‘Everybody’s talking about it’: Talk of Alberta separation already rattling business confidence, survey says

Ongoing discourse around the prospect of Alberta separation is emerging as a top concern for Calgary businesses, half of whom say the debate is already impacting the local economy, a new Calgary Chamber of Commerce survey suggests.

In a survey of members the chamber released Monday, 28 per cent of respondents said talk about Alberta’s separation from Canada was affecting their business, and 88 per cent of them said the impact was negative.

Fifty-one per cent said separation talk was impacting the provincial economy. Of those, 93 per cent said the impact was negative.

When respondents ranked a set of issues facing businesses by importance, 53 per cent put “Alberta separation” at the top of the list, ahead of securing a tariff-free deal with the United States or building new pipeline capacity.

Respondents were also asked where the impact of separatist discourse on Alberta’s economy would most likely be felt. They most commonly identified:

The push for Alberta to become its own country has led to the chamber’s email inbox being more active than usual, says chamber head Deborah Yedlin.

“Everybody’s talking about it. Are they talking about it publicly? No,” Yedlin said. “But it is a topic of conversation. And certainly, we are getting our inboxes inundated.”

Quebec’s business community is more alert to separatist politics, Yedlin noted. After René Lévesque’s 1976 election, economic activity stalled and parts of the financial sector moved to Toronto.

The prospect of Quebec separatism has once again made headlines in the wake of the Parti Québécois leading the polls in advance of this fall’s provincial election.

“The business community in Quebec is very live to this … they’re more inclined to be visible on issues like this, because they’ve already walked this path and they don’t want to walk it again,” Yedlin said. 

“If it comes to pass that there will be a referendum in Quebec, you won’t see any reticence from the Quebec business community.”

Conversely, Alberta business leaders have been largely quiet on this point. Yedlin isn’t sure when that will change.

“Everybody is making their own decisions in terms of when and how they will make their positions known,” Yedlin said. “Some people may be waiting, and fair enough, to see what the signature count is at the deadline for the signatures to be gathered.”

Alberta separation canvassers are looking for 177,732 signatures by May 2 before the question can be put to a referendum.

Among the few to speak publicly has been Nancy Southern, chief executive of ATCO, who last May said that conversations around Alberta separatism were already hurting the investment climate. 

The ATCO chief added that the prospect of such an event was raising too many questions for companies to feel confident before they made significant investment decisions.

“I think the separatist discussion is very unhelpful and not constructive to Alberta,” Southern said in 2025, following her company’s annual shareholder meeting.

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, who sits on ATCO’s board, has also been frequently critical of the separation movement. 

On a recent episode of The Herle Burly podcast, Kenney said that, starting several months ago, he and a couple of others began reaching out to a number of prominent centre-right federalists in the province who work in the business community.

“And we were talking about putting together something, to do this in a strategic way,” Kenney said.

But there was “very little interest,” Kenney said, which he attributed to many in the business community taking a “wait-and-see” approach to how the movement is handled.

“Most of the, let’s call them prominent federalists, are waiting to see whether this thing goes forward,” he said. 

“I think that may be a mistake, because … it could be too late to help really engage. These other guys have been running a full-time campaign on this now, basically for a couple of years.”

In a statement, the Business Council of Alberta said it understands “the frustration felt by some Albertans, which is fuelling discussion about separation. That frustration is rooted in valid concerns that Alberta is not treated fairly within the country.”

“We do not believe that separation is the solution. The focus now should be on a new relationship between Alberta and Ottawa built on a foundation of fairness,” the statement reads.