Yes, Danielle Smith is a separatist

By Max Fawcett
Opinion
February 2nd 2026

David Eby had clearly seen enough. Ahead of a meeting in Ottawa between the premiers and the prime minister, Eby decided to call out the leaders of Alberta’s separatist movement and their widely documented meetings with Trump administration officials. "To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there's an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is treason," he said.

It’s not clear whether those meetings actually meet the legal definition of treason, as experts told the Canadian Press. But they’re certainly treason-adjacent, and what really matters here isn’t the word’s precise legal definition but Eby’s use of it to shake people — especially his colleague in Alberta — out of their complacency. It certainly got Doug Ford’s attention, who told reporters that “this is an opportunity for Premier Smith to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough.’ Either you’re with Canada or you’re not with Canada.”

It’s an opportunity that she decided to pass up, just like all the other ones that came before it. Instead, she went to bat for the separatists. “I’m not going to demonize or marginalize a million of my fellow citizens when they’ve got legitimate grievances,” she said. “What we need to do is we need to give Albertans hope.”

Those grievances aren’t really legitimate, as I’ve written before. Alberta’s oil production is at record highs, it has access to a major new export pipeline and the prime minister is entertaining the prospect of supporting another one. Their grievances, such as they are, are mostly a stew of misinformation, ignorance, and conspiracies. Witness the recent conversation my colleague Arno Kopecky had with Mitch Sylvestre, one of the leaders behind the separatist movement, who aired any number of poorly informed grievances. “The United Nations has been anything but a friend to the Caucasian world,” he said. “I mean, you're seeing disruptions in Europe, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia. Very little anywhere else. [The] New World Order is after white Christianity by the looks of it, it seems to me. They're trying to replace us.”

To Smith, I suppose, this litany of conspiracy theories is a “legitimate” grievance. So too is his assertion that the Canadian government is “absolutely raping Alberta” through its climate and energy policies, ones that have resulted in — wait for it — record high oil and gas production. These are not serious people, and yet Smith insists on treating them and their ideas as though they are. Nobody is asking her to demonize every single person in her province who supports separatism, although I certainly wouldn’t complain if she tried. Instead, they’re asking her to denounce the three people who have gone down to the United States and held meetings with the Trump administration. That she won’t do it is both disappointing and entirely unsurprising.

After all, while her rhetoric is more polished than the separatist leaders, it conveys the same basic message: that Ottawa is an inherently hostile and increasingly foreign government. “I think we also have to be realistic that [for] 10 years under Justin Trudeau’s government, our province was relentlessly attacked,” she said. This is, of course, the same broad message that predecessor, Jason Kenney, also used to power his political ambitions. But the same base he spent years firing up with anti-Ottawa messages eventually turned on him after he belatedly tried to address the COVID-19 pandemic, and Danielle Smith seems determined to avoid upsetting them no matter the cost.

The costs of Alberta separating from Canada would, of course, be enormous. In a recent interview with CTV’s Vassy Kapelos, Kenney argued that choosing independence would be “economically suicidal” for Alberta. “What they want to do is play on anger as opposed to actually dealing with those very real facts.” I agree, but I also can’t help but wonder: where does he think they learned that from? Smith’s willingness to defend their delusions is just a natural extension of Kenney’s own habit of entertaining them, whether that’s with his Fair Deal Panel or the referendum on equalization that he surely knew would accomplish the square root of nothing.

Another day, another example of Alberta's premier fighting hard to defend separatists than defeat them. Why it's time for the rest of Canada to pick up the gauntlet — and start treating her like the separatist she is.

Kenney is speaking out against the separatists now, even if he spent most of his time as premier indulging them. But it’s more clear than ever that Smith will not do the same. And so, it falls to Canada’s other political leaders, from the prime minister to premiers like David Eby, Wab Kinew and Doug Ford to step up and fill the void she has deliberately created. It’s also up to Alberta’s voters to punish her for putting party and power ahead of country. In the meantime, though, let’s all take a page out of Eby’s book and start using the word that most accurately describes Smith’s behaviour: separatist.