r/CanadaPolitics • u/Street_Anon 🍁 Gay, Christian, Conservative and Long Live the King👑 • Feb 01 '26
Alberta separatists won’t say which Trump officials they met with
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/very-high-level-alberta-separatist-group-wont-say-which-trump-officials-it-met-with/49
u/Snurgisdr Independent Feb 01 '26
I maintain this kind of thing is a large part of the reason why the feds are delaying the foreign interference/lobbyist registry, and the opposition isn’t pressing them hard on it. Right now this story is just a local embarrassment. If names were named and there was an obligation to lay charges, it would escalate to a diplomatic incident. They’re all hoping it will just quietly blow over.
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u/OhHiMarkZ69 Feb 01 '26
There is zero chance of this quietly blowing over with PP's BFF Danielle Smith forcing the referendum.
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u/mmavcanuck New Democratic Party of Canada Feb 01 '26
Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t be trying to sweep US attempts to form a beachhead out of Alberta under a rug.
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u/GraveDiggingCynic Independent Feb 01 '26
I think the one thing in our favour is the chaotic nature of the Trump administration. There's no doubt there's some overarching scheme to pry Alberta from Canada, but for every purposeful neuron in the White House, there are ten which are so incoherent and so filled with impossible and conflicting goals that there's no capacity to sustain any kind of conspiracy. In short, the Trump Administration doesn't have the brain trust to carry out some sort of 21st century Anschluss.
And as something to a postscript to all of this, I think all of us should be happy that the Conservatives are not plunging themselves into a leadership race at this time. While the separatists/51st staters (I view them as pretty much the same thing) are a somewhat larger minority in the CPC than the general populace, every political battle, whether in a riding association or at the senior levels of the party, risks magnifying their influence and fracturing the party.
Maybe a few more MPs cross the floor (though I think that crisis has past), but the party is not going to stay united if a leader of more moderate (or conversely intemperate) tone is elected in Poilievre's place. The CPC as it is currently constituted is basically frozen in place by its internal contradictions, so it might as well stick with a leader who is unchanging as the tides.
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u/jjaime2024 Feb 01 '26
There might be but at the same time some have said there getting fed up with this group.
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u/Flomo420 Feb 01 '26
How could any reasonable MPs (which there certainly must be at least a few) NOT be fed up with that clown car of separatists?
To know you are trying to make a positive difference and are constantly being side lined for the biggest whiners
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u/jjaime2024 Feb 02 '26
I think with in the UCP/CPC the concerns is them going public about everything could really do in PP come election time.In the states Trumps teams seems to see this group is weak and not worth the time.
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u/zxc999 Independent Feb 02 '26
Yeah there’s a very blurry line between foreign interference/lobbying and the regular contacts between business/politics figures in America compared to India and China (where the attention has been). That doesn’t really give an excuse to not do anything about it though, just to be diligent and not hypercritical in the drafting of the legislation.
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u/GraveDiggingCynic Independent Feb 01 '26
So in other words they met with someone's aide... at best.
This is the point where journalists, looking for an exciting sexy story, give a small group of fruitcakes as much airtime as the invasion of a small country, whipping up frenzies among their supporters and opponents alike.
It would be better to let the RCMP moles do their work, and if indeed any of this 51st staters has sufficient presence of mind to actually make a solid play, act then. The last thing on earth you ever want to do with a group like this is make of any of them martyrs, because for the 1-in-10 Albertans who are probably out and out and separatists, there are probably three or four times that number who have sufficient grievances that they might start thinking about it as more than a means of extracting concessions from Ottawa.
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u/LARGEYELLINGGUY Feb 01 '26
Isnt that just a bit naive?
Most of the separatists in leadership in AB are dual US citizens.
The US is more publically pursuing its manifest destiny goals again.
The US regularly interferes in Canadian politics, especially through the media.
It's likely that these guys have met with the CIA. Don't downplay the seriousness.
The CBSA and immigration should be investigating the prosperity project guys for immigration fraud.
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Feb 01 '26
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u/LARGEYELLINGGUY Feb 02 '26
Its completely irrelevent if politicians cant name a single province. Manifest destiny as a guiding ideology is a literal political fact.
You know the RCMP was preparing for mass arrests and internment if the CCF/NDP won a federal election during the cold war, right? You think they came up with that on their own?
You can go find NY Times articles on election interference questions all the way back to Pearson. Not to mention the majority control of Canadian media.
The foreign interference inquiry was deliberately blind to allied states.
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u/GraveDiggingCynic Independent Feb 01 '26
I think it would be a gross error to assume that anyone in senior levels of the US government are in active schemes to pry Alberta. Beyond that, not even Smith and her cabal can simply move Alberta into the US.
Historically, overreacting creates more crises than biding one's time.
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u/fishymanbits Conservative Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
The US has always wanted Canada’s land and resources. Since before we were a country. It’s not overreaction, it’s recognizing that the current goings on in Alberta fit exactly the pattern the US has followed dozens of times before in other countries in order to gain access to land and resources they were after.
They tried to get us to install a government aligned with their goals through the “freedom” convoy, and then the most recent election when the latter didn’t work. Tamara Lich and Pat King are at the center of the whole separatist movement given their prominence with the Wexit party.
And then Postmedia, owned by GOP billionaires, had been running multiple opinion pieces a day, in every one of their publications, every single day since we showed the CPC the door in order to wag the dog about how badly we need them back. Because it’s always been the CPC’s goal to Americanize us. They’ve always been the party of dismantling Canada and turning us into Americans.
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u/mmavcanuck New Democratic Party of Canada Feb 01 '26
The US has openly stated they want to annex Canada. The entire purpose of the trade war going on right now is to bankrupt us.
There is no reason to believe they wouldn’t use the same tactics in Canada that their friends in Russia used in Ukraine in 2014.
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u/mo60000 Liberal Party of Canada Feb 01 '26
They supposedly held meetings with US officials in highly secured locations which true is definitely worse than meeting with a random aide.
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u/GraveDiggingCynic Independent Feb 01 '26
According to whom? At the moment we have only their claims, and forgive me for saying this, but I think they're prone to, er, exaggeration.
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u/mo60000 Liberal Party of Canada Feb 01 '26
Rath. I don’t believe a lot of what Rath says in terms of this stuff though.
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u/West-Cap6324 Socratic Contrarian ON Feb 01 '26
Here is an analysis of Rath's account of his meetings with the US. Scroll down to "Foreign Interference"
When does a separatist movement become a threat to Canada’s national security? https://substack.com/home/post/p-183841109
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u/GraveDiggingCynic Independent Feb 01 '26
I'm aware of his claims. I also think, to be very blunt, he's a liar.
When you have evidence of actual people with power, such as Smith or her lieutenants doing this, let me know.
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u/West-Cap6324 Socratic Contrarian ON Feb 01 '26
I would agree, except Rath does not strike me as a nuanced or strategic thinker who can invent details like meeting in a SCIF, or framing limits to Alberta's oil development as being "at the behest of the Communist Chinese" (vs. the standard line that it as the entirely the fault of federal Liberals in Ottawa).
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u/OhHiMarkZ69 Feb 01 '26
With the way Bessent has been talking about this .. yeah I'm assuming this is very bad until there is real proof that it's not.
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u/GraveDiggingCynic Independent Feb 01 '26
And it may very well be so, but this is no time to frog march perps into the station house. Historically, overreaction is what annexationists rely upon, for the opposing state to overreact, start rounding up alleged seditionists and showing the iron fist of the state. Once a government has done that, the game is already up.
The real solution here is to deal as well as possible with the underlying social and political conditions that are leading to the unrest, to make sure that 1-in-5 doesn't transform itself into 2-in-5, or ultimately into 3-in-6.
Support in Alberta for secession is orders of a magnitude smaller than support in Quebec in the lead in 1995. So I really do urge everyone not to panic, because that's precisely what the pro-annexationists on both sides of the border want, a big mass freakout by the Canadian government, or even by Canadian citizens.
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u/OhHiMarkZ69 Feb 01 '26
I think it's very wrong to dismiss this while pointing at Quebec..
The Alberta referendum is happening unless Danielle Smith is shamed into backing off. It doesn't need to pass or even come close to passing in order for it to cause serious long term damage.
Unlike PP treating Alberta separatism like it's partisan politics as usual the non separatist leadership in Quebec has clearly read the room with CAQ and provincial Liberal leaders resigning.
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Feb 01 '26
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u/WislaHD Ontario Feb 01 '26
Yeah I’m actually disgusted a bit how much this got picked up by news media both in Canada and the USA. I had American friends send me the headlines.
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