Instead of Making Canada The 51st State, Just Take Alberta
Arjun Singh
If Alberta votes Oct. 19 to leave Canada, Washington should be waiting with open arms for the resource-rich province and its conservatives.
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.