U.S. Treasury Secretary says “natural partner” Alberta should join U.S.
A top U.S. official has openly suggested that the resource-rich province of Alberta should break free from Ottawa and join the United States.
Author: Clayton DeMaine
A top U.S. official has openly suggested that the resource-rich province of Alberta should break free from Ottawa and join the United States. While attending the World Economic Forum, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent remarked that Albertans “want sovereignty, but Ottawa is in the way.”
Some Canadian commentators are calling the U.S. official’s comments on a potential Alberta independence referendum this year “foreign interference.”
During a live interview on Real America’s Voice with U.S. conservative commentator Jack Posobiec, Bessent noted that Alberta was a “wealth of natural resources.” However, he said the government in Ottawa “won’t let them build a pipeline to the Pacific.”
“I think we should let them come down into the U.S.,” Bessent said. “Alberta is a natural partner for the U.S. They have great resources. The Albertans are a very independent people. Rumours say that they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not.”
When Posobiec pressed him, Bessent claimed that “people are talking,” and that “people want sovereignty” in Alberta.
“They want what the US has got. Because when I look at Europe, how can they have sovereignty?” Bessent said. “They don’t have immigration sovereignty. They’ve let their borders be overrun. They don’t have economic sovereignty. They are dependent on China, and they do not have a security sovereignty, because they are so far behind on defence and rare earth, they need to live under the US security umbrella.”
He added that the U.S. would be happy to provide security to its NATO partners, but said U.S. President Donald Trump is asking each nation to contribute to the defence of NATO as a whole.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to meet NATO’s five per cent GDP defence spending target by 2035 by spending 3.5 per cent on core military needs and another 1.5 per cent on industrial and infrastructure by 2035. Last year, he said Canada was on track to meet the old NATO goal of spending two per cent of Canada’s GDP on defence.
On Monday, Trump privately criticized Canada for having weak Arctic defences and not pulling its weight in the NATO alliance. During a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump similarly blasted Carney for being ungrateful for the defence America provides, stating, “Canada lives because of the United States.”
A pro-Alberta independence referendum petition began on January 3 and will run until May 2, 2026. The petition requires 177,732 signatures by the deadline to trigger a referendum for Alberta to leave Canada and become a sovereign state.