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This Week's Round-Up: October 12, 2026 |
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Good day. We hope you’re enjoying a wonderful long weekend, celebrating Thanksgiving, the fall, the harvest season.
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Alberta’s referendum is a week away, and The Walrus will have regular coverage through to October 19.
You can catch up with our free guide and our latest stories.
Below, we’ve rounded up some of the key questions and numbers to help you understand the latest on the referendum.
Are Alberta separatists getting US support to leave Canada?
Last weekend, the Globe and Mail reported that Republican organizers have visited Alberta supporting separatism—while separatist organizers have visited the US hoping to secure economic support for an independent Alberta by offering fresh water, adoption of the US dollar, or land for Alaska to use.
British Columbia premier David Eby has previously called similar activity treason. As Stewart Prest explores, while “treason” can be tricky to establish here, American interference is a problem that needs to be addressed.
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| Read or Listen to the Story |
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Meanwhile, Max Cameron looks further into these apparent auditions to be a de facto fifty-first state and analyzes how the sovereigntist movement relates to the US, Canada, Quebec, and First Nations.
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| Separatists Courting Donald Trump |
How is separatism polling?
Support for separating in the latest Angus Reid polling:
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33% overall vs. 61% for remaining
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64% among United Conservative Party voters
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7% among Alberta New Democratic Party voters
This stark gap poses a problem for Danielle Smith, who risks alienating her base with too much support for Canada—and alienating the majority of Alberta with too little. This also helps explain why the federal Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, have mostly sat on the referendum’s sidelines so far.
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| Pierre Poilievre's Alberta Problem |
Who are the other separatists?
The Parti Québécois was just elected to a minority government, returning the separatist party to power after eight years of the Coalition Avenir Québec.
Philippe J. Fournier breaks down the road that led to this result and how the threat of Trump played a role (and sometimes didn’t).
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| PQ Wins |
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The PQ win was a long time coming, but now that it’s official, it will create a new challenge for Mark Carney, Alex Cool-Fergus writes. PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon (PSPP) has explicitly promised another referendum, but with separation polling no better in Quebec these days than in Alberta, is that the real issue?
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| Read or Listen to the Story |
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Like Alberta, Quebec will likely argue it’s getting a raw deal from the feds financially and seek to do more in-house. But while Alberta is constrained by BC’s ability to block major projects such as a pipeline, Quebec wields the ability to block or bog down major projects such as the Alto rail line.
But the one thing Alberta and Quebec sovereigntists seem to share this time around: fixating on and blaming immigrants. Although Smith once called for more immigration (in a bid to double Alberta’s population) and PSPP once pushed for the PQ to add diversity initiatives, both have since mixed nativism into their rhetoric of sovereigntism.
And we’ll be keeping an eye on more from Alberta and the referendum. Don’t miss our coverage on thewalrus.ca.
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Thank you for reading,
—Cameron Welch,
Audience Editor, The Walrus |
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Join us for The Walrus Talks at Home: Midlife and Belonging on November 5 for a conversation about the challenges of creating a sense of belonging in midlife, and how we can strengthen social bonds and critical supports during this difficult —and often overlooked— stage of our lives. |
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A MESSAGE FROM THE WALRUS LAB IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA |
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How did a Canadian invention change the way the world connects? |
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In this episode of Canadian Time Machine, explore the history of the telephone, from Alexander Graham Bell’s early experiments in Brantford, Ontario, to the phones we carry today.
Vintage telephone collector and former Bell Canada employee Phil Stasinski shares his collection and explores how people once made calls, while Bell Homestead curator Robert Stanczyk takes us back to where Bell’s telephone story began.
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| Listen to the Episode |
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