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The political pancake breakfast is one of the longstanding traditions of the Calgary Stampede, Alberta’s annual rodeo and fair. Members of the province’s governing United Conservative Party hosted one on July 2, the day after Canada Day. The far-right premier of the province, Danielle Smith, kitted out in Lone Star cowboy boots, a Stetson hat and a Texas Longhorn bolo tie, popped in. It was hard not to read the outfit as a conscious nod to Canada’s erstwhile friends south of the border, because President Trump, MAGA and the United States are unmistakable strands of the conversation in Alberta these days.
After flipping some flapjacks, the premier addressed the crowd, making sure to toss a pancake to her base by saying that immigrants — or “newcomers,” as she put it — had caused government spending to skyrocket. She reminded people that the Stampede is an expression of bedrock Albertan values: grit, determination and getting back in the saddle. The implied contrast was with the hopeless mandarins in Ottawa who can’t be expected to know anything about such matters.
It would have been a typical Stampede breakfast were it not for the sightings of a formerly reclusive political creature: the baldfaced Alberta separatist, a breed apart from the more common species, the alienated Westerner. They came in groups like Albertans4Freedom and United Alberta Flags, which advocate Alberta seceding from Canada to become an independent Judeo-Christian nation. They encouraged Albertans to vote yes on Oct. 19 to a referendum question asking whether Alberta should start down the road to separation, an impulse that the Trump-friendly Ms. Smith — without explicitly endorsing separation — has given new life to by pushing for the referendum question to be on the ballot.
Most Albertans are outraged that their elected leader has given credence to the idea, even if polls show it has little chance of being approved. A couple of weeks after the Stampede, when Ms. Smith was again pancaking at another event, a protester yelled that her pancakes were “fascist.” Hardly fair to the pancakes, but evocative nonetheless. There are plenty of irate separatists, too, who view the wording of the separation question, which asks voters to move forward with a further binding referendum, as too wishy-washy.
Separatism isn’t a new idea in Canada. The provincial government in Quebec has kept the notion of independence simmering on a back burner for the past few decades to use as leverage with the federal government, though polls show that most Quebecers don’t actually want to leave. With Alberta now considering the idea, the normally cozy patchwork quilt that is Canada is really starting to pop a seam or two. It just feels like everybody’s angry, everywhere, all the time.
It is the perfect moment, in other words, for Mr. Trump to tear further at the quilt by insulting our leaders (especially Prime Minister Mark Carney), threatening our sovereignty, attacking our economy — particularly after the highly acrimonious breakdown of trade talks between Canada and the United States in late August — setting provinces against one another with differing tariffs, speculating about erasing the border and just generally butting into our business. In so doing, the American president shows how he is not only damaging the comity of nations dating back to the end of World War II. He is, actively or by example, rending the fabric of nations internally.
The Trump administration has meddled in Argentina in favor of the right-wing president, Javier Milei; interfered in elections in Hungary, Honduras, Colombia and Brazil; given a boost to the ascendant far-right AfD party in Germany; and offered refugee status to white South Africans. “This administration has had zero compunction about interfering in the domestic elections, the domestic politics” of U.S. allies, Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, told me. Mr. Trump “obviously does not like Carney” and “he will do anything he can to belittle or minimize Canada’s autonomy.” His actions could also embolden divisive internal forces — including Alberta’s separatists, Mr. Drezner said.
When it comes to Alberta, the MAGA presence has taken various forms. Ms. Smith says she told Trump administration officials to “pause” on tariffs “so we can get through an election” — meaning, of course, to avoid tariffs on oil and gas, the mainstays of the provincial economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in an interview, appeared to show sympathy with separatists in Alberta. “They have great resources. The Albertans are very independent people,” he reportedly told Real America’s Voice, a right-wing media outlet. Separatists have met multiple times with administration officials to discuss the logistics of Alberta separating and how the United States might support that process. The Trump administration has acknowledged the meetings, but said no senior officials were present.
The greatest favor Mr. Trump has done for Alberta separatists has not been to promote an independent Alberta, but to undermine a sovereign Canada. Mr. Trump’s casting of Canada as weak, broken and beholden to the United States does nothing but promote the separatist cause. All of it is a complication we could do without. Hoisting ourselves onto a chopping block with Donald Trump standing there holding a cleaver just doesn’t seem all that smart.
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