[This piece originally appeared in The Globe and Mail on January 21, 2026.]
Canada’s leaders need to stop dignifying Alberta separatism by taking it seriously. Alberta is not the kind of thing that has a right to secede, and it won’t.
Under international law, secession is an act of self-determination, which in turn is a right enjoyed by “peoples.” Peoples are groups of individuals with a common identity grounded in culture, tradition, or sense of kinship who share an origin story, a collective historical narrative, and typically a language, a value set, and a belief system.
In seeking to exercise a right of self-determination, peoples have variously sought a state of their own (Palestinians), detachment from one state and attachment to another (Sudeten Germans), a greater degree of autonomy within an existing state (Scots), or deeper integration with an existing state (Falkland Islanders). Secession applies when the people in question is already under the jurisdiction of an existing sovereign state from which it seeks to separate for the first or second purpose. Because international law strongly favours stability and the territorial integrity of states, it limits the right of secession to extraordinary circumstances: namely, decolonization, alien subjugation, and (arguably) apartheid.
Albertans are not a “people,” because Alberta is not an ethnographic construct. It is an administrative unit, created in 1905 by an act of parliament for the purpose of providing effective governance over a more or less arbitrarily delimited space within an evolving Dominion of Canada. Administrative units have no right of self-determination. If they did, Calgary and Edmonton would have one, too.
Even if Albertans did qualify as a “people,” international law would still deny Alberta a right to secede. Albertans aren’t colonized, subjugated, or victims of apartheid. (Alberta’s First Nations, in contrast, are peoples who enjoy a right to self-determination and could probably mount a pretty good claim to a right to secede if they wanted to.)
Now, even though international law would not recognize Alberta’s right to secede, it would have no opinion on the legality of a unilateral declaration of independence, should Alberta attempt one. It would leave legal judgment on that matter up to Canada, the state with jurisdiction over the territory in question.
That judgment has already been rendered. In its 1998 ruling in Reference re Secession of Quebec, the Supreme Court of Canada unequivocally ruled that “Quebec could not, despite a clear referendum result, purport to invoke a right of self-determination to dictate the terms of a proposed secession to the other parties to the federation.” Quebec’s secession could only take place following a successful negotiation and a constitutional amendment. While the Court said that “the continued existence and operation of the Canadian constitutional order could not be indifferent to a clear expression of a clear majority of Quebecers that they no longer wish to remain in Canada,” nothing further necessarily followed: “There would be no conclusions predetermined by law on any issue. Negotiations would need to address the interests of the other provinces, the federal government and Quebec and indeed the rights of all Canadians both within and outside Quebec, and specifically the rights of minorities.”
Despite the fact that Quebec has no right to secede, it is at least plausible to say that French-Canadians have a right to self-determination, because they certainly qualify as a people. In the event of a clear majority of Quebecers backing independence in response to a clear referendum question, recognition of that right would likely motivate the rest of Canada to have a conversation on the matter. That conversation would almost certainly bog down, because the province of Quebec, like Alberta, is an administrative unit whose borders do not map neatly onto Francophone-majority districts in Canada. Also like Alberta, Quebec has large minorities whose rights would be difficult to accommodate.
But the fact that Albertans have no plausible claim to peoplehood whatsoever would, unlike in the case of Quebec, deprive Albertan separatism of sympathy elsewhere in the land. Canadians would be in no mood to negotiate dismembering the country to satisfy the whims of unpatriotic malcontents whose gripes are largely ideological and whose cause is supported by nefarious foreign actors – particularly in the face of existing treaty obligations to First Nations that predate Alberta’s creation and implicate the honour of the Crown.
The secession of Alberta, in short, is a non-starter, both legally and politically. We might as well acknowledge that now and stop wasting our collective breath – and feeding the beast – by treating it otherwise.