Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he expects US President Donald Trump to “respect Canada’s sovereignty” after reports that Alberta separatists have met with US officials multiple times.
“We expect the U.S. administration to respect Canada’s sovereignty,” Carney said Thursday in Ottawa, flanked by the premiers of Canada’s provinces. “I will always make that clear in my conversations with President Trump, and then we will look at what we can do together.”
The premier said President Trump never raised the issue of Alberta’s independence in their meetings.
Carney’s comments came after British Columbia Premier David Eby accused a group of Alberta independence activists of “treason” for meeting with the Trump administration.
Commenting on a Financial Times report Thursday that White House officials met with activists collecting signatures for a potential independence referendum in Alberta, Eby told reporters he understood the referendum and their desire to “talk about the issues we want to talk about in Canada,” but said it was inappropriate at a time when Canadians should be coming together amid tensions with the United States.
“We have freedom of speech, and that’s important. But to go to a foreign country and ask for support in dismantling Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for it, and that word is treason,” he said.
Oil-rich Alberta is generally more conservative than the rest of Canada, but has a vocal independence movement. Canadian secessionists have long argued that Albertans are too overtaxed and undervalued to remain part of the Canadian confederation.
Asked about the meeting, a White House official told CNN, “Administration officials have met with a number of civil society groups. No support or commitments were communicated.”
News of the meeting comes at a time when relations between the United States and Canada are delicate. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to make the country the 51st state. Meanwhile, after a year of tariff and counter-tariff deals with the United States, Mr. Carney said he believes Canada must move away from U.S. influence.
Eby’s voice shook with emotion as she expressed her disgust with the secessionists who went to Washington, saying they “don’t want to be called Albertans.”
“It’s totally inappropriate to try to undermine Canada,” Eby said. “It’s totally inappropriate to try to seek help to dismantle this country from a foreign power.”
Jeffrey Russ, a lawyer and independent activist who told CNN he was part of the group that met with U.S. officials, responded: “If David Eby walked up to you and punched you in the face, you wouldn’t know he was a real Albertan.”
Russ said he and other separatists will return to Washington next month to explore the possibility of gaining economic credit from the United States in the event of independence.
“We’re not raising money,” Russ said. “We are doing a feasibility study to see what is possible.”
Alberta separatism has long played a minor role in provincial politics, but the Liberals’ victory in the 2025 election has reignited a movement that sees Carney’s centre-left politics as anathema to Alberta’s conservative values.
Ironically, Carney himself is an Albertan. He grew up in Edmonton, the provincial capital.
The Alberta government approved the independence referendum petition in early January, and activists need to collect 178,000 signatures from voters by May.
Alberta Premier Daniel Smith said Thursday that he disagrees with the separatist movement’s goals, but warned against demonizing its supporters.
A recent Ipsos poll found that about 28 per cent of Albertans are likely to vote “yes” in the independence referendum, a level comparable to that of French-speaking Quebec, where separatism is a major cultural force.
“When we look at the polls, we see that 30 per cent of Albertans have lost hope. That’s about one million people. And we don’t mean to demonize or marginalize one million of our fellow citizens who have legitimate grievances,” Smith said.
