Colby Cosh: Alberta separatists still love their Canadian passports

One of the funniest features of the Alberta Separatism Scare of 2026 is that the leaders of the movement spend most of the time, in practice, reassuring fellow separatists that they'll be able to keep their Canadian passport after we all renounce the declining, dysfunctional, hostile Dominion of Canada to form an independent state. CBC News has the latest discussion of the legal theory, and as is usual — I'm not singling out the Corp here — it's a little superficial and pointless.

The federalists are always quick to appeal to the axiom that it is "up to Canada" who is a Canadian citizen, as indeed it is. They may even say, with rustic pride and astonishing naïveté, that it is for the Parliament of Canada to decide.

This always provokes a little Denzel Washington chuckle from me. It's the courts that decide citizenship policy in Canada, which is almost never mentioned in these pieces, even though we're in the very midst of an exponential expansion of Canadian citizenship that was driven by adventurous judicial Charter interpretation. Courts would as soon deprive seceding Albertans of their Canadian passports as they would sacrifice their eyes to the goddess of blind Justice.

After all, the flip side of the axiom — a sovereign state determines its own passport eligibility — is that eligibility for People's Republic of Alberta passports will be decided by Alberta. Lord knows what kind of citizenship criteria our future leaders might cook up. As a consequence, Canadian withdrawal of citizenship from Albertans might result in statelessness for individuals, and the appellate courts of rump Canada would never have that. Even a government, even an elected Canadian government in a foul and vengeful mood, would be extremely reluctant to do this. And, by the way, they'd be right.

The separatists thereby have the stronger of the dumb factual arguments they're constantly making. Even in the event of an uncontested Velvet Divorce of Confederation, Albertans would definitely get to keep their Canadian passports, and their children almost certainly would, and their grandchildren almost certainly would.

The real question to be asked is why this is an issue — why Alberta separatists are so nervous about the possibility that they could lose their passport eligibility. I'll whisper the answer in your ear. It's because Canadian citizenship has enormous and practical hard-cash value. People who travel frequently in the Old World learn this fast: you can't talk to most foreigners for 20 minutes without hearing some envious mention of the "strong passport" Canadians wield. It works pretty much everywhere! It doesn't get you frowned at by border authorities! For 60 or 70 years it's been a preferred choice of international spies who need to steal or fake a passport!

The logical implication is that there are important benefits to being Canadian, and that the legal secession of Alberta from the Canadian state would have a zillion hidden costs. This is just the one that the separatist audience is aware of, because, well, a lot of them are affluent, selfish and ignorant people who enjoy sunning themselves like lizards in January, and the one implication of separation they can actually imagine is trying to explain a funny new Sovereign Wildrose Protectorate passport to a Thai monoglot with a badge at the Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Maybe they're relatively sure that they'll be able to get to Scottsdale with the new passport; but they turn a little green thinking of Cancun or Sint Maarten or (gulp) Varadero. As carbon-tax policy and the Trump Era have occasionally revealed, there is nothing so important to a rich Canadian as the right to get the hell out of Canada without administrative trouble a few weeks a year. It's what brings us together!