On October 19, 2026, Albertans will go to the polls to vote on 10 referendum questions. Nine of them are government-sponsored questions on immigration and working with other provinces to acquire powers from the federal government. The tenth was inspired by a citizen-initiated petition and is on Alberta separation. The advocates for separation hold certain beliefs in common. Given the consequential implications of this tenth question, it’s important we understand where separatists get their information.
Two incidents in late April 2026 highlight problems with the sources of Alberta separatists’ information. The first was a poll commissioned by CBC and conducted by Janet Brown, who is widely seen as Alberta’s most accurate pollster. Among her questions were several about separatism. Brown found that 67 per cent of Alberta respondents would vote against separation and only 27 per cent for it. These results were similar to tracking she’s done for almost a decade as well as the results from other polling firms. Nevertheless, separatist supporters said Brown was wrong because “you can’t trust the CBC,” “all pollsters are wrong” and everybody they know supports separation.
The second incident was when the Centurion Project—a pro-separation group led by David Parker—was discovered to have acquired the official voters list from the Republican Party of Alberta (a recently created fringe separatist party). The private personal data of 2.9 million Albertans was handed to separatists and posted online in a massive data breach that is being investigated by Elections Alberta as well as by the province’s Privacy Commissioner and the RCMP. The breach was condemned throughout the media and across the political spectrum. But taking their cues from Parker, separatist-aligned Albertans dismissed the leaked data as simply what you’d find in a phone book. They argued that everybody buys and sells personal data, calling the breach a big nothingburger.
Both examples illustrate that many in Alberta’s separatist movement get their information from fellow separatists and ignore or ridicule facts and analysis from the mainstream media, other politicians, independent government institutions, pollsters and academics. A February 2026 Angus Reid poll showed that when asked where they get their information on separation, those Albertans who would vote to leave Canada said “alternative media sources” (50 per cent), “friends and family” (45 per cent) and “social media” (37 per cent). Only 28 per cent of leave supporters said “mainstream media.” In contrast, those who would vote to stay in Canada got their information from “mainstream media” (71 per cent), “social media” (45 per cent) and “friends and family” (25 per cent). Only 18 per cent of stay supporters relied on “alternative media.”
One of the main reasons for the stark split between separatists and other Albertans in terms of where they get their information is the decades-long and systematic effort by conservatives to diminish the CBC. Some of the loudest applause at Pierre Poilievre’s 2025 election campaign rallies was when he promised to defund the CBC. This is important, because while not all conservatives are separatists, virtually all separatists are conservatives. This insight has been backed up by multiple polls. For example, Brown found in April 2026 that 57 per cent of UCP voters support separatism, compared to just 2 per cent of NDP supporters and 11 per cent of those who back other parties. Conservatives like Poilievre often portray the CBC as a state broadcaster (an instrument of the government, like Pravda in Russia), when in fact it is a public broadcaster (a media agency that’s not subject to editorial direction by politicians but is paid for with public funds—and which exists in virtually every advanced democracy, e.g., the BBC in Britain, ABC in Australia, Japan’s NHK).
Traditional news outlets are disappearing. In their place is a deluge of “alternative media.”
This false critique—that the CBC is an arm of the federal Liberal government—now often extends to all mainstream media in Canada. This is in part due to the Trudeau government’s expansion of subsidies to newspapers, radio and TV news. It did this with the intention of supporting news as a public interest in the face of technological changes that upended traditional business models. One could argue these new programs simply grew the support the federal government has for decades provided to a variety of media (magazines, film, TV etc.) and that other democracies have similar programs. Nevertheless, for critics such as Peter Menzies, a former newspaper executive and vice-chair of the CRTC, how can people trust Canada’s media as free and independent if it’s reliant upon government support?
Despite public subsidies, the downsizing and even disappearance of news outlets continues. Newsrooms are getting smaller and small-town papers are going bankrupt. For example, the Calgary Herald—which used to be the dominant news organization in Alberta, with around 800 employees in 1981 and, even in 1998, 146 people on its editorial staff—no longer has printed editions on Sunday or Monday, and today only has about a dozen reporters. According to the Local News Research Project, 529 community newspapers in Canada closed between 2008 and 2025. Likewise viewership of the supper hour news on Global and CTV has plummeted.
In its place has arrived a deluge of “alternative media.” These outlets easily post stories, videos and interviews online. They’re small, some with only one or two staff. This is especially the case with podcasts, which have proliferated. Alberta now has many explicitly pro-separatist podcasts. Even the largest alternative outlets, such as Rebel Media or the Western Standard, employ only a few people. This hampers their ability to factcheck and vet stories before publication or to make corrections afterwards.
But many of them aren’t interested in facts anyway. Alternative media typically don’t do basic reporting. Most of their content is commentary (ironically, often relying on reporting from mainstream news), with little original factfinding, let alone in-depth investigations. Revenue Canada actually denied Rebel Media’s request to be a qualified journalism organization for tax purposes because it didn’t do original news. When staff at such organizations masquerade as reporters, they don’t even pretend to be balanced. They have an explicit bias. And while some alternative media are on the left (e.g., Press Progress, The Orchard, The Breakdown), the vast majority are on the right. This means they’re likely at least sympathetic to separation. Both Rebel Media and the Western Standard explicitly advocate for separatism. The former has even registered as a third-party advertiser for the referendum. This isn’t just an editorial stance; all of its content is designed to help the separatist cause and disparage federalists.
Accompanying the decline of mainstream news and rise of alternative media is the role of social media. Social media (Facebook, X, Instagram, BlueSky, TikTok, YouTube etc.) create communities of like-minded individuals and make it harder for people to encounter other interests and viewpoints. The upshot is users frequently see only one side of important issues, such as Alberta separation, or get only distortions and criticisms of the other side. So, when people claim they’ve “never” seen a positive case for staying in Canada, it’s because they perhaps haven’t—because of their narrow exposure to information.
All sorts of institutions are experiencing downgrading and mistrust—what Tom Nichols rightly calls “the death of expertise.” People “do their own research” over a couple of hours and believe they have the same degree of knowledge as professionals who have dedicated their entire career to analyzing the same issue. We saw this during COVID, when people claimed expertise about communicable diseases and vaccines and were loudly critical of the medical community.
For separatists, it means you can’t trust politicians, academics, doctors, business leaders or judges. The only people you can trust are those who already think the same way you do. So when Stéphane Dion, the architect of the Clarity Act and a staunch federalist who confronted Quebec separatists in the 1990s, spells out the difficulty of Alberta separatism, he can be ignored because he’s from Quebec, a former Liberal leader, and speaks English with an accent. When Alberta-based academics push back against separatist arguments, they’re mocked as left-wing and “out of touch woke elitists.” When the Chambers of Commerce in Edmonton and Calgary warn about companies and investment fleeing Alberta as a consequence of separatism, they’re called fearmongers. When judges bring up Indigenous treaty rights, they’re attacked as unelected Trudeau-appointed activists. Separatists even lambasted premier Danielle Smith—who has bent over backwards to give separatists a voice—for estimating that separating would come with almost $400-billion in upfront costs.
Separatists living in their own echo chamber creates consequences. Misinformation is saturating their movement. Many if not all of the leading separatist voices claim the process will be easy. This ignores that the Clarity Act requires a clear majority on a clear question before secession negotiations can begin. That’s a high bar. Even if it were possible to accomplish that, negotiations with the rest of Canada would be very difficult. Who would own national parks such as Banff, Jasper and Waterton? How would assets be divided? What about Alberta’s share of the national debt? What about Indigenous treaties, signed with the Crown before Alberta was even a province? What about the cost of creating new institutions (a military, border officials, a food inspection agency) to replace federal ones? What about citizenship, passports and currency? These questions and thousands more would take years of acrimonious and emotional negotiations. This would entail huge costs for everybody.
Other forms of misinformation include a belief that it would be easy to build another pipeline to the coast or that sovereign Albertans wouldn’t pay income or corporate taxes. Or that Alberta needs to separate because of former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act to address the Ottawa convoy protesting COVID public health restrictions. Separatists claim the convoy was peaceful (it wasn’t, which is why several of its leaders were imprisoned), that Trudeau sent in the army (the Emergencies Act temporarily gives temporary extra powers to police; the army wasn’t used), that tens of thousands of bank accounts were seized (about 200 accounts used to fund the convoy were temporarily frozen).
Contributing to this misinformation are memes and videos that circulate among separatists. For example, a graphic proclaiming a Republic of Alberta will drill it (oil), ditch it (the UN), drain it (Parliament) and deport it (non-white Albertans). Or charts showing the amount of money that provinces receive via federal equalization, emphasizing that Alberta is at zero—but without recognizing that it would be illogical for the richest province in Canada to receive benefits meant to help poorer provinces. Or statements like those from Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) leader Mitch Sylvestre that Canada is a third-world country in decline, with the highest taxes in the world. Or that there are Chinese communist soldiers in Canada, and prime minister Mark Carney is a secret agent. By separatists’ logic, Ottawa is simultaneously dependent on Alberta’s oil and gas revenue but also desperately trying to keep the resource in the ground.
Of particular relevance is a video called Sovereign Steel: The Anthem of Alberta that is shown at APP rallies. Sovereign Steel is an AI-generated collection of stereotypes: the heroes are all roughnecks, ranchers and farmers in rural Alberta; the only women are wives, children or premier Danielle Smith; there are no visible minorities; Carney wears a crown and laughs at Alberta. Sovereign Steel was produced by someone calling himself Full Metal Patriot, an American who has produced similar videos for audiences in the US and the UK. In other words, some of the misinformation separatists are consuming is produced far from Alberta. This is an example of what studies identify as foreign interference in Alberta’s separation debate.
To be clear, Alberta separatism is a homegrown, grassroots movement that goes back decades. However, the modern version is marked by clear and growing evidence of interference from China, Russia and the US. In some cases foreign actors are trying to break up Canada; in others, stoking chaos. Some are just trying to make a buck. Those individuals don’t really understand or even care about Alberta and its separatism debate. As just one example, a noodle merchant from Indonesia regularly posts on Facebook posing as an Alberta separatist. By amplifying content, these actors make it seem, at least online, that the separatism movement is larger than it really is.
They didn’t create the conditions for separatism. What they’re doing instead is exploiting existing divisions in Alberta, similar to what happened in the Brexit referendum in 2016.
It also doesn’t matter that some of these videos are ridiculous. One shows the six (!) Western provinces telling Carney they’re seceding from Canada; another has Donald Trump deploying troops to Montana to liberate Alberta. Sovereign Steel depicts the CN Tower rising in downtown Calgary…! The term “slopaganda” was coined in 2025, referring to low-quality AI-generated content aimed at manipulating beliefs for political ends. Like traditional propaganda, “slopaganda overwhelms the information environment with plausible-sounding material that distracts, misinforms or influences ideologies,” writes a researcher with the Centre for Media Transition. “The difference is it’s distributed instantly and at an unprecedented scale, using social bots and algorithmic mechanisms.”
Can a democracy survive if its people don’t even share the same understanding of reality?
The referendum campaign itself will be divisive, and misinformation will affect how separatists interpret the outcome. What happens if Albertans overwhelming vote to stay in Canada? This is the most likely outcome, according to most polls. If you’re a separatist, and all the information you’ve seen indicates most Albertans want to leave, how will you process a losing result?
Based on historical analogies, I can anticipate three reactions.
One would be to respond the way Quebec separatists did after the failed 1980 referendum: be disappointed, accept the result, realize you have work to do to convince Albertans of the case for independence, try again in a future referendum. If at first you don’t secede, try, try again! In fact, Quebec separatists did get a second referendum, and it was very close: they lost by just over 54,000 votes out of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast.
The aftermath of that 1995 referendum might resemble the second possible reaction in Alberta. In his concession speech a visibly angry Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau blamed the defeat on “money and the ethnic vote.” It doesn’t require much imagination to see Alberta separatists taking a similar tack. They might blame the loss on the business community or money flowing in from Ottawa and the rest of the country combined with the large number of visible minorities concentrated in Edmonton and Calgary who voted to stay in Canada, thus thwarting the will of “real” Albertans. Online misinformation, including all sorts of conspiracy theories amplified by foreign actors, would quickly spread.
A third possible reaction might look like the aftermath of the 2020 US election, when Trump refused to recognize the loss and repeatedly said the election was rigged. He lashed out at TV networks—especially Fox News—for calling the election for Joe Biden. The conditions are in place for separatists to claim Alberta’s referendum was likewise rigged. Because of the complexity of the process (10 questions on different-coloured ballots that must be counted by hand), Elections Alberta has hired tens of thousands of temporary staff. The agency has warned it might take 48 hours to count the ballots, in part because the Smith government banned vote tabulators due to its belief that the machines diminish trust in “the methods and results of local elections.” Any delay could lead to accusations that the vote is being stolen—especially, as appears likely, if the smallest polling stations (those in towns) are counted first and the largest (in Edmonton and Calgary) are counted last. Alberta could see a mirage of a separatist lead early in the counting, then a wave of pro-Canada votes. You can already hear separatists’ chants of “Stop the count!” and “Stop the steal!”
Separatists are already laying the groundwork for rejecting a pro-remain outcome in the referendum. Even before the scandal involving the breach of the voters list, separatist leaders David Parker and Jeff Rath were calling Elections Alberta—the independent organization that will conduct the referendum—“corrupt.” Separatists are also raising fears that prime minister Carney and even premier Smith will interfere. And it doesn’t take a leap of imagination to see Trump himself assert that the Alberta referendum was stolen by pro-Canada forces and to declare the US will recognize an independent Republic of Alberta. Other foreign actors, to stir chaos, will spread misinformation to sow doubt about the result.
It’s tough to speculate about the aftermath of a referendum that hasn’t happened yet. But these plausible outcomes highlight the consequences of the Alberta separatist echo chamber. When you ignore or denigrate information from mainstream media and institutions, and only believe information from like-minded sources, you are psychologically unprepared for an adverse outcome.
And the implications of sources of information, misinformation and disinformation extend well beyond Alberta’s separation referendum. Can a democracy survive if its people don’t even share the same understanding of reality?
Duane Bratt teaches Alberta politics, international relations and Canadian public policy at Mount Royal University
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