If the goal of Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard was to fuel the separatist fire, she’s doing an exquisite job.
On Wednesday, Leonard quashed a petition that separatists in the province had organized to trigger an independence referendum in the fall. Why? Because the chief electoral officer who allowed the petition to go forth in the first place didn’t adequately consult the Indigenous peoples of the province.
An Alberta court decision this week derailed a proposed referendum question on the province’s separation from Canada. The ruling focused on the issue of Indigenous consultation. Legal experts say the long-term impact of the ruling is unclear, with a planned appeal to the higher courts, and other open questions about previous Supreme Court of Canada decisions on secession and Indigenous consultation.
On Wednesday, in its Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation v Alberta decision, the Alberta Court of King’s Bench quashed the province’s secession referendum process. In particular, the judge quashed the chief electoral officer’s decision to allow signatures to be gathered to call for a referendum. Whatever your view on Alberta secession, the decision warrants attention for the readiness of the judge to prohibit a democratic process based on Indigenous rights claims.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said her government would appeal a court ruling on Wednesday that struck down the approval of an independence petition that could have forced a separation vote in the province.
In two decisions posted on Wednesday, Justice Sheila Leonard ruled that Alberta’s chief electoral officer Gordon McClure wrongfully approved the petition given an earlier ruling that found the separation question would violate First Nations’ treaty rights. She also found that the Crown had failed in its duty to consult with applicants Piikani Nation, Siksika Nation, Blood Tribe and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
On May 4, the organizers of the Alberta Independence Movement announced they had accrued a massive number of signatures, well in excess of the required number to submit their petition to trigger an independence referendum.
They needed 177,732.
Interesting pro-separation numbers from the aboriginals.
The head of Canada’s intelligence agency says Alberta’s potential secession vote is susceptible to disinformation and foreign interference from players like Russia.
In an interview with CBC’s The House, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director Dan Rogers said it’s his agency’s job to “understand and investigate” foreign interference.
“And a referendum like the one in Alberta, that may have a divisive effect on society, is rife for amplification or for the sort of disinformation or foreign interference that we’ve seen from players like Russia in the past,” he told host Catherine Cullen.
I get the impression this guy will say anything Carney wants.
More babies, more guns, more passports, lower taxes, fewer immigrants and a smooth, painless process: That’s the vision Alberta’s separatists sold this winter as they barnstormed across the province gathering signatures for an independence referendum that may now be held as early as this October.
But while independence leaders have been making big, specific promises about how Alberta would leave confederation, and what a sovereign Alberta would look like, constitutional and other experts say the reality would be far more complicated.
EDMONTON, CALGARY, MOSSLEIGH, LETHBRIDGE—I had known Mitch Sylvestre — the architect of the Alberta independence movement — for less than five minutes when he first implied King Charles might have him killed.
It was late February. We were in a loud coffee shop near the Alberta Legislature. He kept mouthing the words.
“The King! The King!”
But he wouldn’t say them out loud.
The RCMP has informed the Alberta government that there is no evidence the province’s separatist movement has been subject to foreign interference, according to the minister who oversees policing.
Mike Ellis, Alberta’s Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Services, on Wednesday attributed this information to the RCMP’s deputy commissioner, noting the update landed before the government learned about an alleged privacy breach involving the personal information of 2.9 million Albertans.
Early this year, Canadian researchers who track online influence campaigns and foreign propaganda happened upon something peculiar. Using artificial intelligence to catalogue the activity of Russian websites and social-media accounts known to be spreading disinformation about the invasion of Ukraine, the researchers noticed a new topic suddenly garnering more attention than it ever had from those groups: Alberta.
My first suspect would be CBC.
EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Alberta separatists said Monday they have formally submitted almost 302,000 signatures to try to trigger a referendum on the province leaving Canada.
The group needed 178,000 signatures to force the province to consider such a vote.
The question of separation could go on a provincewide ballot as early as October, as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said she would move forward if enough names are gathered and verified. Smith has said she personally does not support the oil-rich province leaving Canada.
h/t patthedog
People based in the Netherlands are behind several YouTube channels that promote Alberta separatism but are fronted by hired actors, according to an investigation by CBC News’s visual investigations team and Radio-Canada’s Décrypteurs.
CBC News identified three individuals in the Netherlands whose digital trail links them to accounts that hired actors to appear on the YouTube channels. Two of them attended the same online course that teaches customers how to create “faceless” YouTube channels that generate passive income for the creators, who remain in the shadows.
The mispronunciation of Regina — as in, the capital of Saskatchewan — was a clue. Then there was the reference to B.C. MLA Dallas Brodie, a woman, as a “he.”
These slip-ups helped lead researchers at the Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO) in Montreal to what they say is a network of affiliated YouTube accounts that appear to belong to concerned Canadians, sympathize with some Albertans’ grievances and push the idea of American annexation.
“The video narrators performed ‘Albertan,’ but there were these moments where you’re like, ‘OK, so this person is not from here,’ ” said Chris Ross, the senior analyst at the Observatory, who led his team’s recent probe into thousands of suspicious YouTube videos.
Who is behind this? Who stands to gain? Russia? China? Liberal Party members? Likely the latter.
AI makes it easy to create a click-bait video the creator(s) may have simply found a rich vein to mine for cash.
OTTAWA — A new poll finds that support for Alberta separatism is at its highest level in at least five years, with a fall independence referendum looking increasingly likely.
The poll, taken by Pollara Strategic Insights, shows that 27 per cent of decided voters in Alberta would vote for the province to separate from Canada. This is a seven point increase from December 2025 and a record-high over the five years Pollara has spent tracking support for independence among Albertans.
A First Nation in Alberta has said that a separatist push for the province to secede from Canada is “consummately irresponsible and dishonourable” and should be shut down, arguing in court that a proposed referendum would violate their treaty rights.
A minority of residents of the oil-rich province have long argued that the province’s woes are due to the structure of payments to the federal government and a perceived inability to get their vast fossil fuel reserves to market.
In recent months, separatists have seized on the sentiment and collected nearly 180,000 signatures to request a referendum. But the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, near Edmonton, has asked a court to halt the campaign.
