A headline in Friday’s Calgary Herald asks: “Is the UCP still a pro-Canada party?”
That’s one of those questions that, if you have to ask it, you already know the answer. Maybe you don’t want to believe that you know it. But you do. And, yes Alberta, the United Conservative Party is a separatist party.
The rest of the headline, over a political column by Don Braid, a well-known Alberta commentator with good sources in the UCP, continues with a smidgen of additional news: “They might take a vote on it.”
But the plain fact is that if you don’t understand by now that the United Conservative Party led by Danielle Smith is a separatist party, then you haven’t been paying attention.
The UCP strategic brain trust, of course, is counting on it that a lot of Albertans haven’t been paying attention, and they’d like to keep it that way. That’s why they’ll be flooding the zone with a lot of often irrelevant and occasionally upsetting announcements in the weeks and months leading up to the separation referendum that Premier Smith has been working so hard to facilitate. That will serve to keep your mind off what’s really going on.
As I wrote on Dec. 29, 2025, “with a new year almost upon us, everyone paying attention now understands Danielle Smith is a separatist.”
“The compulsion in a long-stable democracy to explain away actions of a popularly elected leader who goes over the edge or ignores the traditional limits of democratic rule is very strong,” I said in that column. “It’s easy and comforting to ignore the evidence of our lyin’ eyes.”
But we do so at our peril.
As if after backing the United Conservative party for years, the Herald felt a little squeamish about Mr. Braid’s news, a subhead over the column provided a little more detail but omitted a key fact found in the column.
“At the top level of the UCP they’re pondering whether to hold a vote on the party turning separatist,” it said. Fair enough. They should.
Readers had to dig to dig a little deeper into the story, though, to discover that while UCP president Rob “No Relation” Smith – in effect the chief executive of the party, not its elected caucus in the Legislature – isn’t talking about holding the vote on declaring the UCP a separatist entity until after the referendum.
Deep in his column, Mr. Braid observes that if there was a pro-separation vote in the dangerous referendum Ms. Smith is determined to see happen this year or next, “and party members subsequently voted for independence, many Albertans would be furious to see a government they elected as federalist suddenly turn separatist.”
But the time party members and all Albertans should be furious is right now!
The UCP certainly didn’t campaign on separation from Canada in 2023, although if we’d really been paying attention to whom was advising the government, we might have had an inkling of what was coming.
But consider what the party is now obviously proposing to do. Their plan is to continue sucking and blowing at the same time.
Among voters who aren’t paying attention they want to pretend to be patriotic Canadians who believe only, as Ms. Smith puts it, in a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.” (Never mind that, as sovereignty is defined by Ms. Smith, Canada could no longer function as a country if she got her way.)
At the same time, the UCP will quietly work to ensure the referendum takes place and do what they can by fair means and foul to ensure it passes. As is by now well known, party members and officials who are also APP separatists are making regular visits to Washington to plot Canada’s destruction with unnamed members of the Trump Administration.
So the UCP are greasing the skids to get Alberta out of Canada – a disaster for Albertans that may not be apparent to some until it’s too late and, one way or another, we are on our way to being integrated into the shitshow down south. We are already being inundated with misinformation and disinformation by separatist groups and their foreign allies.
Meanwhile, CTV reported Friday that 19 UCP MLAs support Alberta separation, based on an “MLA Independence Scorecard” published by the fringy Republican Party of Alberta.
But this isn’t news. The list was posted on the RPA website almost a year ago, and I reported on it in this space on April 25, 2025.
The only difference is that, since then, the RPA has added some names and subtracted one name, and the tally has grown from 11 to 19. One is no longer an MLA.
Good for CTV for trying to find out if the MLAs now named on the list are separation supporters, separation curious, or not actually interested – but where was Alberta’s media last April?
As I suggested last April, constituents of all UCP Caucus members should be asking their MLAs what their position on separation is. Now they should also ask if their MLAs have signed the petition. The same goes for all Conservative Party of Canada MPs. All 38 Alberta NDP MLAs have signed a pledge saying they are opposed to separation from Canada.
Here is the list of the sitting MLAs said to be supporters of Alberta separation on the RPA website last night:
- Eric Bouchard, Calgary Lougheed
- Scott Cyr, Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul
- Devin Dreeshen, Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, minister of transportation
- Shane Getson, Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland, Parliamentary Secretary for economic corridors
- Nate Horner, Drumheller-Stettler, minister of finance
- Grant Hunter, Taber-Warner, minister of environment
- Jennifer Johnson, Lacombe-Ponoka
- Todd Loewen, Central Peace-Notley, minister of forestry
- Martin Long, West Yellowhead, minister of infrastructure
- Ric McIver, Calgary-Hays, Speaker
- Dale Nally, Morinville-St. Albert, Minister of Service Alberta
- Chelsae Petrovic, Livingstone-Macleod
- Angela Pitt, Airdrie-East
- Joseph Schow, Cardston-Siksika, minister of jobs, economy trade and immigration
- RJ Sigurdson, Highwood, minister of agriculture
- Jason Stephan, Red Deer-South
- Justin Wright, Cypress-Medicine Hat, chief government whip
- Tany Yao, Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo
Rajan Sawhney, Calgary-North West was identified as a separatist on the RPA’s list in April and no longer is.
Nathan Cooper, former MLA for Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills and Speaker of the Legislature last April is still on the RPA list. However, he resigned as an MLA in May and now serves as the Alberta Trade Representative in Washington, D.C., accredited as a Canadian diplomat. I highly doubt he is a separatist sympathizer, but given his sensitive position and location, he needs to make this clear.
CTV’s reporter said she tried to contact all the names of the RPA list and 18 of the 19 did not return her calls. Joseph Schow – MLA for Cardston-Siksika and minister of jobs, economy trade and immigration – told Alesia Fieldberg he hasn’t signed the petition. Whether or not he supports separation was not completely clear from the quote the reporter provided.
Mr. Wright told City News that, like Ms. Smith, he supports a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada. Mr. Getson “declined to clarify his stance, but instead fired back at the Republicans.”
Since the RPA is clearly willing to remove the name of an MLA who says they were misrepresented – viz., Ms. Sawnhey – presumably any MLA posted on the list in April last year must have no problem being characterized as a separatist.