Jared Wesley: Decoding the Separatist Playbook
Albertans should learn to recognize these tropes in the coming months
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By: Jared Wesley
As we move into the closing weeks of the separatist referendum campaign, Albertans can expect to be inundated with appeals from those who want to pull the province out of Canada.
Their messaging will be familiar to those who have seen similar far-right populist movements in other parts of the world (think: MAGA and Brexit), or those long enough in the tooth to remember the 1995 Quebec referendum. In short, separatists will be asking Albertans to treat the Oct. 19 vote as a low-risk, high-reward, consequence-free exercise. It’s anything but.
The rest of us could use a Separatist Playbook to make sense of their moves.
Their first play is the Low-Stakes Two-Step, framing the referendum as simply a vote to have another vote. This is meant to lower the cost of voting for Option B, encouraging frustrated federalists to either support another referendum or simply stay home until it “really counts.” The stakes are actually much higher than the separatists let on, however, stalling important momentum and setting Alberta up for years of damaging economic uncertainty and political instability.
This play is a precursor to the Message-Vote Misdirection: telling folks that voting for Option B is simply a way to “send Ottawa a message.” That’s not how referendums work, of course. They create expectations, spook investors, and encourage politicians to interpret protest as consent. Don’t let separatists convince you to vote for a process you don’t support in order to vent your frustrations with the way things used to be under a previous federal government.
The Playbook continues with the Utopian Draw, with separatists comparing the real Canada (flawed, frustrating, and full of compromise) with an imaginary independent Alberta where everyone gets what they want without any trade-offs. No Ottawa, no equalization, lower taxes, better services, no disruption. This resembles the Chicken-in-Every-Pot play, promising that everyone will be better off and no one will have to sacrifice. Albertans should be on the lookout for these classic fake-outs.
Once you’re onto them, separatists will pull the “Details Later” Screen. “Currency? Pensions? Borders? Treaties? Trade? We’ll negotiate all of those later, and we’ll win.” Every major question will be treated as a minor administrative detail that will be sorted out after the vote. It’s like approving a divorce before seeing the custody arrangement, debt split, spousal support, and moving bills.
When federalists raise those sorts of issues, separatists will throw the Fearmongering Flag. It is a neat trick: turning due diligence into a weakness. But serious debate weighs risks and trade-offs. The counter to “stop the hysteria” is “stop dodging the real questions.”
Separatists will then offer the Burden Flip — proposing radical change without any plans, then demanding that federalists produce a detailed blueprint to “fix Canada.” In reality, the burden belongs to the side asking Albertans to gamble their livelihoods, but this won’t stop the distraction tactics.
The most revealing pages in the Separatist Playbook concern power and leverage. In the David-Goliath Switch, Alberta is somehow both mighty enough to stand alone yet helpless enough to be trapped in Confederation with no hope of improving it. In the Lone Wolf Delusion, separatists pretend Alberta would have more leverage negotiating alone against ten other governments, Indigenous nations, and international trading partners than it has by building alliances within Canada.
Separatists may even whip out the Constitutional Cheat Code, offering the idea that a vote to leave will, overnight, resolve a host of complex constitutional questions that have perplexed Canadian leaders for generations. An iteration of this move involves the Treaty Deception — arguing that an independent Alberta will automatically inherit Canada’s relationships with Indigenous nations and foreign countries. Truth is: Alberta can’t simply vote itself out of Confederation, take treaty lands with it, or be grandfathered into trade deals; it needs to negotiate its way out and back into these arrangements, convincing partners to agree to the new terms. That will not come without compromise and sacrifice.
Once flustered, separatists will resort to identity politics, applying the No-True-Albertan Test, where any disagreement with them is a betrayal to the homeland; the Braveheart Fantasy, where separatists are the true face-painted patriots and federalists are cowering cuckolds; and the Abuse Frame where Canada is the violent oppressor and Alberta is the helpless victim. These moves distract from any substantive discussions through name-calling.
When confronted with all of these inconsistencies, separatists will resort to the Sovereignty Smokebomb. Empty slogans referring to “autonomy,” “freedom,” and “independence” will swirl among AI slop images creating a useful fog that lets separatists sell a “stronger Alberta” instead of an isolated, vulnerable, landlocked state.
The Separatist Playbook works only in so far as everyday Albertans take their moves at face value. They should not. A serious province deserves a serious set of discussions, not stunts. And as summer draws to an end and temperatures cool, rhetoric like that mentioned should only heat up. When you hear such tactics in the coming months, be sure to call out these plays for what they are.
Jared Wesley is a professor of political science and leads the Common Ground project at the University of Alberta. He is part of the Lead Not Leave initiative (leadnotleave.ca).
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Thank you to Jared Wesley for writing this clear-headed, well-reasoned and compelling op-ed, and to The Line for publishing it.
None of these are "credible arguments why Alberta should stay in Canada". Because the only actual such argument is that Canada might well harm itself in order to punish a secessionist Alberta. Which is, of course, a valid argument. But not necessarily one that makes secession less likely.