Oil, Anger, and the Alberta Grievance Machine

This article was first published in The Hill Times on July 6, 2026.

Alberta was the first province outside Quebec to elect a separatist MLA when, in a 1982 by-election, voters sent Gordon Kesler to the legislature. His victory was powered by Albertans’ visceral anger toward Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government and, in particular, the National Energy Program (NEP), which established a made-in-Canada oil price and imposed unconstitutional taxes on the energy sector. That anger had been stoked by then-premier Peter Lougheed, who sought to turn the policy fight into a constitutional crisis. Kesler’s victory was short-lived: he lost in the general election just nine months later. Lougheed’s campaign against the NEP, however, succeeded. Within two years, the program had been dismantled and Alberta had reasserted its political control over oil and gas.

Four decades later, a similar playbook is back in circulation. Premiers Jason Kenney and Danielle Smith went to war with Justin Trudeau’s Liberals over a range of environmental policies that risked devaluing Alberta’s oil and gas (conveniently ignoring the fact that the federal government bought a pipeline to facilitate oil exports). They railed against illegal federal “incursions” into Alberta’s sovereignty and rattled their sabres in defence of provincial rights. A byproduct (unintentional for Kenney, much less so for Smith) was a resurgence of separatist sentiment that has spun itself into a whirling dervish of a campaign for a referendum, cynically abetted by Smith.

What ties the two crises together is not a legitimate expression of Albertans’ disdain for the federation, but a full-throated defence of Alberta’s oil industry. The separatist movement is not a creation of Albertans’ anger, but an offshoot of the ongoing campaign by the province’s political and economic leaders to increase the profitability of oil and gas companies.

For decades, Alberta’s strategy has been remarkably consistent: pick fights with Ottawa, rally voters primed to see the federal government as the enemy, and use the conflict to extract concessions for the province. At their core, the fights are anchored in legitimate differences over policy; Albertans often have differing policy priorities from other Canadians. But Alberta politicians ramp up the rhetoric to the level of constitutional crisis as a strategy to corner the federal government into backpedalling. Crisis is a tool for increasing Alberta’s bargaining power.

In the dying days of Justin Trudeau’s government, Danielle Smith gleefully threw kerosene on the separatist bonfire to ramp up pressure. Prime Minister Carney has engaged in appeasing Alberta, making concessions on a raft of policies ranging from scrapping the carbon tax to streamlining environmental approvals and, of course, promising a new pipeline to the Pacific Ocean despite there being no private sector interest in building such a pipeline. With the federal government sufficiently humbled, Smith has attempted to tone down the temperature, becoming a late convert to the cause of remaining in Canada. However, the fire she stoked now rages out of her control, and Alberta finds itself careening toward a referendum most Albertans don’t want and never asked for.

The vast majority of Albertans wish to remain in Canada and are, in fact, vaguely embarrassed by the hubris of the separatists. Separatism is, and always has been, a fringe movement in the province. Occasionally, it serves a useful purpose for political leaders looking to gain leverage with Ottawa, and in those moments, it is nudged to centre stage for some timely political theatre. What is different this time is that Danielle Smith made separatists part of her electoral coalition and central to her rise to power. Now she needs to repay that debt with a destructive referendum.

Like other Canadians, Albertans are frustrated by the rising cost of living, long health-care wait times, crowded classrooms, and a sluggish economy. But these are not failures of Confederation. They are failures of governments, federal and provincial, that are ignoring the real needs of the people they represent. Rewriting the terms of Confederation to appease the separatist faction is not only ineffective but also counterproductive to addressing these issues. To address the valid concerns of Albertans, Alberta needs to get its own house in order.

Photo credit: Alberta Government/Flickr

Jason Foster

Jason Foster is the director of Parkland Institute and a professor of human resources and labour relations at Athabasca University. Jason is the author of Gigs, Hustles, & Temps (2023) and Defying Expectations: The Case of UFCW Local 401 (2018), as well as co-author of Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces (2016). His research interests include workplace injury, union renewal, labour and employment policy, and migrant workers in Canada. He is committed to sharing research to as broad an audience as possible, so that it might contribute to policy change and making people’s lives better.

Read more by this author |  Follow on Twitter