Alberta’s Breaking Point: Western Separatism and the Crisis of Canadian Capitalism

By Prince Kapone, Weaponized Information – April 23, 2025

The growing buzz around Western Canadian separatism isn’t just some prairie pipe dream—it’s the pressure valve of a system cracking under its own contradictions. Alberta and Saskatchewan, long treated like gas stations for Bay Street bankers, are once again rumbling with talk of breaking away. But beneath the headlines lies a deeper reality: the settler capitalist project in Canada is fracturing under the weight of its own uneven development, elite mismanagement, and the imperialist integration into the U.S. war economy.

Western alienation isn’t new. It’s been smoldering since Confederation. But what’s different now is the rawness of the crisis. Alberta sends billions in oil revenue to Ottawa and gets back carbon taxes, pipeline blockades, and a housing market strangled by speculation. Working-class folks in Calgary and Edmonton aren’t just mad at neoliberalism—they’re mad at the system. But without a revolutionary alternative, that anger is being hijacked by right-wing formations like the Wildrose Independence Party and the Buffalo Party, both of which push a settler-colonial fantasy of “freedom” while staying silent on Indigenous land theft, labor exploitation, and racial capitalism.

This isn’t about a real path to liberation—it’s about shifting the terms of exploitation from one elite to another. Separatist rhetoric in Alberta often boils down to: “Let us drill without interference.” But whether it’s Ottawa or Calgary calling the shots, the land remains stolen, the oil industry remains toxic, and the working class remains disposable.

Meanwhile, the liberal establishment mocks the movement as fringe and backwards. B.C. Premier David Eby called separatism a “tired trope.” But dismissing it won’t make it disappear. In fact, the dismissals only feed the fire. Alienation without representation breeds rupture. And if the left doesn’t provide a materialist, anti-colonial vision for the region, the far right will keep filling the void with flag-waving corporate populism.

We must not confuse the crisis of federalism with a call for real decolonization. Real self-determination begins with the restoration of Indigenous sovereignty, climate justice, and the dismantling of the extractivist economy—not with new flags for oil barons. Alberta doesn’t need independence. It needs revolution—from the bottom up.

Weaponized Information stands with the working class and oppressed nations in every province—not for nationalist illusions, but for a new society built on solidarity, land back, and justice.