Recent Research
Essential and Expendable
How Alberta’s COVID-19 Response Failed Cargill Workers
In 2020, Cargill's beef processing plant in High River, Alberta, was the site of the largest industrial COVID-19 outbreak in North America. More than 950 workers — nearly half the plant's workforce — tested positive. Two workers and four close contacts died, and dozens were hospitalized. Six years on, this report is the first independent investigation into how the outbreak was allowed to grow to the scale it did — and why it should never have.
Scapegoating and Separatists
Why Immigration Is on the Ballot in October
Five out of the 10 questions in Alberta’s 2026 referendum are directly related to immigration. Why immigration? What does it have to do with separatism? Built around unsupported claims, fabricated terms, and spurious logic, the “immigration questions” draw on racist tropes taken directly from the separatists’ playbook. This report shows that immigration is not a “distraction” from the issues of separatism on the ballot; instead, it is integral to the separatist project.
Recent Blog Posts
Flags, Fault Lines, and Fanning the Flames
Watching a Province Fracture in Real Time
As the referendum results trickled in, most Albertans breathed a sigh of relief. The numbers on the dreaded question 10 were clear: a sound trouncing of separatist sentiment. But the referendum has cracked open fault lines among Albertans, deep divisions that Danielle Smith and her government are all too happy to use to shore up political power.
The Alberta Disadvantage
Province Now Has the Lowest Minimum Wage in Canada
Every single jurisdiction in Canada raised its minimum wage in 2026. Or rather, almost all of them. Alberta, which hasn’t bothered to increase its rate in eight years, has finally hit rock bottom and now has the lowest minimum wage in the country. What’s at stake for workers and the economy?
The current separatist wave in Alberta might lead some to conclude that it is a natural result of legitimate anger by Albertans toward Ottawa. This article takes a close look at what is actually behind this movement and finds that Alberta's separatism is rather a result of the ongoing campaign by Alberta's leaders to increase the profitability of the province's oil and gas companies.