Raymond J. de Souza: Will Alberta prove a model to emulate in the age of upset?

Alberta separatism supporters rally in front of the Elections Alberta headquarters in Edmonton, on May 4, 2026. Photo by Henry MARKEN / AFP via Getty Images

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CALGARY — When Albertans vote this October on whether they should vote to separate from Canada at some point, it will be 40 years to the month that Preston Manning gathered a few close advisers to discuss what would become the Reform Party a year later. The slogan then was “The West Wants In.” Now the question is whether Alberta wants out or, to be precise, whether Albertans want to be asked about whether Alberta wants out.

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No snide remarks, please, about Alberta’s referendum question. Compared to the ambiguities and obfuscations of the Quebec questions in 1980 and 1995, Alberta’s ballot paper will be a model of clean, clear prose.

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Manning, now the grand old man of conservative populism, shared this past week the lessons he considers should have been learned from the 1995 Quebec referendum, namely that voting to remain does not mean a vote for the status quo.

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It’s worth recalling the tradition which Manning knew well — his father Ernest Manning was Alberta’s longest-serving premier, 1943-1968 — and in which he operated: grievance politics.

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It’s not an attractive name, but should not be taken as pejorative, but descriptive. Whether grievance politics serves the common good or not depends upon the purposes to which it is put. The Trump phenomenon is the most powerful grievance movement at the moment and is especially creative in finding causes for grievance — immigrants, fake news, real news, trading partners, Ukraine, Greenland and Canada. Whether for good or ill, no one can doubt its political potency.

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Grievance has always been a part of Alberta politics (and not exclusive to Alberta). Any group that considers itself a minority is inclined toward grievance. And Albertans consider ourselves to be a minority in Canada, and not one kindly treated.

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That’s not new. There are cartoons from the 1930s with farmers shaking their first at the skies which provided no rain, inveighing against the Canadian Pacific Railway as the central Canadian cause of all their woes. Long before the National Energy Program of the 1980s, the political culture of the West was shaped in significant part by grievance against the prevailing (central Canadian) consensus, both on the right (Social Credit) and the left (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation).

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When Brian Mulroney defeated the long-governing Liberals in 1984, there was a sense in Alberta that long-standing grievances would be remedied by a new party in charge of the same federal system. In 1986, Manning sensed that those grievances ran deeper than a change in parties could fix. Those parties, after all, depended upon populous central Canada’s seats to win power. If a new party did not solve the old grievances, perhaps it was an entirely new arrangement that was needed, an arrangement that found room for a West that wanted in.