A Liberal MP Wants a Law for Separatists Who Talk to Washington
Fourteen days before Albertans vote, a federal Liberal MP has floated an idea that should make anyone who values free speech sit up: maybe Canada needs a law for citizens who go to Washington and talk about Alberta independence.
By Jason LaFace | Alberta Radio
Monday, October 5, 2026
What Hogan said
Corey Hogan, Calgary's lone Liberal member of Parliament, said Sunday that Canada needs to consider overhauling its laws to deal with the kind of trips Alberta separatist leaders made to meet the U.S. State Department ahead of the Oct. 19 referendum. He doesn't think those talks meet the bar for treason. "They're wrong," he said. "If we don't have a law that covers them, I think we should at least be thinking about whether we need one." His summary: "A principle seems to have been violated here, even if a rule hasn't."
What set it off
Weekend reporting described meetings last year between Alberta Prosperity Project leaders and the State Department. Co-founder Dennis Modry said a discussion document put ideas on the table including access to fresh water, agriculture, forestry and mining, land for a railway to Alaska, and a Pacific oil pipeline through Washington State with crude royalties offered as compensation. Separately, Republican strategists from Michigan reportedly met sovereignty organizers near the Calgary airport in January to discuss campaign software.
Jeffrey Rath, who arranged the State Department meetings, disputes Modry's account and says the talks were general. "We were private citizens. We had no government mandate to offer anything," Rath wrote Saturday. "We only went to Washington to express the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of Albertans for a free and independent Alberta and to gauge U.S. support for such a project."
Everyone piles on
Premier Danielle Smith's office said she "is not affiliated with these individuals and has no knowledge of these alleged meetings," and that she opposes separation or becoming a U.S. state. Jason Kenney called the movement "shambolic" and its leaders "MAGA bootlickers," and said the trips were "disloyal and unpatriotic" though not treason or sedition. NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi called the U.S. interest "intensely bizarre."
The take
Let's separate two things. First: offering a foreign country Alberta's water and oil royalties is a terrible pitch. Albertans want independence to keep control of their resources, not to hand them to a new landlord. If that's what was on paper, independence supporters are entitled to be angry about it, and Rath's own pushback suggests the movement isn't of one mind.
Second: a sitting Liberal MP musing about a law to police which foreign officials private citizens may talk to is a far bigger problem. Even Kenney, no friend of the separatists, said it plainly: "You can't prevent Canadian citizens from talking to representatives of a foreign government, as long as it doesn't constitute a violation of actual treason, sharing national secrets." Hogan admits no rule was broken. So the proposal is to write a new one, aimed at one political movement, in the middle of a referendum campaign.
Albertans can judge the Alberta Prosperity Project for themselves on Oct. 19. They don't need Ottawa drafting a speech code for the trip to Washington.
Source: Os1ris News Aggregation
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