Unlocking Alberta’s Potential

Why Independence Must Be on the Table

Alberta enters the second half of this decade standing at a fork in the road. Global energy demand is escalating. Industrial AI, electrification, and food security are reshaping markets. We should be leading this transformation — a province with unmatched resources, ingenuity, and ambition.

Instead, we spend our time fighting the same federal battles we have fought for decades, while competitors seize the opportunities slipping through our fingers.

The irony is almost exhausting: every time Alberta prepares to scale up, Ottawa finds a way to pull back on the reins.

Take electricity. To power hyperscale data centers, EV infrastructure, industrial AI, and decarbonized heavy industry, Alberta needs abundant, reliable, low-carbon energy. We can deliver it. Nuclear SMRs, abundant supplies of natural gas with carbon capture, industrial co-generation, and hydrogen production give Alberta an enviable foundation — one most jurisdiction would envy.

Yet Ottawa’s Clean Electricity Regulations create a compliance maze that raises costs, injects uncertainty, and threatens grid stability. The rules do not align with Alberta’s geography, its resource mix, or its growth trajectory. We have spent years making this case. The federal government has heard every argument. Nothing changes.

On market access, the story is even more familiar. Alberta can produce world-class energy, food, and technology — but our ability to reach global customers is sabotaged by policies written thousands of kilometers away. Marketing boards restrict our agricultural output to benefit Quebec. Bill C-48 locks Alberta out of the most direct route to Asia. Bill C-69 subjected critical infrastructure to an assessment regime so politicized and unpredictable that investors now treat “Canada” as a regulatory risk category all by itself.

We have argued, lobbied, litigated, and pleaded for balance. After years of effort, the bottlenecks remain, and our competitors — the U.S., Australia, Norway — move their products freely to global markets while we wait for federal permission to build an energy corridor through our own country.

The same pattern repeats in capital markets. Alberta is ready to offer stability, clarity, and velocity — the conditions investors crave. Yet while the province builds certainty, Ottawa erodes it. The proposed emissions cap, framed as “pollution” not “production,” still hangs over the energy sector like a sword.

Billions of dollars sit on the sidelines while corporate boards evaluate whether investment in Alberta is worth the federal policy volatility that seems to escalate every election cycle. Our most strategic industries operate under a risk premium that is not market-driven — it is manufactured by this federal government.

Meanwhile, on reconciliation, Alberta has moved decisively to partner with Indigenous nations through equity, ownership, and long-term prosperity. The province’s Indigenous loan-guarantee model is a national success story. But Ottawa’s response remains slow, restrictive, and bound by the same structural limitations that have burdened Indigenous nations for generations. The racist Indian Act remains dominant. The reserve system is rife with poverty, crime, desperation, and corruption. Federal approvals drag on while First Nations and Alberta firms ask for nothing more than the freedom to build wealth together.

And then there is Ottawa’s approach to “transition.” Alberta has been told, again and again, that economic transformation will be managed from federal boardrooms in Toronto and Ottawa. Billions in subsidies flow east for EV manufacturing, while Alberta — the global leader in CCUS, hydrogen, and industrial clean-tech — must scrape for parity. Skilled trades are treated as sectors to be phased out, not engines of national competitiveness. Workers hear the message clearly. This federal government is now clearly and loudly pivoting away from Alberta’s largest trading partner, the U.S.A.

Through all of this, Alberta has tried to fix the relationship. We have negotiated in good faith. We have challenged bad laws in court. We have complied, adapted, and innovated. We have presented evidence, economic modelling, and technological solutions. We have built coalitions. We have appealed to national unity and common interest.

And what has this federal Liberal government given us in return? More regulation, more centralization, more constraints, and more political interference in industries that are Alberta’s constitutional jurisdiction.

We can no longer pretend this is a temporary disagreement or a fixable misunderstanding. It is the structural product of a federation that was never designed for a province with Alberta’s economic profile, growth potential, and global relevance.

The uncomfortable conclusion is becoming impossible to ignore: Alberta’s challenges are not operational — they are jurisdictional. We are trying to build a 21st-century economy using 19th-century constitutional tools.

For some, this realization is alarming. For others, it is overdue. But for all Albertans, it poses a simple question: How many more decades must we fight the same federal battles before we accept that the structure itself is the problem?

Alberta can power the digital world. We can fuel and feed the next billion people. We can lead in nuclear, hydrogen, ag-tech, CCUS, industrial AI, advanced manufacturing, and Indigenous economic partnership. We can be North America’s most dynamic engine of innovation, investment, and global trade.

But we cannot do it with Ottawa standing on the brake pedal.

The past fifty years have proven one thing beyond debate: federal constraints are not anomalies — they are constants. And constants do not change by asking nicely.

Albertans now face a decision. Do we continue the cycle of frustration, litigation, and federal obstruction? Or do we begin a mature, serious exploration of what Alberta could achieve with full control over its resources, its trade routes, its taxation, its workforce policy, its Indigenous partnerships, and its regulatory future?

Independence is no longer a fringe idea. It is a rational response to an unsustainable status quo.

We owe future generations an honest conversation — not about what Canada should be, but about what Alberta could be.

And if this province is ever to reach its full potential, the answer may be that Alberta must finally stop asking permission.