The Decibel - Voices from inside Alberta’s separatist movement

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Canvassers are currently collecting signatures for a petition in Alberta that could trigger a referendum on whether Albertans want to remain a part of Canada. The volunteers are with a group called Stay Free Alberta, whose leaders are Mitch Sylvestre and Jeffrey Rath.Matthew Scace is a staff reporter for The Globe and Mail based in Calgary. He has been reporting on the separatist movement in Alberta and shares interviews he conducted with the leaders, and some supporters, on how they feel about recent U.S. comments about their movement and why they’ve given up on Canada.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is the stay-free Alberta event. You're listening to the start of a rally in Eckville, Alberta, a few hours north of Calgary. The question is Mitch Sylvester. He is a private citizen. And his question was approved. The question is, do you agree that the province of Alberta that seems to be a part of Canada and becomes an independent state? The organizers are trying to get people to get people to...

to sign a petition to trigger a referendum in the province. A referendum to test to see if Albertans want to leave Canada. These rallies have been happening all across the province for months now. Hundreds of them. In big cities like Calgary and smaller towns like Echville. It's a town of about 1,100 people. There are about 350 seats and a lot of people in the back of their room standing as well. people bent over tables signing the petition to separate.

Matthew Skace is a staff reporter at the Globe based in Calgary. He's been attending events and rallies as part of his efforts to explore the Alberta separatist movement. He also spoke with some of the leaders of the Stay Free Alberta campaign, including Jeffrey Rath. Right? So what happens, Carney comes to Ottawa this year and after being threatened by Daniel Smith, oh, well, if you don't do something about this, there's going to be a national unity crisis.

Well, guess what? This is what a national unity crisis looks like. After Jeff Raff's speech, Mitch Sylvester takes the stage. He started the petition, calling for a referendum. We have nothing to lose here. And I'm going to tell you why, as funny as this sounds, they'll take us back. Absolutely nothing to lose. Not a single fit.

Today on the show, Matt is going to take a. us inside the separatist movement to hear from the leaders and supporters who are pushing for Alberta independence. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Matt, welcome to the Decibel. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Cheryl. So off the top, we heard some sound from the rally you went to in Eckville. Was that rally a fair presentation of what these events are like? Like, can you quickly tell me about the others you attended? The first one I went to was on a Tuesday night in Dinalda, Alberta, which is a town of 216 people. And that one was much smaller than an Eckville.

It was people were coming in and out. It felt more like a community hall. We had little snack set up with tea. It was about 20 to 25 people. So it was a little bit smaller. It's more of a conversation. They have a sort of a roster of speakers that are going to these events right now. The one that was there that night is named Chris Scott.

and he is a cafe owner from Muir, Alberta, who was acquitted of charges relating to COVID lockdowns and public health restrictions back in 2023. He basically went up there and said, ask me your best question about separation or questions people are asking you when you're canvassing right now. What else? What else do you ask? What other opposition to Alberta independence do here? I talked to somebody today, wanted to know when we succeed. That's right, when. Who's going to be the guys that are going to be doing the negotiating? How are we going to get through the two years? And who's going to, how's that going to work?

How do we set up the new level of government? Okay. How does that happen? So here's the timeline. Under the, through the clear, the referendum, a successful referendum with a clear question. In Eckville, it was more representative of the type of events that Jeff and Mitch are running, which are rally type events where you have at least 300 people in seats. more people in the back signing petitions coming in and out. If they want to stay, they can.

If they don't, then they go home. They've signed the petition. They call it a day. And just last week, I was in Calgary for an event that had more than 4,500 people at the Big Four Roadhouse and Stampede Grounds. This is an event set up by a group called Stay Free Alberta. Can you tell me about this group? It is effectively a new version of the Alberta Prosperity Project, which has existed for several years now. And that began as a group that was pushing for a provincial control of a pension plan and leaving the Canadian pension plan. It's now evolved into a pro-independence group. But because of what I understand are sort of tricky elections laws, they took the leadership

of that group and created State Free Alberta to be the official campaigner of the event to basically pursue the 178,000 signatures they need and to do it without securing election laws. Yeah, and the 178,000 signatures you mentioned there, that's the amount of signatures this movement needs to get to this referendum vote. So I want to get to know the leaders of this movement. movement a bit more. You've mentioned Mitch and Jeff. Let's start with Mitch Sylvester. Who is he? Mitch Sylvester is a sports store in order from Bonneville, Alberta. He is also a constituency president for the United Conservative Party, which is led by Daniel Smith, Premier. He was one of the

top fundraisers for the party in 2025. He was at the UCPAGM. And he has described to me as his evolution of politics starting around the COVID pandemic. He said he was totally uninterested in politics before then. He got involved with Take Back Alberta initially, which was run by David Parker, which my colleague Kerry Tate reported on back in 2023. And then he slowly became involved in the Prosperity Project. And about a year and a bit ago, he was asked to become the CEO of that group. And so he's been giving these presentations that we've heard before for about the past year. And now those are featuring at the separation events in Beckville in Calgary and other places across the province. Tell me about his style.

Like, how does he present to the people at these rallies? His style is very serious. He has a slideshow and it has a list of screenshots of tweets, of quotes, of headlines from supportive news outlets that try to hammer home the point that not only is the federal government acting against the will of Albertans, it actually actively hates Albertans. They're lying to you. They don't respect you and they're stealing from you. And we already showed that. Soles, do they like you? They hear you. They absolutely hate you. They're showing you they hate you by what they're doing. So here we are sitting in a country that is actually gone to the level where it's actually working against the citizens and working against the people.

And that's why we travel to Alberta, follow Alberta to talk to you. And he wants the audience to feel, go home with that feeling, that Alberta is being worked against actively by the federal government. It's also being controlled by several forces such as China. And he's been saying this before Canada struck a deal with China just several weeks ago. This has been a theme through his presentations well before that. And so this is the feeling that he has is that there's a fight happening. And he said, they're going to try to intimidate you and they're going to try to make you scared that this is this is a bad idea and that this shouldn't happen. But we need to fight anyway.

We're going to talk more about the supporters in a minute. But I just want to sense from you when he gives the speech, is the audience receptive? Like, what is the reaction from the audience? Yeah, the audience is very quiet through the speech. He spoke in Eckville for about an hour. Okay. So he's up there for quite a long time. And there are applause lines.

There's no pushback, obviously. But they are quiet for most of it. And by the end, he brings up a standing ovation. Okay, so that's Mitch. Let's talk about Jeff Rath. Who is he? Jeff Rath is a lawyer. He's obviously from Alberta.

He doesn't have the same quite through line that Mitch does with the various groups in Alberta. But he has been a general counsel for the Prosperity Project and now is general counsel for the state free Alberta. He has a much different style than Mitch. It's a less polished type of presentation. He doesn't have slides. He doesn't have cue cards in front of him. He's really just rambling on many of the points that he will tell you in interviews as well. He mentions China, just like Mitch does.

And Alberta is going to continue to stay shut in, right, until China's national oil company, which is now busy drilling in northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, gets enough oil to fill a pipeline. And that is the only time that Alberta will see a pipeline going through. to the West Coast, right? As a people, is this the way that we want to be governed? No. Right?

So that's why all of us are doing what we're doing. The two of them have effectively made themselves the leaders of the movement. And I ask them that directly, do you believe you're the leaders? Because there's no clear structure yet. They're not elected. They are two people who effectively have taken up this role organically. And they said, yeah, we're leaders. We'd call ourselves that.

Okay. I know you also spoke to some supporters. at these events. First, can you give me a sense of who is coming out to these events? Like, what are the demographics? The rural events I went to, they are rural crowds, pretty homogenous group, much older groups, I would say. They're white. They are very politically engaged folks who want to be a part of a movement, I would say. There seems to be continuity with the past five to six years of the Freedom Convoy. A lot of people sort of refer to that point as being one of their first political moments where they found a group of like-minded people.

A lot of people have told me that they came to independence organically about last year when people started talking about it because it sort of became an issue with a combination of the 51st state remarks by Donald Trump and the liberals re-election after the conservatives were expected to win that election just months before Mr. Carney entered the race. And it sort of coalesced into this moment where this became the defining movement for a of those folks. Okay. So that's kind of gives us a sense of like a broad idea of who the people are that are going to these events. You've met some of the supporters as well and talked to some of them. Tell me about someone you met. Yeah. So I talked to a woman named Sandra Shepholt. She's a

canvasser. Canvassers are there to collect signatures over the course of the campaign. I found her really interesting because she reminded me of somebody who could be anybody's aunt. She was really happy to be there. She was like kind. She was referring to me directly as a young person. Her real, the underlying point of her frustration and wanting to separate was that her kids and her grandkids can't afford a home. And she expected that to be sort of the baseline agreement when she was growing up in Canada. It's ridiculous. How do you guys do it? Like, I don't know how you guys do it. Seriously, I remember when I had kids and like my husband made 40 grand a year. We bought a house. We had a car. You know what I mean? Like, could you do that?

No. It's so, it's for you. Yeah, I guess the question I have is, do you feel confident that this is the answer to that? Yeah, I do. Do you know why? Because, like, I think if Alberta only had Alberta as the overhead, how much more freedom would we have? How much more money would we have? Really an economic argument for her.

Her one line that stuck out to me was that if Alberta was being asked to join Canada right now, would a degree to join under the current conditions that it's under? And she said, that's what got me. That's what, that's what fully brought me over to independence. That was, that was her argument. It was purely economic. And that's not, it wasn't reflected by everybody I've talked to. But that was an interesting conversation.

Okay, really interesting. Yeah. I mean, what you're telling me, and from Sandra's story and from the story about the crowd, it seems like it's a very engaged group of people. But do we have any numbers on how many people support the stay free Alberta campaign? In mid-March, Premier Daniel Smith threatened a national union. crisis if Mark Carney didn't meet her government's demands to strip a lot of energy and environmental regulations. And that threat of national unity was, it was a flashpoint in the year. At around that

point, it was estimated around 20, 30 percent of Albertans would support independence. That number is generally held for the past 12 months. It hasn't moved anywhere significantly above 30 percent. And as Premier Daniel Smith said last week, that's about a million Albertans. And that's not nothing. especially if you need 178,000 signatures for the referendum. What about the other side, though? Do we have any numbers to get a sense of how many Albertans are against separating? Last year, there was a petition, also citizen initiated by a former deputy premier. His name is Thomas Lukazek, and he called it the Forever Canadian petition.

And he asked people to sign a petition that asked it, do you agree that Alberta should remain a part of Canada? and he collected, I believe it was well over 438,000 signatures. Nobody expected him to get that many. And he was dealing with the previous threshold that was much higher than the 178,000 that the separatists have to deal with right now, which was lowered by Premier Smith's government after Election Day. And it was essentially viewed as a rebuke to the separatist movement. The difference between that petition is that now a committee in the Alberta legislature has to

decide whether to put that to a vote in the legislature where the local MLAs will vote on whether they agree Alberta should remain in Canada or whether we should go to a referendum on that issue. So if they send this to a referendum with the citizens of Alberta, it will either be the only independence question or it will be one of two if the separatists are successful in getting their signatures, which is a whole scenario that we haven't really, I don't think, grappled with yet. We'll be right back. Okay, I want to shift for a moment to talk about some news that happened last week.

So on January 29th, the U.S. government confirmed that officials had had two meetings with some of the leaders of the Alberta separatist movement, including with Jeff Rath. What do we know about those meetings? This has been something Jeff and others have been talking about for a long time. For people who have been covering the separatist movement, that wasn't news, but we hadn't gotten confirmation from the U.S. that these meetings had happened. And the U.S. confirmed the financial times and then later to us, the globe, that these meetings, had happened. They didn't say much else about that. They have not said who they've met with. What they've discussed at those meetings is not exactly clear we've gotten the separatist side from Mitch and Jeff. They've said that they have received a commitment from the U.S. that they would not seek for Alberta to become the 51st state.

All of our discussions with the State Department are in and around the reality that the Americans do not need, the U.S. the Americans don't want Alberta as a state. So we've had those discussions with the U.S. They recognize that there's an impossibility of Alberta becoming a state because the Democrats would insist on Puerto Rico getting statehood to balance off Alberta in the same way that Hawaii was brought in at the same time as Alaska to balance off, you know, a conservative Alaska. They have said that U.S. would grant Alberta independence. They are asking or they're hoping to secure a.

$500 billion line of credit for a future independent country. $500 billion. $500 billion. Yeah. And the way they describe this, too, is that this is because they're not elected officials and their private citizens, these are meetings that are purely exploratory and meant to basically set up a roadmap for the future up bird a government to help them on the path to setting up a functioning country.

They recognize that they're not elected, but they're doing these anyway. But that is not obviously stopped criticism. Yes, loss of criticism. And let's talk about some of that criticism. So it garnered a range of reactions from Canadian politicians, from Prime Minister Mark Carney, saying he is trusting that the U.S. is respecting our sovereignty. I'm always clear my conversation with President Trump to that effect and then move on to what we can do together. And then to BC Premier David Eby saying that what those separatist leaders did was treason. I read an article last night in the Financial Times about a great. group of people from Alberta, I won't describe them as Albertans, who went to the White House,

seeking the assistance of the United States to break up our country. Now I understand the desire to hold a referendum, to talk about the issues you want to talk about in Canada. We've got free speech, that's important. But to go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there's an old-fashioned word for that. And that word is treason. Okay, so strong words there from David Eby. Matt, what about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith? What has she said about these meetings? She has refused to really comment on them directly. When she was asked about this beside the Prime Minister and David Eby last week, she said...

I've always been clear that me and our United Conservative Caucus are supportive of a strong and sovereign Alberta within a United Canada. That is one of the bills that we passed when I first came in. But I think we also have to be realistic that 10 years under Justin Trudeau's government, our province was relentlessly attacked. Our economy was relentlessly attacked not only for our economy, but our provincial rights and also our personal freedoms and our way of life. And so when you look at the polls, they suggest as many as 30 percent of Albertans have lost hope.

That's about a million people. And I'm not going to demonize or marginalize a million of my fellow citizens. when they've got legitimate grievances. What we need to do is we need to give Albertons hope. It is a complicated tightrope she's trying to walk right now. She won't denounce the movement, but she is also working with the Prime Minister, obviously with the MOU that she announced in November,

to try to reset the relationship with Ottawa and prove to a majority of Albertans that it's worth staying in Canada. Okay. So the other development that happened at the end of January was that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent talked about the Alberta separatist movement in an interview. Alberta is a wealth of natural resources, but they won't let them build a pipeline to the Pacific. I think we should let them come down into the U.S.

And Alberta is a natural partner for the U.S. They have great resources. The Alberans are very independent people. rumored that they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not. Sounds like you may know something up there. What people are saying? People are talking. People are talking.

People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got. So before we move on, we should mention that Canada has built a pipeline to the Pacific. That's the Trans Mountain Pipeline. How did the leaders of the stay-free Alberta movement interpret these comments from Scott Bessent. They welcomed it. They celebrated it. They interpreted his comments as Alberta as an energy partner for the U.S., not as a state. I remember when I talked to Jeff briefly after that, and he said, no, this is a great. We have confirmation from the U.S. that they're willing to work with

Alberta, and just for their proves that we have a better partner in the U.S. than we do in the federal government. And just to be clear, I don't think I've mentioned this. The MOU to Mr. Rath is a dead letter. He's not interested in it. He makes the point. that includes significantly increased industrial carbon tax, even though it does strip many of the regulations that Ms. Smith had sought to strip for years from the federal government. Yeah, and just to say this MOU, this memorandum of understanding between the Alberta government and federal government, this sets out a framework for a new pipeline, right? So what you're saying is this did not address any of the concerns from Jeff or from Mitch.

No, no, they don't really see a way forward for Alberta and Canada anymore. I mean, the list of frustrations and grievances are so entangled to each other. What they want is a tax-free nation that has very little government involvement. And there's no saving it. There's no conservative government that will save it. And a lot of the supporters have talked to as well have said that they don't, even if there was a conservative government elected, they don't think that they could fix the problems that ALE Alberta.

They would just much rather prefer to no longer be a part of Confederation. So what you're saying is that there's nothing that could restore their faith in Canada? For this contingent of the movement, and when I say 20 to 30 percent of Albertans feel this way, I wouldn't suggest that 30 percent of Albertans feel that the country is far beyond saving. Because what I saw with people I spoke with at these events, they have different views of what this movement may lead to or what it could lead to. There are folks who truly believe that independence is the only thing that they want out of this. But there are other folks who think that this is going to be a useful chip to get concessions out of Ottawa. So one of the supporters I talked to about this, the name is Spencer Burton, and he viewed the separation petition as a potential bargaining chip with Ottawa.

Yeah, I think it's just kind of been something that has gained a little bit more steam. and I think it's good to just see whether it ends up getting the end result or not, it kind of shows that change needs to happen. And I think that's a big proponent for us is that change needs to happen, whether that change ends up being us leaving Canada and us being our own country or working with Ottawa better. I think that's just the important side of things is knowing that people have kind of, we've reached our tipping point and we're not going to stand for this anymore.

and I think that's the most encouraging thing for me. Many people I've asked who I say, have you thought about the consequences of secession and what happens the day after and the week and the years after secession? A lot of them say I haven't really thought about it and I'm leading the leaders to handle that or I trust that it may get us a better deal.

It's really all over. The range of opinion is striking. On that point of getting a better deal or negotiating with Ottawa, are the separatists, spoke to happy with how Danielle Smith has been working with Ottawa because there is this evolving relationship between Mark Carney and Danielle Smith right now. So are they, are they happy with how that's going? Mr. Rath and Mr. Sylvester are not. They maintain the position that they,

the fact that she's even in negotiations is just not where Alberta needs to be headed. The way they imagine Alberta working as an independent country is very much more adversarial to Canada. one of the lines Mr. Rath has said over and over again at these events is, well, we're going to have trucks that want to get through Alberta from BC to Ontario. And we might be inspecting them for rats because Alberta is a rat-free province. And so we need that these trucks will be held up unless they meet Alberta's demands. So because Alberta is a rat-free jurisdiction, we're going to stop every train and every truck at the Alberta hoarder and inspect them for rats might take two or three these.

And well, we're inspecting your trucks and trains for Las in Vancouver, right? Connectstand. So what we're going to do is we're going to have our customs inspectors on board. They'll value the goods on your trains and your trucks. And then we'll assess a throughput tariff

on all of these goods going to Ontario or would you rather let us have a pipeline? So effectively landlocking BC out of the rest of the country. to end here, Matt, what happens next with this petition? Like, how will we know if there's going to be a referendum? And do you think it's likely?

It's a great question. They have to get 178,000 signatures. That's about 6% of eligible voters. So it's not a lot. They have four months to do it. May 2nd is the deadline. They're confident. They want to get a million signatures.

I go back and forth on this question whether they're going to be able to do it. If it does happen, we're going to do a referendum. Premier Smith said over the weekend that that referendum would happen in the fall of 2026. And then a campaign period would presumably open. And the rest is sort of to come. Who knows what happens after that. We live in interesting times, Matt. We do.

Thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks, Cheryl. Appreciate it. That was Matthew Skase, a staff reporter at the Globe based in Calgary. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Rachel Levy McLaughlin. Our editor is David Crosby.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.