In September, the Alberta Transition Council — a separatist organization led by Freedom Convoy lawyer Keith Wilson — released its 214-page blueprint for an independent Alberta, covering borders, currency, pensions, trade and basic government functions. Unlike the Alberta Prosperity Project’s much-mocked Value of Freedom, The Alberta Transition Plan maps a route to independence rather than just an end state.
Wilson’s apparent aim is to reassure voters who are on the fence that Alberta independence won’t actually change a whole lot in their daily lives. Throughout the text, the plan repeatedly defers the major changes entailed by creating a new country to future negotiations with the Canadian government, First Nations and/or the U.S., whose outcome it emphasizes cannot be predetermined.
Perhaps even more important than what the plan includes is what it omits — namely, ambitions explicitly articulated by separatist movement leaders and existing UCP policies, both of which the Transition Council dismisses as beyond the scope of its proposals.
For each of the past five weeks, I’ve been examining one of the plan’s 28 chapters for the Forward Weekly newsletter. With permission, I’m reprinting each of them below in order of when they first appeared.
Health Care
The council’s starting point is simple: “For most patients, health care is already an Alberta service. A patient should therefore not need a new hospital, doctor or provincial health number simply because Alberta’s constitutional status changes.” The problem with this logic is that the funding is not an Alberta service. If Alberta left Canada, it would need to replace billions in federal health transfers.
This year, Alberta is expected to receive $7 billion through the Canada Health Transfer, covering almost one-fifth of the operational health-care spending in the province’s latest fiscal update. These specific figures go unmentioned in the council’s report, which is equally vague about how to make up for these funds.
It favours a “negotiated bridge” to keep some federal funding flowing temporarily, while warning Alberta must be ready if transfers end. But ready how? The plan does not say.
One possibility is more private coverage of the sort enabled by the UCP government’s Bill 11. No longer required to abide by the Canada Health Act, an independent Alberta could expand the range of procedures eligible for private coverage. That could create more opportunities for the wealthy and well-connected to jump the queue while the rest of us wait in increasingly overcrowded public hospitals.
Indigenous Rights
The Transition Plan promises that Indigenous Peoples’ rights would not change in an independent Alberta. The council acknowledges the difficulty of making good on this promise: First Nations’ treaty relationships are with the Crown and cannot simply be transferred from one government to another, meaning an independent Alberta would need new agreements with each of the province’s 48 First Nations.
Whatever each First Nation decides, creating a new international border through treaty lands would affect First Nations’ ability to exercise their Treaty rights, including hunting, trapping, fishing, and conducting ceremonies. “First Nations’ mobility therefore requires special treatment,” the council notes. It proposes negotiating an “Indigenous Mobility Protocol” regarding First Nations people’s ability to visit, conduct traditional practices, access reserves or settlements and have their ID documents recognized on both sides of the new border.
The plan cites the 1794 Jay Treaty as a precedent for Indigenous mobility, even though Canadian courts have held that it is not in force in Canada and the federal government is still working toward a permanent solution to Indigenous cross-border mobility. The existing Canada–U.S. border has divided First Nations and disrupted treaty rights and cultural practices for generations, suggesting that prolonged negotiations over a new Alberta border would leave Indigenous communities bearing the consequences in the meantime.
The Transition Plan makes a very big assumption: First Nations will be cooperative negotiating partners with an independent Alberta. But any attempt at secession would have to address their rights, interests and territorial claims. With First Nations leaders unanimously opposed to it, First Nations have much more leverage than separatists seem to realize.
Citizenship and Immigration
A key assumption of the transition plan is that citizens of a newly independent Alberta would retain their Canadian citizenship and, as such, protections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The council notes that under the federal Citizenship Act, no provision exists that would remove Canadian citizenship rights from residents of a province that separates. But given that no province has ever successfully seceded from Confederation, the council acknowledges that Canadian citizenship could become a bargaining chip in negotiations with Canada.
Retaining Canadian citizenship is one question, but the separatist movement is much more focused on questions of who belongs in an independent Alberta. As it stands, Alberta influences Canadian immigration primarily by nominating economic migrants for permanent residency through the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program. (Alberta’s government, of course, wants to expand its immigration authority through five immigration referendum questions on the Oct. 19 ballot.)
For permanent residents and people on work or study permits, the question is whether an independent Alberta could keep their immigration status intact while it assumes full control over citizenship, passports, visas and permits, refugee adjudication and border security. Given the scale of this undertaking, the Transition Council proposes the new country temporarily recognize existing Canadian immigration statuses and adopt Canadian visa and permit categories. “No one should lose their lawful status simply because Alberta’s constitutional status has changed,” the plan reads.
While the council notes that the “simplest transition approach would avoid requiring existing Alberta residents to go through a citizenship-application process,” day one legislation would outline “which residents automatically acquire Alberta citizenship.” The Transition Council is mum on what would happen to those who don’t acquire Alberta citizenship or have their Canadian permits expire during the transition period. Whether this process would at some point result in the mass deportations outlined in the Alberta Prosperity Project’s Value of Freedom plan is left to the reader’s imagination.
Natural Resources
One of the major motivations behind Alberta separatism is the perception that the Canadian federal government has placed onerous restrictions on Alberta’s ability to export oil and gas to international markets. This narrative persists even though oil and gas production levels have broken new records every year from 2021 to 2025.
Under the federalist status quo, provinces maintain control of natural resource production and regulation. That control is exercised in Alberta through bodies such as the Alberta Energy Regulator, the Alberta Utilities Commission and the Alberta Electric Systems Operator. Federal jurisdiction comes into the equation when resources or electricity are transported across provincial and international borders or resource extraction occurs on federal Crown land.
The Alberta Transition Council claims that ensuring the continued flow of Alberta energy across international borders while maintaining the confidence of outside investors would be the primary challenge of an independent Alberta’s energy policy. Alberta would have to enter a transition agreement with the Canadian government to determine who would exercise jurisdiction over oil and gas facilities and pipelines that operate across provincial and international lines.
The U.S. is by far the largest export destination for Alberta oil and gas. The Transition Council recommends establishing agreements regarding export permits and customs duties with the U.S. prior to independence, “while also preserving routes through Canada and other markets.” This prioritization of market access to the U.S. might explain why separatist leaders have already been meeting with U.S. officials.
International Relations
The Transition Council notes that, as a Canadian province, Alberta already has a series of international trade relationships. What it lacks is “legal personality and institutional machinery,” a.k.a. everything that turns those contacts into diplomacy: international recognition, the authority to enter treaties, accepted travel documents and the ability to establish consulates and assist citizens abroad.
The diplomacy plan for an independent Alberta starts reasonably enough, beginning with a “lean” foreign affairs ministry initially focused on North America, establishing trade corridors and seeking recognition to expand its partnerships.
Identifying international allies, however, is a political calculation that is beyond the scope of the plan, though Jeff Rath, cofounder of the Alberta Prosperity Project, identified “like-minded” governments in Argentina, Hungary and Israel as countries he believes would recognize an independent Alberta. While his casual comments shouldn’t be taken as anything more than a political mood board, his choices reveal the movement’s affinity for right-wing populism — and, in the case of Israel, violent settler colonialism.
The Alberta Transition Plan, at least, acknowledges that Alberta’s “most consequential bilateral relationship” would be with the country it had just left, meaning the province’s current Ottawa overlords would remain central to its economic stability, even after separation.
While oil and gas and other extractivst industries may perceive an advantage in Alberta 'going it alone'. any Albertan who has been paying attention to the Trump regime and its MAGA base in the USA should realize: The Fossil Fuel boosters worship big money and rely on the military industrial complex for their dominant position in world affairs.
Alberta might think it has a lot in common with that outfit.......but a few hours researching how their latest war of domination is going....might cause us to reconsider. The role Alberta would play in the implosion of Amerikkkan power around the world wouldn't be that different from what she does now.
Except our universal health care, good schools and a modicum of equality would be the inevitable casualties. Commentators on progressive American sites continually tell me how poor and desperate the people of America have been and are becoming. Anyone who wants to join that graft should have their head's examined.....or, here's a good idea..........go out an buy a Tesla to show your support for tax cuts and the trashing of what's left of our social safety nets.