The Night the Alberta Separatists Lost

The first big night for Canada’s newest separatist party unfolded last week at a bar in Olds, Alberta, a town of about 9,000 people, just off the main highway in Treaty 7 territory.

The community, about an hour north of Calgary, is known for its agricultural science college, many oil and gas workers, and a particularly solid base of southern Alberta conservatism. This is where, in the June 23rd by-election, the Republican Party of Alberta hoped to establish its beachhead in the province, with leader Cameron Davies seeking a seat in the Alberta legislature; if all went well, the event at Our Flames Restaurant & Lounge would be a victory party.

Before the close of polls, the room was almost empty, with most of the volunteers still out campaigning. A few people who appeared to be regulars had pints at the bar. Most weren’t there for the event, though they seemed curious and supportive of the idea of Alberta independence.

“I want to have a better life and get out of this situation with the government in Ottawa,” said Paul, who works in oil and gas.

“I want to have more rights, more freedom. In the States, they have the First Amendment, the Second Amendment.”

Another patron blamed First Nations for a lack of progress on pipelines.

Attitudes like these wouldn’t be out of place in the separatist movement, which is also generally anti-environmentalism, anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ2SA+, and invested in a culture war around perceived threats to free speech.

Above all, though, the main thrust of the Alberta sovereignty movement is fighting against what it sees as attempts by Ottawa to sabotage Alberta oil (notwithstanding record production projected for 2025). The financial backers of various independence groups frequently include wealthy business owners and oil executives.

To varying degrees, all of this is arguably true for Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party as well.

And so for Premier Danielle Smith, appeasing her increasingly separatism-inclined far-right base has become a major challenge, just as it was for her predecessor, Jason Kenney, whose COVID-19 policies and referendum on equalization inflamed a significant movement that eventually brought him down.

That movement grew during the pandemic as a collaborative effort between Christian nationalists, longtime “Wexit” separatists and disgruntled rural Albertans under the banners of various organizations, notably Take Back Alberta. Davies, who now heads the Republican Party, was one of its lead organizers.

Still, he was a surprising figure to become the face of the organized separatist movement in Alberta. A highly experienced organizer, Davies has campaigned in some capacity on behalf of multiple leaders of Alberta’s mainstream conservative parties. These included Wildrose leader Brian Jean, for whom he was described as director of “poli-ops”; Smith, through his leadership role in the Take Back Alberta group that brought her to power; and allegedly Kenney, for his role in the “kamikaze” scandal.

He turned on them all. But it was the last experience that left him bruised.

The “kamikaze” scandal involved funneling contributions to the campaign of a UCP leadership candidate, Jeff Callaway, who wasn’t running to win but rather to pave the way for Kenney by attacking his nearest competitor, Brian Jean.

The fallout resulted in Davies being personally hit with over $25,000 in fines by Elections Alberta in 2019 for his role as co-campaign manager for Callaway.

In 2022, Davies told a podcast that the ordeal, which was first reported by PressProgress, left him feeling betrayed by Kenney’s UCP, angry and politically isolated in his organizing career.

Staff and volunteers for the Cameron Davies campaign. (Photo by Stephen Magusiak / PressProgress)

But speaking to PressProgress on by-election night, he rejected the notion that this separatist project was personal.

“There’s no personal grievance at play here. This is not the Cam Davies project,” he said.

“I don’t make a very good doormat, and my experience so far is that the political establishment just serves their own interests and they like to use people along the way. Albertans rejected that with Jason Kenney. And they’re on their way to rejecting that with the current UCP administration as well.”

At a long table near the bar entrance, Davies’ core campaign team — including a videographer, a press manager, and several of the more dedicated volunteers — snacked on wings.

This was the big moment when they’d see how their weeks of work paid off. Campaign press secretary James Snell, a former Winnipeg Sun reporter, checked his phone frequently as polling stations reported in.

“The election of Mark Carney created fertile ground for this movement in Alberta. The sovereigntist, separatist movement is decades old,” Snell told PressProgress. “We’ll see what the results say.”

The realization didn’t take long to set in.

They’d lost, and it wasn’t close. In Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills, Davies finished with just shy of 18% of the vote against United Conservative Party candidate Tara Sawyer’s 61% and NDP candidate Beverly Toews at 20%. In the two Edmonton ridings also holding by-elections, the Republican candidates finished even further behind, with 3% and less than 1% of the respective totals.

The team expected better results.

(Earlier that day, a far-right blogger argued that the Republicans’ efforts amounted to a “second kamikaze campaign” that could ultimately damage the UCP in a future election. In anticipation of the piece, Davies threatened to complain to Elections Alberta that it constituted “election interference.”)

Even with a diverse group of volunteers trickling in, the bar never filled up, and the mood stayed subdued.

Cameron Davies campaigners outside the event. (Photo by Stephen Magusiak / PressProgress)

One key volunteer at the head table was Alana Barager, a public relations professional who had travelled from Edmonton to campaign for Davies in a personal capacity. Barager mentioned she previously helped campaign efforts for right-wing social media personality (now MP) Aaron Gunn.

“I’ve never doorknocked rurally before. I enjoyed meeting a lot of farmers. They’re really ready for change,” Barager told PressProgress.

Barager said she believes an independent Alberta would be able to strike a deal with the federal government to get pipelines built because “we have leverage.”

Since the election of Mark Carney, support for provincial independence among Albertans is in the 30% range, according to recent polling.

But Barager said the prospect of Alberta joining the US as a 51st state was not something that came up during canvassing. “We don’t talk about it at the doors,” she said, adding that there’s no appetite for it.

“The ‘51st state’ idea is pretty low down the list of what people are eager for,” said Jeff Bai, who produced video content for the campaign.

One observer close to establishment conservative circles, Matthew Solberg, described the result as “disastrous” for the separatists.

Davies, for his part, had already managed his expectations for the result. Asked recently what success would look like, Davies told Canadian Affairs that 20% would be “a measurable outcome that we could build from.”

“We’re proud of our team for a party that started a couple months ago. Pollsters and pundits said this morning we wouldn’t crack 7% tonight,” Davies told PressProgress. He points out that in 2008, the then-nascent Wildrose Party got about 20% in the riding.

Davies was joined by some of his former Take Back Alberta colleagues.

Among them were Marco Van Huigenbos, who concluded a jail term earlier this year on a charge of mischief over $5,000 for his role in the Coutts border blockade.

David Parker outside the bar. (Photo by Stephen Magusiak / PressProgress)

Another was Take Back Alberta founder David Parker, a frequent collaborator with Davies who, similarly, once supported Smith before turning against her UCP government after a public falling-out.

Parker appeared to be in high spirits despite the loss.

“I expected 25-30%. We’ve worked on a lot of campaigns together. I think Cam obviously has a lot of history in the province. There’s a lot of people that don’t necessarily trust him. I think they trust Danielle more,” Parker told PressProgress.

”I honestly think close to 20% is a pretty good result.”