I will admit something right up front: I don’t know enough about Alberta politics to pretend that I have some profound insight into the province’s separatist movement. Until recently, I had barely been paying attention to it. But I have started paying attention now, and the more I read, the more uncomfortable I become.
Not because I think Alberta is about to leave Canada. It isn’t. Not because I think the United States is secretly preparing to invade Alberta. There is no evidence of that, either.
What bothers me is something considerably more hypothetical—and considerably more frightening.
What happens if a genuine separatist movement takes hold in Alberta at precisely the moment the president of the United States is openly talking about absorbing Canada?
That is the scenario that keeps nagging at me.
Alberta has long had a complicated relationship with the rest of Canada. The province is enormously wealthy, heavily dependent on oil and gas, politically conservative, and separated from Ottawa by a considerable cultural and political gulf. Many Albertans have spent decades complaining that their province sends more money east than it gets back, while federal governments impose policies they believe restrict Alberta’s energy industry.
None of that is new.
What is new is the international environment surrounding those grievances.
Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada should become the 51st American state. He has talked about the Canadian-American border as though it were an artificial inconvenience. He has used maps showing Canada as part of the United States. And as recently as August 23, 2026, with the latest U.S.-Canadian trade confrontation escalating, Trump was again talking publicly about Canada joining the United States.
Ordinarily, I would dismiss this as Trump being Trump.
But there is now an actual separatist movement in Alberta.
That movement has gathered enough support to put the question of independence onto Alberta’s political agenda. The province is scheduled to vote on October 19 on whether its government should move toward a binding referendum on separation. That distinction matters: Albertans are not being asked in October whether they want to become an independent country. They are being asked whether they want to take another step toward holding a vote that could eventually ask that question.
And the important thing is that separatism remains a minority position.
A recent Ipsos poll found that only 18 percent of Albertans said they would vote for separation if a binding referendum were held, while 72 percent said they would vote to remain in Canada. Support for separation has actually fallen from 28 percent earlier in the year. Other polling has put separatist sentiment considerably higher, but no serious polling I have seen suggests that a majority of Albertans currently want to leave Canada.
So why am I worried?
Because history has taught us that geopolitical disasters don’t necessarily begin with majorities.
They can begin with minorities, political crises, foreign influence, propaganda, economic grievances and governments making a series of decisions that seem individually manageable until, suddenly, they aren’t.
Think about Crimea.
Russia did not simply announce one morning that it was invading Ukraine and send the Russian Army across the border with tanks flying. The situation was prepared politically. Russia had cultivated relationships, exploited existing grievances, used propaganda and information warfare, and then eventually deployed troops without insignia—the infamous “little green men”—to seize strategic positions.
The world was confronted with a new reality before it had fully decided what that reality was.
I am emphatically not saying that Alberta is Crimea.
Canada is not Ukraine. The United States is not Russia. Alberta is not occupied territory. There is no evidence that American soldiers are secretly preparing to cross the border.
And I certainly don’t believe that most Albertans who support independence are secretly plotting to join the United States.
But there is something about the comparison that deserves attention.
Alberta is an overwhelmingly North American, English-speaking, conservative province immediately adjacent to the United States. Its economy is deeply intertwined with America’s. Its political culture has significant overlap with the American conservative movement. Some Alberta separatists have explicitly embraced MAGA-style rhetoric. And some separatist activists have sought relationships with American political figures.
That last part is not hypothetical.
Earlier this year, Alberta separatist figures were reported to have met with people connected to the Trump administration. The U.S. government has subsequently denied that it is meeting with or strategizing with Alberta separatists, and there is no evidence that Washington has adopted a policy of supporting Alberta independence. Those denials should be taken seriously. But the fact that the contacts happened at all is noteworthy given the larger political environment.
Then there is the voter-data controversy.
A separatist-linked organization obtained access to a database containing information on roughly 2.9 million Alberta voters, triggering investigations and concerns about electoral integrity and foreign interference. The episode has become particularly uncomfortable because of connections between American political technology and people involved in the Alberta separatist campaign.
Again, I don’t think that proves that the Trump administration is running an operation to break Canada apart.
It doesn’t.
But it demonstrates something important: Alberta’s political struggle is occurring inside the same information environment that has already transformed American politics. Political databases, targeted messaging, social media manipulation, foreign influence and ideological networks can cross borders much more easily than armies can.
And that is where my “little green men” thought comes from.
Imagine a completely hypothetical future in which Alberta separatism becomes considerably more popular. Imagine that the relationship between Ottawa and Edmonton deteriorates badly. Imagine a referendum produces a narrow vote for independence. Imagine the Canadian government refuses to recognize the result because of constitutional and Indigenous-rights questions. Imagine protests begin. Imagine some Albertans declare that Ottawa no longer has legitimate authority over them.
Now imagine that President Trump looks at that situation and says something like:
“We support the right of the people of Alberta to determine their own future.”
That statement, by itself, would already be extraordinarily provocative.
Then imagine American political organizations begin openly supporting the Alberta independence movement.
Then American money begins flowing into sympathetic organizations.
Then American media personalities begin telling Albertans that Ottawa is illegitimate and that Washington will protect them.
Then, perhaps, “private security contractors” begin appearing.
Then American officials announce that they are concerned about the safety of American citizens in Alberta.
Then some mysterious armed men begin appearing around critical infrastructure.
No American invasion has occurred.
At least, not officially.
That is essentially what makes the Crimea analogy so unsettling.
The most dangerous geopolitical situations can exist in the gray zone between peace and war.
And if you think that scenario sounds completely insane, I would remind you that the idea of the United States openly talking about annexing Canada sounded insane a few years ago too.
Yet here we are.
There is another reason Alberta deserves attention: geography.
If Alberta somehow became independent and then moved toward the United States, America would suddenly possess an enormous new strategic relationship with a territory sitting directly on the Canadian interior. Alberta contains some of Canada’s most important energy resources and has major transportation and pipeline connections. It is also enormous—larger than Texas in land area.
That would radically alter the strategic balance of North America.
But there is an enormous problem with the idea that Alberta could simply become American.
Most Albertans do not appear to want that.
In fact, independence and annexation by the United States are two very different propositions. A person can believe Alberta should become its own country while having absolutely no interest in becoming an American.
That distinction is crucial.
The Alberta separatist movement is fundamentally about Alberta. Its supporters generally want greater control over their resources, taxation and political future. Some may favor joining the United States, but that is not the same thing as saying the movement as a whole is an American annexation movement.
And ironically, Trump’s behavior may make Alberta separation less attractive.
That is already happening elsewhere in Canada.
Quebec has its own long-running separatist movement, but the leader of the Parti Québécois recently said that if his party wins power, it would not hold an independence referendum until after Trump’s presidency ends in January 2029. His argument is essentially that Quebec’s future should not be decided under the shadow of an unpredictable American president who is openly talking about annexing Canada.
That may ultimately happen in Alberta too.
The more Washington talks about swallowing Canada, the more Canadian separatism risks being transformed from an argument about autonomy into an argument about national survival.
Trump may believe that threatening to make Canada the 51st state demonstrates American strength.
It may actually be producing the opposite effect.
It may be reminding Canadians why they are Canadian.
And there is a particularly important Canadian constitutional problem lurking underneath all of this.
Even if a majority of Albertans eventually voted for independence, Alberta could not simply declare itself a new country on Tuesday and start printing passports on Wednesday. Canadian constitutional law, federal authority, Indigenous treaty rights, negotiations over borders and assets, debt, pensions, citizenship, military installations, energy infrastructure and countless other issues would have to be resolved.
A provincial referendum would be the beginning of an enormous political and constitutional process, not the end of one.
A 1998 Canadian Supreme Court decision concerning Quebec established that a clear vote for secession would not automatically create independence but would create a constitutional obligation to negotiate. Canada’s Clarity Act subsequently established federal requirements concerning the clarity of a referendum question and the size of the majority required before negotiations could proceed.
And Alberta has an additional complication that Quebec did not have in quite the same way: Indigenous treaties.
A provincial court ruling earlier this year found that Alberta’s referendum process failed to adequately account for Indigenous treaty rights, creating another major legal obstacle to separation. The provincial government has appealed.
In other words, even a successful separatist campaign would be extraordinarily complicated.
Which is precisely why I don’t expect Alberta to become independent anytime soon.
But I do think Americans should pay attention to what is happening there.
Because there is a fundamental principle involved that goes beyond Alberta.
Canada is a sovereign country.
Its borders are not ours to redraw.
If Canadians decide democratically that Alberta should become independent, that is a matter for Canadians and Albertans to resolve through Canadian constitutional processes. If they decide Alberta should remain part of Canada, that should be the end of the matter.
The United States should not manipulate that process.
It should certainly not fund political movements designed to fracture an allied country.
And under absolutely no circumstances should American military forces be used to manufacture a political outcome.
That last possibility may sound ridiculous.
I hope it is ridiculous.
I hope that Donald Trump is not that bonkers.
But I also think there is value in saying out loud where the line is before somebody gets close enough to cross it.
The United States has spent generations telling the world that borders cannot simply be changed by force. We have spent generations criticizing Russia for using military power and political manipulation to redraw the map of Europe.
We should be extremely careful about becoming the thing we have spent so much time condemning.
There is a temptation, when imagining something as bizarre as American “little green men” appearing in Alberta, to laugh it off.
I don’t want to laugh it off.
Not because I think it is about to happen.
I don’t.
I think the far more likely outcome is that Albertans will vote, most will ultimately choose to remain Canadian, Ottawa and Edmonton will continue their endless political argument, and this strange chapter in Canadian history will eventually become something historians write about.
That is what I hope happens.
But history is full of moments when people looked at a dangerous possibility and said, “That would never happen here.”
So I am watching Alberta. And I am watching Washington. Because the last thing North America needs is a Crimea.
Especially a Crimea with oil fields, nuclear weapons next door, and the United States on the other side of the border.
