EDMONTON — Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Calgary Liberal MP Corey Hogan joined forces Monday to make the case for Alberta to remain in Canada, arguing this is an opportunity to address longstanding grievances, not run away. "This is not new in terms of Western alienation," said Hogan during a fireside chat between him and Kenney hosted by Build Canada. "This province was founded in a smoke of Western alienation. This didn't start with pipelines or carbon taxes or equalization payments.""Even this goes back a long way, where, fundamentally, there was a feeling in this province, and if you grew up here, you know it. You know it because it manifests in 100 small ways and 100 takeaways every day that the East sometimes feels like it's at best government with indifference to Alberta.".Kenney and Hogan said Albertans have legitimate and justified frustrations, but pointed to examples, such as Premier Peter Lougheed fighting to get provincial jurisdiction of natural resources as demonstrations of how those grievances should be combated. "We are the best educated, most entrepreneurial province in this country," said Kenney. "We are the most Canadian province because of the millions of people we've welcomed from across the country. We are the most innovative province and the most prosperous province.""I think our vocation as a province is to lead and not leave." .The Alberta independence movement dates back decades, and support for independence in 1980 sat around 20%. Support for Alberta independence in 2026 typically polls around 27%, which is only a 7-percentage-point increase. Hogan said the difference is that the 27% have become louder, the UCP government have partially enabled them, and disinformation has amplified the movement's message. Kenney believes Alberta is one key moment, such as a failure to reach an MOU and oil companies deciding to leave Alberta, away from seeing independence support boom to 40%. "You remember, by the way, black swan events, do you remember in the lead up to the 1995 referendum in Quebec, a bunch of people in a town in Eastern Ontario, walking over a Quebec flag," Kenney asked moderator Jen Gerson. "It was the number one story on Quebec media for a week, on the front page of every newspaper. It inflamed passions in Quebec. We are one incident like that away from this turning into a kind of dynamic Alberta patriotic mode as well." .Some Albertans view an independence vote as an opportunity to make a statement towards Ottawa following a decade of mistreatment under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the election of another Liberal government in 2025."This is, frankly, the hardest separatist argument I find to rebut," Kenney said. "They say, look, Quebec's held a knife to the throat of the Federation for 60 years, and out of it, they got asymmetric federalism, $13 billion of equalization and minimal interference from Ottawa. Why don't we try that?"A fundamental difference between Quebec's referendum and Alberta's expected one is that Quebecers elected a separatist party that ran on holding a referendum, and Alberta's is being forced by a group of individuals gathering signatures on a page from a fraction of the electorate."This has been a separation by subterfuge, right? Hogan said. "Say what you will about Quebec separatism, but people in Quebec have thought their entire lives about whether they are separatists. They've thought about the pros; they've thought about the cons. Is the misinformation, of course, but it is a robust policy debate.""Here, it feels like you're going to have to make a decision based on the last two Facebook posts you read on your way to the polls, and that's no way to have a conversation about something so interesting.".The volatility of the movement and Alberta's longstanding grievances towards Ottawa are two of the reasons why Kenney and Hogan agree that leaders need to take a stand against the independence, because it is not going to go away. "I know it's easy to look at polls and convince yourself, 'Ah, at worst it's at 70/30,'" Hogan said. "70/30 can become 60/40 in a heartbeat, and 60/40 never goes away." "This is in our politics, our political DNA forever if this gets to 60/40, so if you love this country, it is time to say that loudly and proudly, get out there and have that conversation."
