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Premier Danielle Smith says it was \u201cabsurd\u201d and \u201cridiculous\u201d for separatist leaders to offer the United States government access to fresh water and resource royalties in return for its help establishing an independent Alberta.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The information was reported by the Globe and Mail on Saturday. CBC News has not independently confirmed the details in the story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alberta separatists met three times with\u00a0U.S. State Department officials in Washington in late 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s absurd that anybody would offer something like that up that’s not theirs to offer,\u201d Smith said at an unrelated news conference in Edmonton Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a decision that Albertans would make, and I don’t think Albertans would support it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Washington meetings were already public knowledge, but what was offered to U.S. officials was new information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the Globe and Mail, Dennis Modry, co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project, told the media outlet about the offer that was made.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jeff Rath, a lawyer with the separatist movement, denied to the Globe and Mail that any of those matters were discussed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith has been criticized for including a question on Alberta\u2019s Oct. 19 referendum about whether the province should remain in Canada or if it should start the legal process for a binding future referendum that would provide a definitive answer on Alberta\u2019s fate within Confederation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith didn\u2019t answer a question Wednesday about whether she believes she has encouraged U.S. involvement in the political situation by asking the question.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead she said she believes the people that were involved in the meetings are critics of hers because she plans to vote to stay in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect that the American administration will deal with the duly elected governments,\u201d Smith added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat includes mine, but it also includes the government of Canada.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-924665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}