andrew Kemle is the government and external relations manager for the University of Calgary Graduate Students' Association. His master's degree focused on applying complexity theory to models of deliberative democracy.