Alberta Conservative MP Dane Lloyd said the province’s citizens are fiercely protective over oil and gas resources.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Conservative and NDP MPs from Alberta expressed alarm over provincial separatists appearing to offer up access to natural resources in exchange for support from Americans for their cause.
Albertans are fiercely protective of the province’s oil and gas, and those resources cannot be a used as bargaining chips in connection with the Oct. 19 referendum, said Dane Lloyd, the Conservative MP leading the federalist push from his party.
Mr. Lloyd, the MP for Parkland, said generations of Albertans have been raised on stories about how their provincial government wrested control over resources from Ottawa.
“Nobody has the right to promise away Alberta’s birthright,” he told reporters on Parliament Hill Monday.
Mr. Lloyd was responding to a report in The Globe and Mail disclosing previously unreported details of meetings leaders within the separatist movement had in the U.S. capital.
Opinion: Alberta’s separatists would sell us out to the Americans
Dennis Modry, a former Alberta heart surgeon who is co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project, told The Globe in an interview that the separatists proposed a number of ideas in a document that was put on the table for discussion during meetings at the State Department last year.
They included access to valuable resources such as fresh water, agriculture, forestry, mining and precious metals. Land for a railway to Alaska was one potential idea, as was a new oil pipeline to the Pacific that would run through Washington State, with royalties from crude oil offered up as compensation.
Fellow separatist leader Jeffrey Rath, who arranged the State Department meetings, has disputed Mr. Modry’s characterization of the talks.
Mr. Rath told The Globe that the talks were general in nature, “about the aspirations of Albertans and Alberta for independence. And that was it.”
Mr. Lloyd was appointed by Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre earlier this year to helm the party’s response to the referendum campaign. The federal Tories hold 33 of the province’s 37 seats.
Heather McPherson, the lone NDP MP in Alberta, called for an emergency debate in the House of Commons on the substance of The Globe’s investigation, including known links between separatists and U.S. Republican political operatives.
“Canadian sovereignty is at stake, and the people trying to trade it away for foreign political support should understand how seriously Canadians take this threat,” she told the House.
The Speaker denied the request for the debate, which is not unusual; many emergency debate requests are turned down and that decision is at the discretion of the Speaker.
Alberta separatists’ talks with GOP spark outcry, call for legislative change
The Globe asked the offices of both Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc if the ministers or their officials had raised the matter of American involvement in the referendum with their counterparts.
Both declined to comment and would not say whether they received any assurances from the U.S. administration that it is not involved in the separatist campaign.
In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office said Mark Carney has made his position known.
“The Prime Minister was clear earlier this year when he said that we expect the U.S. administration to respect Canadian sovereignty in the context of the Alberta referendum,” spokesperson Sofia Ouslis said in an e-mail.
On Oct. 19, Albertans will vote on the question of whether to remain within the federation or if the province should commence a legal process to hold a binding vote on separation.
Polls suggest a strong majority of Albertans will vote to remain, and Mr. Lloyd said that is the sentiment he is hearing at the doors.
“The message that we’re hearing from Albertans is they’re frustrated with Ottawa,” he said. “They’re not frustrated with Canada.”
With a report from Carrie Tait, Grant Robertson and Nathan VanderKlippe