TORONTO—Union leaders in Alberta and across Canada are sounding the alarm over what they see as an unprecedented foreign interference campaign: the Trump administration’s covert collaboration with Alberta separatists. Washington is openly embracing a secession effort in the oil-rich province that aims to fracture the Canadian federation and undermine workers’ rights.
Officials from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Treasury have held at least three secret meetings with far-right fringe separatists who want Alberta to declare its independence and likely become a part of the United States, according to reporting from the Financial Times on Jan. 29.
Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) President Gil McGowan, the most vocal leader in the mass movement opposing the sham independence effort, says the meetings are clear “evidence of foreign interference.” He said the scheme is not organic. “We’re being targeted by the MAGA crowd.”
The separatists, calling themselves the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), are currently mounting a campaign to gather 178,000 signatures on an independence petition in hopes of triggering a separation referendum. Their other themes mirror those of the MAGA base in the U.S.: accusations that Canada’s federal government is corrupt and squandering money, xenophobic claims of a Chinese takeover, persecution of Christians, and “globalist” conspiracies.
They have another meeting scheduled with Trump administration officials in February where, according to APP lawyer Jeff Rath, they will discuss “a $500 billion USD line of credit to support the transition to a free and independent Alberta.”
That figure dwarfs Alberta’s current provincial budget and would leave workers and taxpayers on both sides of the border exposed to crushing debt. U.S. officials deny committing to the plan but continue to openly back the would-be defectors.
U.S. pursues divide-and-conquer strategy
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent intentionally threw gas on the fire at the World Economic Forum in Davos in mid-January when he publicly endorsed the goal of pulling Alberta and its resource riches out of Canada and into the United States.
“I think we should let them come down into the U.S.,” Bessent said. “Alberta’s a natural partner for the U.S.” He referred to the referendum petition and said Albertans “have great resources” and want “sovereignty” and desire “what the U.S. has got.”
That seal of approval checks out with claims by Rath that the U.S. “is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta” and explains why the APP has a “much stronger relationship” with the Trump administration than with the Canadian government in Ottawa.
These developments take place amid a backdrop of intense U.S. pressure on Canada as President Donald Trump pursues his strategy of locking in economic control of the entire Western Hemisphere, an updated Monroe Doctrine. Canada was among the first countries targeted by Trump’s trade war when he returned to office in 2025, and the president regularly proclaims his desire to make it—along with Greenland—the “51st state.”
His hostility toward the U.S.’ northern neighbor is running even higher after the events of recent weeks.
Canada signed a “strategic partnership” deal with China in January that lowers tariffs, increases trade between the two powers, dials back years of confrontation, and eases travel for tourists. It will make the Canadian economy less dependent on the U.S. and goes in the opposite direction of Trump’s goal of squeezing China out of the hemisphere.
And Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 20 calling for “middle powers” to stand together as “American hegemony” crumbles and Washington becomes aggressive toward one-time allies further enraged the president.
Separatism’s anti-worker edge
The labor movement in Canada warns that the combination of external meddling and internal division jeopardizes not just Alberta’s unity with the rest of the country but also all the social gains that workers have fought for and won over the decades.
“We value hard work and solidarity, not selling each other out,” the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) declared in a recent statement. The union has called out not just fringe separatists but also mainstream right-wing politicians like Alberta’s Conservative Premier Danielle Smith and Canadian reality TV businessman Kevin O’Leary, who have touted an economic union with the U.S.
CUPE called them “traitors to Canada” who are “happy to sell out Albertan workers and Canadian workers as long as it means keeping the bonus checks rolling for their CEO friends.” As for federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Polievre, who has been “as quiet as a church mouse when it comes to Mr. Trump’s attacks,” the union said he’s “just another servant or the billionaires and big oil.”
The strongest voice against U.S. imperial interference in Alberta has been McGowan of the AFL. On Jan. 28, he wrote on X: “Separatist Jeffery Rath says Albertans are tired of being a ‘resource colony for Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal.’ He’s right that we’re a resource colony, but he got the colonizer wrong. More of our resource wealth is exported to the USA than Ottawa.”
A recent report commissioned by the AFL showed that the big four oil companies in Alberta—which account for four-fifths of the province’s production—are 76% foreign-owned. The study, which is called “Exporting Profits,” determined that most of those foreign owners are American shareholders. Canada is the single biggest source of imported oil in the U.S. market.
In an extensive take-down of the separatist argument, McGowan has pointed out that the Alberta independence campaign is also about clearing the way for destructive austerity. The current United Conservative Party government in Alberta has already been working to “cannibalize and privatize” the public health care system, he says.
And as for an independent Alberta, “it would likely be unwilling, and perhaps unable, to offer equivalent national programs like the Canada Pension Plan [Canada’s version of Social Security] or universal social programs like public dental care, pharmacare, and childcare.”
McGowan argues that unions and workers in Alberta oppose separation because they understand that it would quickly result in “annexation by Trump’s America.” He said that most Canadians recoil at the thought of becoming part of a country “where democracy is eroding in real time.” He pointed to the stripping of union rights from public sector workers; attacks on immigrants, women, and LGBTQ people; and the stifling of science and education.
“Billionaire plutocrats—including the president himself—are in the process of replacing a cruel ‘trickle-down’ economy with an even crueler gangster economy,” he said, and Canadian workers have no interest in being sucked into that.
The latest polls back him up. Data released on Jan. 9 from Pollara Strategic Insights found that although dissatisfaction with the federal government persists in western provinces like Alberta, only 14% of residents there say they would actually vote to separate from Canada.
That makes McGowan confident that Canadian workers “won’t rest until the threat posed by Maple MAGA is neutralized.”
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