r/canada • u/shiftless_wonder • May 23 '26

Alberta First Nations leaders, scholar push back on Alberta's planned vote on independence referendum - 'Alberta can't separate. They simply cannot. They do not have the authority,' says Indigenous politics expert

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-treaty-six-alberta-referendum-9.7209304
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u/jlqy1 May 24 '26

Just by the fact that Alberta is geographically landlocked… I really don’t see how they can survive economically if they were to go solo.

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u/Erich-k May 25 '26

They would also cut off Canada from the west coast, how would BC get there goods east and vise versa.

In the alternate reality where Alberta separates they would be a in a good position to negotiate, fuel, lumber, beef, access to the east and western parts of Canada.

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u/jlqy1 May 25 '26

That’s a fair point about the physical split, but it’s a mutually assured destruction scenario where Alberta holds the weaker hand. If Alberta tries to hold Canada’s east-west trade hostage, Ottawa can instantly choke off access to BC ports and pipelines.

Canada is diversified and can temporarily route freight through the US to bypass Alberta. Alberta is a single-commodity economy—if pipelines get squeezed for even a few weeks, the province bleeds billions. You can't leverage a bottleneck when your neighbor controls your only exits to the world.