Another Alberta separatist leader is courting U.S. conservatives in Washington and Mar-a-Lago
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Another Alberta separatist has travelled south of the border to woo American conservatives.
In recent months, members of the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), a separatist organization, have boasted of meetings in Washington, D.C., with senior-level officials from the U.S. administration. Now, the only political party affiliated with Alberta’s independence movement, the Republican Party of Alberta (RPA), is making its own waves south of the border.
RPA leader Cameron Davies said he is visiting U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort this week and that he met last week with undersecretary-level officials at the White House. In between these talks, he met with radio and podcast host Megyn Kelly and political commentator Tucker Carlson in New York, and with potential 2026 congressional candidates in the swing state of Pennsylvania. A member of Davies’ team shared a photo with the National Post of him posing with Kelly and Carlson.
Davies said that while he’s at Trump’s property in Palm Beach this week, he plans to share the same message he has with the others — that an “independent Alberta Republic is beneficial not only to Albertans, but also to the United States of America as a key ally and partner, both economically and for North American security.”
Davies would not divulge whether he had a meeting scheduled with Trump — and it’s unclear whether the president will even be in Florida during his stay. But, “if the opportunity arises,” he said, “I will have a productive conversation.”
Unlike the APP, an educational organization, Davies represents a political party, so these meetings could raise questions about transparency and foreign interference. Is he simply raising the RPA’s profile, or does he risk causing a diplomatic incident?
Chasing a referendum
In August, when Davies was asked about the APP’s recent chats with officials in Washington, he said it would be “improper” for him to have such contact with the White House until after an independence vote. So what’s changed?
“It’s becoming more and more clear that the current Alberta government has no intention of holding a referendum,” he said. “So, unfortunately, I think these are conversations that need to be had as an effort to increase the pressure on the existing United Conservative Party (UCP) to listen to the will of the people.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s office points to the legal process — a citizen-initiated law for putting forward referendums. “If there is support for independence,” Sam Blackett, Smith’s press secretary, wrote by email, “that process is the proper avenue for citizens to bring it forward for all Albertans to have a say on.”
Case in point, the King’s Bench of Alberta begins its constitutional review this month of the APP’s proposed referendum question: “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada?” The court must decide whether this violates the constitution or treaty rights, and if it passes, the APP can begin collecting signatures for a possible referendum.
Davies does not believe the court will approve the question. The UCP legislation, he said, has clauses that serve as a “poison pill on the referendum.”
The case is interesting because it raises constitutional questions about the impact of an independence referendum on Indigenous nations and their territories within Alberta, particularly whether such a vote would undermine treaty rights, according to Adrienne Davidson, assistant professor of political science at McMaster University.
Davidson also noted that a counter-referendum proposed by the Forever Canadian movement has drawn enough signatures and, to her mind, is more likely to be put to voters before an independence vote.
Thomas Lukaszuk, head of the Alberta Forever Canadian campaign, would prefer that neither his proposal to affirm Alberta’s place within Canada nor the APP’s independence question move to a referendum.
A “more wise pathway,” he said, is for Smith to pose his question to the Alberta legislature: “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?”
“If they vote in favour of my question, which I know they undoubtedly would,” said Lukaszuk, “then this matter is resolved.”
While Davies believes the APP’s constitutionality question will be shot down by the court this month, Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security, a project of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, believes the APP’s question is “pretty straightforward.”
“I don’t think there’ll be much to question about that, so I don’t really have any concerns about the outcome. I think it’s going through the right process,” she added.
But if the UCP refuses to hold an independence referendum, as Davies anticipates, he said he wants voters to know they have a clear choice in the next election: “a political party that is actively seeking independence and planning for (it) by having conversations with our partners and potential future allies about what that would look like.”
That’s why he’s making the rounds with American conservatives.
Blackett notes that Premier Smith’s office is “not affiliated with (Davies) nor is he an elected member of Alberta’s legislature.”
Risky business?
A dual American and Canadian citizen and former U.S. Marine, Davies said he has colleagues and contacts within the Trump administration and that he met with those individuals last week at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
“We had several productive conversations around … Alberta independence and what an Alberta Republic would look like,” he said, noting that he met with folks from the Department of the Interior, Department of State, and the Department of War. They also discussed “what a strong partnership with an Alberta Republic might look like as an energy superpower with shared values and an economic zone,” he said.
The “very positive conversations” focused on national security, trade — including having a no-tariff partnership with the U.S. — and on freedom of movement between an independent Alberta and the U.S., similar to the European Union.
Davidson said Davies’s efforts might “reanimate the conversation” around independence in Alberta and galvanize the movement’s supporters, but she doubts that it will help expand support for separatism. She also noted that the moves could be dangerous.
“I think it also poses some potential risks to groups like the Alberta Republican Party,” she said, “particularly if they’re attempting to solicit what is essentially external foreign influence on an internal policy issue.”
“There are still some pretty stable constitutional perceptions of how trade gets organized and … who actually gets to say how people move between borders,” Davidson warned.
Tronnes is also concerned about the risks involved. She pointed first to the recent scandal involving Tucker Carlson’s interview with white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, which has divided U.S. Republicans and even caused internal tensions at the Washington-based conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation.
“Meeting with Tucker Carlson is not the flex that Cameron Davies might think it is,” she said.
“I would think that this might significantly backfire on the Alberta independence movement.”
Carlson’s latest scandal aside, Tronnes also thinks it’s risky to seek American influence in Alberta’s affairs.
“Just as Donald Trump did not like Doug Ford’s attempt to influence American politics with the ad, I don’t think Albertans would welcome the opportunity for Americans to influence our own internal politics up in Alberta,” she said.
Davies is clear that no money has exchanged hands and that discussions around U.S. financial support for Alberta’s independence would be premature at this point.
“This is the 10,000-foot view — looking at economic security, North American security concerns that a Republic of Alberta could be beneficial in solving,” he said, “and what those economic partnerships could look like in the future.”
Transparency is key, according to Tronnes, but even if Davies’s goal is just to win verbal support for Alberta independence from American conservatives, that’s “kind of misjudging the situation,” she said.
The RPA may think this is politically helpful to them, but Tronnes warned that this is likely “going to backfire in a big way.”
“Albertans are not looking to Donald Trump as a liberator,” she said. “They do not feel like right now is the best time to be going down to Mar-a-Lago, even for their own premier, much less someone who has not been elected to speak for Albertans.”
National Post
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.