What will Mark Carney's role be in the Alberta referendum?

Announcing her referendum oppugn endure hebdomad, Alberta premiere Danielle ian smith invoked the last prime minister's name four times.

"When I was first elected premier, I was very concerned that it would be almost impossible to restore provincial rights stolen from Alberta and other provinces by the Trudeau-Singh government in Ottawa," she said, also referencing the former NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, whose caucus supported the Trudeau government from 2022 to 2024.

Her government, she recounted, had sought to persuade all Canadians that "Trudeau's anti-Alberta agenda was also anti-Canadian — and was destroying the unity, energy and economic future of our nation."

"Justin Trudeau's anti-Alberta, anti-energy policies became a national embarrassment — one of several — that ultimately cost him his prime ministership," she said.

One might fairly debate the exact nature of Trudeau's legacy vis-a-vis Alberta. He did, for instance, use the resources of the federal government to complete the Trans Mountain expansion (TMX) and production from Alberta's oilsands reached a record high in 2025. 

But Smith's opprobrium for the recent past — and her conversely upbeat tone about the present — at least clarifies Carney's initial role in the federalist fight against separatist sentiment in Alberta: not being Justin Trudeau.

"There can be no doubt that things are a world of difference better for our province than they were under the Trudeau-NDP government," Smith told Albertans.

Not being Trudeau is not a small thing in these circumstances. But the full extent of Carney's role in the federalist struggle against separatist sentiment remains to be seen.

However that role takes shape, it will be a defining element of his premiership.

National unity is often said to be the first duty of every Canadian prime minister. But only two prime ministers have faced actual referendums on secession: Pierre Trudeau in 1980 and Jean Chrétien in 1995, both in regards to Quebec.

Alberta's referendum is not technically a referendum on secession. But for all intents and purposes it might as well be treated as such — especially by federalists who would rather not go down the road of a binding referendum on separation. 

Those votes were defining moments in both Trudeau and Chrétien's tenures. But their public participation in those campaigns was selective.

Chrétien is remembered now for a televised national address he made on the eve of the vote in 1995, but his public involvement in the campaign before then was limited to three speeches in Quebec. In that, he was following the example of Pierre Trudeau, who made the same number of appearances during the campaign in 1980.

Granted, one of those appearances — Trudeau's address to a rally at the Paul Sauvé Arena in Montreal — became one of the most famous speeches of his time as prime minister.

Carney and some premiers push back on Alberta separation referendum

Something like that impassioned address is perhaps not in Carney's wheelhouse, says Peter Donolo, a former director of communications for Chrétien. But the prime minister has other strengths and he has credibility on the big, overarching issue of the moment — the threat posed by Donald Trump.

"I would think he needs to remind people that this is not normal times — that we've got a voracious predator just south of our border who wants to certainly cripple us, if not gobble us up. And that this is a time to focus on that and all these other efforts undermine that," Donolo says.

"Secondly, [I think] he needs to restate … that in a lot of ways, the country has never been more united. And I think he speaks to the broader macro issues of how we can move forward, how we can reduce our dependence and vulnerability regarding the U.S. Because I think he's just super credible on that."

Zain Velji, a progressive political strategist in Alberta who has worked with the provincial NDP and its leader Naheed Nenshi, says Carney has to approach the separatist threat on two fronts.

The first is to address Alberta's economic concerns, something he is arguably already doing in his work with Smith. The second is more rhetorical, or even emotional — about making a positive case for Canada and the value of Alberta in Canada.

"One of the dangers we might run into is running a campaign where one side is giving you 50 reasons to leave and the other side is … status quo Canada. And in this era, change always beats status quo," Velji says.

He says that Carney can sell the status quo by "telling a story around what we're up to, what the project is that we're trying to accomplish, how that project is unbelievably unique" and how this project is a "stitching together of all these different places and different people."

Carney may not be Pierre Trudeau, but Velji notes that the prime minister did show in Davos earlier this year that he was capable of delivering an impactful speech. Carney is also currently the most well-regarded political leader in Alberta, polling better than even Smith.

Even still, like Trudeau and Chrétien, Carney may want to pick his spots and save his capital for maximum impact. Much of the day-to-day heavy lifting could be left to federalist groups in Alberta and figures like Corey Hogan, the articulate Liberal MP for Calgary Confederation who has already shown a willingness to wade into the debate.

Carney threw his first punch of the campaign on Monday when he said that anyone viewing a referendum as merely a chance to strengthen Alberta's negotiating position would be making a "dangerous bluff." (Michelle Rempel Garner, the Conservative MP for Calgary Nose Hill, accused Carney of wagging his finger at Albertans.)

But when Carney was asked about his own participation in the referendum campaign, he emphasized his government's actions.

"I certainly will be campaigning for Canadian unity. I've begun that and part of the campaign is not a campaign but it's actions," he said. "It's practising co-operative federalism with Alberta, with Quebec, with all provinces and territories in the country, with Indigenous Peoples as well."

'It is what it is': Carney says on Alberta premier's separation question

In that framing, a significant part of Carney's role in this referendum campaign is that memorandum of understanding he signed with Smith and their continued progress toward implementing it — tangible action that supports the idea that Carney is not Justin Trudeau.

"I think his main effort should be to keep the pipeline alive and moving forward," says Lisa Young, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. "The biggest risk to the federalist side, I think, would be to have the pipeline project collapse mid-campaign."

Simply advancing a pipeline probably wouldn't be enough to completely extinguish separatist sentiment in Alberta. If it was, Trudeau's construction of TMX would've done so.

But continued progress on a pipeline now certainly wouldn't hurt Carney's — or Canada's — cause now.

Senior writer

Aaron Wherry has covered Parliament Hill since 2007 and has written for Maclean's, the National Post and the Globe and Mail. He is the author of Promise & Peril, a book about Justin Trudeau's years in power.

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