In 2026, resentment with Canada is reaching a fever pitch in Alberta. This week, voters will head to the polls for a “separation referendum.” The question is simple: Should Alberta remain a part of Canada, or should it leave?
While the results are non-binding and the Ottawa establishment will likely attempt to ignore them, the decision could be historic. If Alberta votes to leave, it could join the United States and would be one of its crowning assets — initially as a territory, with a clear pathway to statehood. If it votes to leave, Washington should welcome it.
Canada Was Built on Anti-American Spite
To understand why Alberta belongs in the United States, one must understand why Canada exists at all. The current arrangement of “free trade” between the two nations is fundamentally unworkable because Canada was never meant to be a partner; it was designed as a fortress against American liberty.
Since 1867, Canada’s reason for existence has been to resist the gravity of the United States. While Americans followed their Manifest Destiny to secure a continent of liberty, Canada’s founding fathers were busy ensuring the British Empire could maintain a foothold in North America. As Sir George-Étienne Cartier remarked in 1865, “We must either have a Confederation of British North America or else be absorbed by the American Confederation.”
Cartier wasn’t wrong, since America has always coveted Canada. In 1775, George Washington penned an open letter “to the inhabitants of Canada” imploring them to join the 13 colonies in the Revolutionary War. During that war, the Articles of Confederation governing pre-Constitution America explicitly allowed Canada to join. Over the years, the idea has come up periodically, mostly at America’s insistence. President Trump’s musings about Canada becoming the “51st state” are the latest in this long history.
Ties to the British Empire
Canada’s national identity was thus built on the “Imperial Preference” system — a colonial project designed to benefit Britain at the expense of the United States and preventing Canada from forming economic ties that would eventually lead to political integration. Its logic was simple: Britain extracted Canada’s resources for its industries and sold goods back to Canada, while tariffs on the U.S. were kept high.
This economic arrangement was secured by a pervasive, state-sponsored anti-Americanism infused into Canadian society, which was taught to be loyal to the empire based in England. Then as now, the “Laurentian” elites’ — referring to the stretch of Canada running from Toronto to Montreal, the equivalent of America’s northeast corridor — detest of America was nothing more than a cloak for their jealousy of its material success and their fear of northward expansion.
After World War II, when the British Empire collapsed, Canada lost the biggest buyer of its goods. Free trade with the U.S. was then necessary for financial survival. Yet, even as it reluctantly opened up to American markets, Canada maintained protectionist barriers on markets for lumber, dairy, and media. Today, that old anti-Americanism has evolved into a new, left-wing sanctimony. Moral superiority over Americans remains the last pillar of Canada’s national identity.
The Elite Looting Alberta
For the people of Alberta, the colonial logic of Canada’s existence has been transposed onto them. They are forced into an unequal relationship where they are treated not as a partner, but as a resource colony to be exploited by the radical left in Ottawa.
Alberta is the engine of the Canadian economy. Blessed with the fourth-largest proven oil reserves in the world, Alberta’s oil and gas industry rakes in more than $100 billion a year. Alberta contributes more than 15 percent of Canada’s GDP — far more than its share of the population.
In return for their contributions, Albertans are slapped with a redistribution policy called “equalization.” Under this socialist scheme, hundreds of billions of dollars have flowed from the pockets of hard-working Albertans to subsidize the bloated public services of provinces that consistently elect Liberal Party governments. These same provinces then turn around and support carbon taxes and block the very pipelines that Alberta needs for its economic growth. It is a parasitic relationship: Ottawa demands the fruits of Alberta’s labor while actively trying to kill the tree.
Under the current regime of Prime Minister Mark Carney and ideologues, this unequal relationship has become an existential threat. The “net zero” mandates of the 21st century are not just mismanagement, but a deliberate policy of managed decline. Canada’s ruling class has decided that Alberta’s oil wealth must be “decarbonized” into effective non-existence by 2050. Though Canada has not said outright that it will limit oil and gas production, that is inevitable; there is no credible way to both increase oil exports and reduce emissions at the same time. Instead, Canada has replaced national interest with the performance of ideological diplomacy, leaving Alberta to suffer a transition to an economy where its riches are stifled.
The tragedy is also constitutional. In the Canadian system, Alberta is systematically silenced. Despite voting for the Conservative Party by overwhelming margins, Alberta has zero influence over the formation of the Liberal Party-led federal governments — elected, once again, by majorities in Ontario and Quebec — that rule them.
Alberta is chronically underrepresented in federal institutions compared to Quebec, which has more seats in parliament than proportionate to its population and reserved seats on the Supreme Court unlike any other province. Furthermore, the Canadian Senate — unlike the U.S. Senate, which was designed to protect regional interests — is an effectively toothless body of “sober second thought” filled with Liberal Party patronage appointees (even from Alberta) and has no influence on politics. In Canada, Alberta has no voice, no power, and no future.
The American Option: A Shared Destiny
Joining the United States is the only logical resolution to Alberta’s plight. Both places, Alberta and America, would benefit.
While Canadian elites sneer at the perceived “chaos” of American politics, they ignore the fundamental structural advantages of the U.S. Constitution. As a state, Alberta would finally have elected senators to defend its interests in a federal system that respects the sovereignty of its members. For Republicans in America, adding Alberta as the 51st state would entail two more conservative U.S. senators, who would bolster their advantages in that crucial chamber.
In Washington, Alberta would not be a problem child to be lectured by woke bureaucrats; it would be a strategic titan. With its oil wealth, it would be the “Texas of the North.” In an era where energy independence is a matter of national security, Alberta would provide the energy required to help the United States counter adversarial regimes such as Russia and Iran. The oilsands would no longer be trapped under Canada’s regulatory regime and would bring their riches to the United States. Indeed, only America possesses the refining capacity and liquid capital markets to help Alberta’s oil industry scale up and reach the world. This is more than a matter of a good business deal; it is a matter of shared destiny.
This is perhaps the biggest argument for Alberta’s joining the United States. It’s one that Trump’s allies in government have endorsed. Figures such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., have spoken in favor of Alberta being American. There is no widespread opinion polling on what Americans think of Alberta in particular. If President Trump gets behind the idea, there would be real momentum.
Cultural Alignment
There is also a profound cultural alignment. The conservative values that define the Albertan character — the frontier spirit, the sanctity of individual rights, and a healthy skepticism of big government — find a far more natural home in the American heartland than in the increasingly statist culture of post-modern Canada.
From the state-sponsored expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAID) to the aggressive imposition of DEI mandates across the civil service, the social trajectory of Canada is diverging sharply from the sensibilities of Albertans. By joining America, Alberta isn’t abandoning its identity — it is seeking the only system that will allow that identity to survive. Americans would be admitting the most American province of Canada to their country, bringing on an ally in the ongoing culture wars to defend the ideals that define this country.
The Politics of Statehood
Critics will inevitably point to the “legal impossibility” of such a move, citing indigenous people’s treaties and Alberta’s existing economic integration with Canada. There is surely a difficult process to negotiate an exit from Canada, let alone becoming a U.S. territory. But sovereignty is never granted by the ruling class and accepted as a fait accompli. Instead, it is asserted by the people. Albertans need to assert their own.
Critics may also claim that admitting Alberta to statehood will trigger demands from Democrats to add Washington, D.C., or Puerto Rico as states, leading the politics of “statehood” to spin out of control. However, the rarest commodity in the world today is land. The more of it a country has, the better, especially if it’s resource rich. This has been the impetus for Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland. Instead of that northern territory, this impulse is best directed at Alberta — a place that’s ready, able, and willing to be American.
Albertans Controlling Their Destiny
The Oct. 19 referendum is thus a moment of democratic clarification. For America, the moment is ripe to continue the Manifest Destiny when democratic conditions are favorable. Unlike the people of Greenland, the people of Alberta are fed up with their current deal. Trump should be using his dealmaking skills to negotiate with Alberta. If successful, he would go down in history and bring home the biggest piece of land since William Seward purchased Alaska in 1867.
For Alberta, a vote to leave is a signal to the world — and to their masters in Ottawa — that they finally have control over their own destiny. The Laurentian consensus is no longer binding on a people who have been systematically excluded from its benefits. The legal hurdles are merely the final paperwork of a divorce that has already occurred in the hearts of Albertans.
Alberta can thus choose a future of “managed decline” within a shrinking Canadian federation that views its prosperity as a liability; or it can choose an independent future of energy greatness as a sovereign state, followed by its rightful place in the world’s most powerful republic. The choice is clear. As a Canadian citizen myself, now living in the United States, I’ve made that choice individually. It was the best decision of my life.
For too long, Alberta has been loyal to a fault, even as that loyalty was repaid with contempt. It is time for Alberta to leave the decaying house of Canada and join the United States, where its resources, its labor, and its values will be celebrated.
Arjun Singh is a journalist who lives in Washington, D.C. He is a natural-born Canadian citizen who is loyal to the United States.