A growing body of empirical research has already been published estimating the dire economic consequences of Alberta separatism. Business leaders, economists, and financial experts have all warned of the economic damage from separation (or even a credible threat of separation): lost investment, recession, job loss, higher interest rates and inflation, and enormous fiscal costs from setting up duplicate national institutions. Table 2 in this report summarizes several of these studies.

However, this report focuses on a more specific question: How would Alberta separation affect workers? The vast majority of Albertans must work for a living. They support themselves over their lives mostly from wages and salaries earned through employment. They have already suffered for years from the one-sided business-dominated policies of the UCP government. Indeed, Alberta is the only province where real wages (after inflation) have fallen since 2019, instead of rising as they should. And workers are uniquely vulnerable to the risks and costs of this needless flirtation with separation.

Unlike the wealthy, most workers don’t have big investment portfolios as insurance against the financial chaos of separation. The loss of trusted entitlements (like EI, the CPP, the Canada Child Benefit, and more) would hit workers hardest. Right now, most workers in Alberta get more back in federal services and benefits than they pay in federal taxes – but after separation they would pay more taxes, for fewer services. Federal programs would be replaced by Alberta-style arrangements (featuring stingier programs and more privatization), financed with more regressive taxes. Perhaps most dangerous, the loss of key statutory and constitutional protections – from the Canada Health Act to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – would jeopardize the fundamental rights of workers in Alberta to organize, speak out, and work collectively for a better, fairer future.

This research paper explores the impacts on workers in more detail. Part I exposes the economic myths and lies on which the case for separatism is based, showing that separation would harm Alberta’s economy – with workers suffering the most.

Part II then discusses the real factors and forces that have undermined the wages, living standards, and basic rights of workers in Alberta in recent years. Workers in this province have every reason to be angry about the deterioration of their economic prospects over the last decade. But the separatist movement has tried to weaponize and misdirect that anger against the federal government, and against Canada itself. So, Part II shows that the hardship experienced by Alberta workers results from the actions of businesses and employers who’ve captured record profits while cutting real wages for their workers, and from a provincial government which does business’s bidding — with program cuts, corporate tax giveaways, and active suppression of wages.

Top Ten Ways Separation Would Hurt Alberta Workers:

  1. Intense risk of job loss resulting from deteriorating investment confidence, capital flight to other jurisdictions, and post-separation recession.
  2. Major declines in property resale values due to expected mass outmigration of population after separation.
  3. Risk of monetary instability, inflation, bank failure, and capital flight from uncertainty regarding a new currency and banking system.
  4. Loss of protection from Canada-wide legal standards, including the loss of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
  5. Increase in the total tax burden, due to excessive costs of establishing new programs and institutions to replace existing federal programs (like national defense, international affairs, and tax collection).
  6. Increased repression of labour rights and standards, including the right to organize unions, the Rand Formula for union security, and the right to strike.
  7. Shift in the tax burden onto the backs of workers, by replacing more progressive federal taxes with less progressive provincial taxes.
  8. Threats to existing entitlements Alberta workers have earned to their CPP pension credits, EI protection, and other federal benefits.
  9. Reduction in minimum wage for workers in federally regulated industries by $4 per hour and continued freeze in the provincial minimum wage well below levels in the rest of Canada.
  10. Increased risk of privatization of health care and other essential services, by losing protection from the Canada Health Act and other federal standards.

The repetitive claim that all Alberta’s problems stem from a far-off federal government is a classic diversion. Don’t challenge the problems that clearly started right here at home, the separatists say. Blame Ottawa instead.

Trade unions will play a crucial role in the campaign to preserve Alberta’s place in Canada. They know that workers who have already suffered so much exploitation and repression here, would face much worse in an independent, corporate-dominated province. This report shows why workers are stronger in a united Canada, and why the false promises of the separatist movement pose big dangers to workers and their families.

Read the full report.