Some left-wing journalists claim that the Alberta independence movement is actually a foreign-inspired campaign to break up the country. A perfect example of this is an article in the October 2026 issue of Alberta Views magazine entitled The Fifth Column: How MAGA is using Alberta separatism to break Canada apart. In short, foreign interference by Donald Trump and his people is allegedly behind the Alberta independence movement.Among other things, the conspiracy theory propounded in this article implicates Postmedia and its newspapers like the Calgary Herald and the Edmonton Journal, although the author isn’t sure whether “Postmedia is a willing participant or an unwitting structural enabler of the separatist narrative.” Rebel News is also part of the conspiracy. Disappointingly, the Western Standard was left out. No fair!We can shake our heads as leftists grasp at straws to blame Donald Trump for an Alberta independence movement raised from the dead by Justin Trudeau. However, if we look back a few years, we can find actual overt American interference in Canadian politics helping to drive the Alberta independence movement. Here, there is substantive evidence.In 2015, Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister. He soon began to hammer Alberta’s energy industry with legislation like the Impact Assessment Act and the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act. Most Albertans became concerned and even angry about Trudeau’s efforts to kill Alberta’s main industry.As a result, in the next federal election on October 21, 2019, Albertans voted 69% for the Conservatives. Despite that, Justin Trudeau was re-elected, and Albertans were furious. Suddenly, the Wexit movement grew rapidly. As Ted Morton wrote in the Calgary Herald at the time, there was a “tsunami of separatist sentiment that has exploded in Western Canada since Monday’s federal election.”.What does this have to do with American interference? A lot. On October 16, five days before the election, Barack Obama had tweeted that the world needs Justin Trudeau’s progressive leadership, and “I hope our neighbours to the north support him for another term.” In other words, Obama publicly encouraged Canadians to vote for Trudeau. He was using his popularity to sway Canada’s election for the Liberals.Did it work? Yes, according to John Ivison of the National Post, Obama’s endorsement was crucial to Trudeau’s re-election. On November 13, 2019, Ivison wrote a column entitled Barack Obama — the man who won the Canadian federal election.As he tells the story, with ten days to go before the election, the Liberal campaign had stalled. By attacking planned cuts in government spending by the Conservatives, the Liberals began to recover. But, Ivison writes, “the real shift in momentum came the following Wednesday, the 16th, five days before election day, at 1:58 pm, when a tweet from Barack Obama exploded on the election like a grenade.”With glee, the Liberals spent heavily to spread the message of Obama’s endorsement on social media.Ivison quotes one campaign worker as saying the Obama endorsement “recharged the base — those people who had been embarrassed by Trudeau’s behaviour (in the ‘blackface’ scandal). Obama gave everyone the reassurance that Justin was a great guy and not a racist.”.Of course, it would be naïve to attribute an election victory to a single event. Nevertheless, writes Ivison, “Obama’s backing appears pivotal.”What does this all mean? Consider: Justin Trudeau’s 2019 election victory led directly to the resurrection of a mass-based Alberta independence movement. Obama’s endorsement of Trudeau was crucial to the Liberal victory. Thus, Obama’s interference in the 2019 Canadian election was a major boost for the Alberta independence movement.If Andrew Scheer had won the 2019 election, the Alberta independence movement would have been nipped in the bud. His campaign was doing reasonably well with only days before the election. But then, as Ivison puts it, Obama’s endorsement “exploded on the election like a grenade.” Momentum then shifted to Trudeau, who pulled off a win, thus sparking the largest independence movement in Alberta since the early 1980s.Clearly, interference in a Canadian election by a former US president did help to build the Alberta independence movement. But it wasn’t Donald Trump — it was Barack Obama.
