Alberta Separatists Kicked Us Out of Their Event After Asking About American Support

On Monday, several thousand Calgarians braved a chilly evening to show up to Stampede Park to pledge their support for Alberta’s separation from the country.

The Big Four Roadhouse was one of the final stops on a month-long, province-wide speaking tour by the petitioners for an independence referendum, calling themselves Stay Free Alberta (SFA).

As people filed into the 4,000-capacity hall, SFA lawyer Jeffrey Rath, grinning and wearing a cowboy hat, gave interviews to reporters about his vision of the province’s future.

There were many potential questions: What would Rath say to Canadians and Albertans concerned about the movement’s courting of support from the American government? What about the First Nations that have resolved to oppose the petition on legal grounds? Why do so many of the separatist movement’s policy planks focus on immigration?

Unfortunately, PressProgress was unable to ask most of these questions, as we were tossed out of the event before it started, and within minutes of sitting down with Rath.

We started by asking him about the group’s efforts to establish ties with the Trump administration, something that he and the other leaders of the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) had been openly speaking about for nearly a year. The group has long claimed to have held meetings with top-level officials in the Trump administration, without saying who — just that they’ve made trips to the US and found the people they’d met to be supportive.

On Thursday, the Financial Times confirmed that three meetings with Trump officials had indeed taken place. (BC Premier David Eby said it amounted to “treason.”)

But at the Big Four on Monday, Rath immediately became defensive at the mention of the movement’s coziness with the United States.

“It’s not coziness. We have mutual interests. So, I think ‘coziness’ is kind of a loaded word,” he said.

Asked how he would respond to concerns about his going to the US, he said that people “should be more concerned with Mark Carney threatening war with the United States,” which he called “the most asinine thing that a Canadian prime minister has ever done.”

When it was pointed out that nobody, including Carney, had threatened war with the US, it became abundantly clear this was not a line of questioning that the visibly flustered Rath wanted to field.

“Of course he has,” he said. “What do you think he means when he’s invoking Article 5 of the NATO treaty, vis-a-vis the United States?”

NATO’s Article 5 is the treaty provision obliging member nations to come to each other’s defence in the event of an armed attack. While Carney has mentioned it in recent comments, in the context of threats to annex Greenland by US President Donald Trump, the idea that those remarks amounted to a declaration of war is a debunked claim that has circulated among far-right social media channels.

Carney, Rath continued, is “literally like a mouse biting on an elephant’s toenail. But if you don’t understand that, I’m done with the interview.”

He stormed away.

Moments later, Stampede Park security approached and asked PressProgress to leave the venue. When asked why, they said it was a private event and the organizers wanted us out. We complied.

In the past year, PressProgress has spoken many times to Rath and the rest of the main organizers of the Alberta separatist movement without incident.

Speaking later in the week, petition figurehead Mitch Sylvestre said that ejecting PressProgress was a decision made without his knowledge; he said he was kept busy at the event and didn’t sign off on it.

“I wasn’t aware of it. And you know what? It’s unfortunate, because I answered those questions 20 minutes before with CBC. Actually, I have no idea why they would target you,” Sylvestre said.

“Jeff has definitely got his own way of things,” said Sylvestre, adding that he was addressing it with him.

Last year, the Alberta Prosperity Project toured every corner of the province to prepare for an eventual petition drive. With a petition application officially approved by Elections Alberta last month, many of the same organizers headed out again, under the banner of Stay Free Alberta.

The goal of the petition is to have a ballot question put to Albertans: “Do you agree that the province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?”

Rath has claimed members of Premier Danielle Smith’s caucus have signed the petition, which, in order to succeed, would need just under 178,000 signatures.

Smith has declined to denounce the separatist movement, and is frequently criticized by both separatist and anti-separatist influencers on social media.

A woman selling Alberta flags, including some bearing the word “REPUBLIC,” outside the separatist event at Calgary’s Stampede Park on Monday. (Photo by Stephen Magusiak / PressProgress)

At the Calgary event on Monday, there were Alberta flags, social media influencers and people selling Alberta-themed merchandise.

According to organizers, the hall reached its capacity of just over 4,000, and images suggest it was at least substantially full. Most attendees, when asked by PressProgress, said they found out about the event on Facebook.

Multiple livestreams of the speeches show that Rath relayed to the crowd many of the same statements about Carney that he’d made to PressProgress.

When Sylvestre took the stage, his speech, similar to Rath’s, invoked conspiracy theories.

“Mr. Trudeau said, ‘The very concept of a nation founded by European settlers is offensive to me.’ He’s offended by us. ‘Old-stock white Canadians are an unpleasant relic, and quite frankly, replaceable. And we will replace them’,” Sylvestre told the crowd.

This was a direct reference to a false claim that was circulated on Twitter in 2021, including by Randy Hillier, who was then an Ontario MPP. There was no evidence Trudeau said this, and the Canadian Anti-Hate Network described the meme as “white nationalist propaganda.”

Sylvestre emphasized that he’s “not mad at the immigrants” but rather at what he characterized as “uncontrolled immigration.”

The petition organizers have a May 2 deadline to obtain the required signatures. Recent polling shows support for Alberta independence to be as high as 28%, according to Ipsos. But the figure for those who remained committed to separation when asked to consider the consequences sits at about half that.