On October 19 Albertans will vote on whether Canada should remain a unified nation, or if Alberta should break from the country and seek independence. With Donald Trump threatening to make Canada the 51st state, many say that the separatist movement is being weaponized by political actors with ties to the MAGA regime with funds flowing from Christian fundamentalists on both sides of the border.

“What they want to build is a far-right, Christian nationalist-informed mecca for MAGA-type people. Zealots in Alberta. That’s what they want to build. And that’s what they’re building. They’re taking their cues from the kind of MAGA… the MAGA fringe in the U.S.,” Parkland Institute executive director Ricardo Acuña told Ricochet.

Throughout the past year, separatist leaders have held at least three secret meetings in Washington with “very high-level” members of the Trump administration, a number of Republican politicians have publicly voiced their support for Alberta’s independence, as Trump himself has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada. 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Alberta a “natural partner” to the U.S., and that it has “great resources.” Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said Alberta could help the U.S. meet its energy needs. Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and Republican congressman Andy Ogles have also chimed in on the importance of supporting Alberta separatism.

Alberta separatism is not unique to this current moment, Acuña said. His work at the Parkland Institute — a progressive policy think tank at the University of Alberta — traced Albertans’ historical grievances with the federal government back to Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program in 1980.  

“There’s always been this sense of Alberta exceptionalism and grievances since the province was formed,” said Acuña. “Premiers over the years have always leaned into some of these complaints, some of the exceptionalism — when they’ve wanted to get a win from the federal government, when they’re bargaining for a pipeline, or gifts to the oil industry, or better taxation for the oil industry.”

Ricochet’s investigation found that Alberta separatism has not been contained within Alberta. Emboldening the movement is a sophisticated network of far-right Christian organizations, advocacy groups, media platforms, pastors, MAGA allies, and financial institutions operating in both Canada and the United States. 

Since 2020, this network has grown increasingly interested in the question of Albertan sovereignty, using its charitable status, donor networks, political influence and public platforms to amplify the discourse and promote a broader reconstructionist or ‘dominionist’ political vision for Canada. One organization within this network is the Ezra Institute, whose media participation and organizational relationships help demonstrate just how much money and influence are circulating within the current far-right Christian ecosystem. 

The Ezra Institute has received money from donors in both Canada and the U.S. It then funnels money to an intermediary organization, the Canadian National Christian Foundation (CNCF), which redistributes the funds. A CNCF board member, Jonathan Wellum, sponsors Christian nationalist podcasts through his investment firm, Rocklinc., many of which are owned and operated by Ezra Institute pastors. This has helped create a media ecosystem in which Christian extremists can influence Canada’s national conversation. 

It was within the backlash to pandemic restrictions that the current movement for a ‘sovereign’ Alberta first took shape, said Carmen Celestini, religion and social theory scholar from the University of Waterloo. 

Celestini explains how the pandemic caused people to do existential searching for meaning in a time surrounded by mortality, isolation, and increased online-only social interactions. These factors were primary reasons that led to the rise of fringe ideologies, such as Christian nationalist and white supremacist groups, the so-called ‘Manosphere,’ and conspiracy theories such as QAnon, and the so-called Great Reset. 

This kind of Christian extremism — such as reconstructionism or dominionism — is not new to Canada, said Donald Gutstein, a communications professor at Simon Fraser University and co-director of NewsWatch Canada, a media-monitoring project. Its influence and popularity has grown substantially in the years since the pandemic, he said.

Dominionism, as explained by André Gagné, professor of theological studies at Concordia University, “is the theocratic idea that God has called Christians to exercise their authority by taking control of cultural, social, and political institutions of a nation.” Gangé explained that a core tenet maintains that the judicial laws and punishments outlined in the Old Testament remain binding on modern nation-states. 

It is also the belief that man has dominion over all land and resources, regardless of what Indigenous treaties exist or non-human species call it home. 

Celestini expanded on the ideological underpinnings of dominionism. 

“After the flood, God said he would never destroy the land again or destroy humanity again. He said that was the last time,” said Celestini. “Some who interpret this say they have dominion over the land. God gave us oil, God gave us gas, and he wants us to have it and that no harm will come to the planet.”

Pastors involved in resisting vaccine mandates and restrictions on public gatherings, who later joined the 2022 Freedom Convoy, often preach a version of Christianity that seeks to bring Canadian politics and society under biblical principles. 

A coalition of these individuals and churches came together in 2020 to sign the Niagara Declaration as an assertion of the rights of the church, saying the state has no business interfering in the church, pandemic or not. According to a 2023 CBC investigation, several hundred churches around the country signed, and they formed Liberty Coalition Canada, mainly to organize opposition to government lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Amongst them was Tim Stephens, an associate of the Ezra Institute and lead pastor at Fairview Baptist Church in Calgary, who was jailed for 21 days in 2021 for violating pandemic restrictions on public gatherings, but was later acquitted. 

“We saw during the convoy that these folks used it as much for organizing and expanding their network as they did as a protest,” Acuña said. “It was during that convoy that we start to see these large fundamentalist churches, evangelical churches in Alberta, start to join in.” 

Duane Bratt, a professor of international relations and Canadian public policy at the University of Mount Royal, told Ricochet about his recent conversations with separatists in Alberta.

“I was astounded by the amount of people that brought up the Emergencies Act,” he said. “I knew that COVID was linked to it, and anti-vax was linked to it.

“On Canada Day, there was a pro-Alberta separatist rally in Mirror, Alberta at the Whistle Stop Cafe. The owner Chris Scott became a hero during COVID because of the fact he refused to shut down.” 

The rally’s keynote speaker was a German member of the European Parliament with the far-right AfD party, which has faced controversy over members’ pro-Nazi statements. Her remarks “contained some of the most vile anti-Muslim and transphobic vitriol I’ve heard, all of which received great applause” and “illustrated the connection between Christian nationalism and Alberta separatism,” reports journalist Jeremy Appel for the Tyee, after attending the 2025 rally in Mirror.

The transformation of Alberta politics has been a long game

The deep and growing influence of the oil industry can not be understated in Alberta politics. Through lobbying and propaganda efforts, the industry has been laying the groundwork for this moment for years.

Premier Danielle Smith was once the president of the Alberta Enterprise Group — a powerful lobby organization whose membership includes some of the largest oil and gas producers in the world, such as Canadian Natural Resources, the Canadian Heavy Oil Association, the Calgary-based Battle River Energy Ltd., and Canadian Association of Energy Contractors, which lobbies federal and provincial governments representing Canada’s drilling and oil well servicing sector.

Smith is not the only premier that has been involved in the oil industry. As Acuña said, “over the years, you start to see this revolving door between the oil industry and the Alberta government, wherein former MLAs, former premiers, former senior staffers, when they retired from government, would go occupy senior positions in the oil industry and vice versa. 

“Senior oil industry people being brought on board by folks like [former Alberta premier] Ralph Klein to advise on a climate change strategy… So that revolving door has just made the government and the oil industry in Alberta largely one and the same.”

Smith is now using Christian doctrine to advocate for a new oil pipeline to British Columbia. She recently told attendees of a Christian conference that a “biblical passage refers to humankind being entrusted with resources that must be managed carefully for the benefit of other people.” This “fits with how Albertans feel about the resources that are beneath our feet,” she said, in a May report from DeSmog.

The pandemic fundamentally transformed Albertan politics, creating a lasting rupture that led to the separatist movement today. “Other premiers raised the spectre of separatism when they were negotiating with Ottawa, but they never platformed it. Danielle Smith has. Because she’s relied on these folks politically since she came into power as leader of the UCP,” said Acuña. 

This shift of Alberta politics was seen in the ousting of Premier Jason Kenney in 2019.  

Acuña described how the far-right fringe that supports separatism are the same electoral base that turned against Kenney for his unpopular COVID policies. “These same folks actually became responsible for Danielle Smith winning her leadership race. They’re the ones that organize around her and support her and put her into power as leader of the party.”

Similarly, Bratt said, “David Parker and Take Back Alberta, formed around public health restrictions, was successful in mobilizing many people who had never been active before, they were able to overthrow Jason Kenney as leader. They then mobilized and gave their support to Danielle Smith. I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve got the referendum now.”

“In her very first press conference after becoming premier, Smith said that the unvaccinated were the most discriminated group that she’d ever seen in her life,” Bratt said, adding, her endorsement of those who opposed vaccine mandates shows the inclusion of this base into her political tent. 

“Danielle Smith needs them in the tent. She cannot afford to have them split off in a different party because of a fear that the NDP would win. Smith is willing to risk national unity for the sake of party unity.” 

As Alberta journalist Markham Hislop told Ricochet in an interview, “And that’s Smith’s fundamental problem here. So much of her base now is separatism. And she’s really caught between a rock and a hard place.”

Separatism is not the only issue that this base has had success lobbying for, either. 

In recent years, the UCP government has aggressively pursued restrictions on trans rights, even invoking the notwithstanding clause three times to pass regressive policies previously blocked by the courts.

“These fundamentalist churches have had a tremendous amount of power in Alberta to pass legislation about schools,” Acuña said. 

Their lobbying and advocacy can be credited for “passed legislations about LGBTQ rights in schools, banned surgeries and gender-defining action for trans kids in Alberta, banned books across the province and libraries, both public libraries and school libraries. They’re having an impact on that front,” he said.

The Albertan Republicans list 18 Albertan UCP MLAs that they consider allies in the push for separatism. In May, one MLA was forced to step down as parliamentary secretary for constitutional affairs after publicly encouraging people to sign a pro-separatist petition. 

Ricochet contacted the UCP caucus for comment. In an email reply from Daniel Verrier, UCP’s manager of communications and media relations, on behalf of the 18 MLAs, states, “The United Conservative Caucus’ position has been clear in our work to support a strong Alberta within a united Canada. This means Alberta remaining a province of Canada while advancing provincial autonomy and fighting to undo Ottawa policies that harm Albertans and intrude on our constitutional rights.”

Bratt highlighted one cabinet minister, Devin Dreeshen, who worked for Trump in the 2016 election.

“The separatists are upset with the secular society. They’re upset with a multi-religious society,” Bratt said. “They would like to go back to Christian fundamentalism. There’s others that basically want to create a Christian, fundamentalist, conservative, utopia, deport immigrants, and make women have more babies, and everybody will have a gun in their house.”

Cross-border financial ties between Christian extremists and separatists

At the heart of this American-style Christian fundamentalism in Canada is the Ezra Institute, which maintains connections to many U.S. religious figures who hold extreme views on reproductive rights and other social issues. The Institute’s operations and leadership structure is embedded within the cross-border far-right network behind the push for Alberta’s independence. 

Founded in Windsor, Ontario in 2009 by Joseph Boot, it expanded its activities to the U.S. in 2022, incorporating in Texas. The Ezra Institute now employs a U.S. chief of operations, Michael Thiessen, who is also a pastor at Royal Springs Chapel in Georgetown, Kentucky. In 2021, when Thiessen was the Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Alliston, Ontario, he was charged with violating Ontario’s pandemic restrictions after his church allegedly exceeded limits on public gatherings. The charges were later stayed by the Crown.

The Institute is affiliated with a number of radical Christians in the U.S., such as Jeff Durbin, an Arizona pastor who believes women should be charged with homicide if they have an abortion, even if that means they face the death penalty.

As a registered charity, the Ezra Institute operates mainly through donations. Based on CRA filings, it has consistently reported receiving donations exceeding $10,000 from non-Canadian residents. Despite this, details of the organization’s CRA foreign donations remain confidential. 

Following the money through these networks is often opaque. Canadian charity laws offer less transparency than American ones. Organizations can hide their donor lists from the public. This regulatory gap has created an environment where foreign funding can flow into domestic causes with minimal oversight. When the Freedom Convoy raised millions in 2022, leaked donor data revealed that American contributors accounted for more than half of the total raised through one major crowdfunding platform.

In 2024, the Ezra Institute transferred a total of $3.87 million to the registered charity and donor-advised fund Canadian National Christian Foundation. The 2024 financial filings show that more than 87 per cent of the Ezra Institutes expenditures were directed to the CNCF.

These kinds of shifts in financial flows should lead to closer scrutiny, said Greg Thomson, director at Charity Intelligence Canada. “If there are changes in these over time that suggest a lack of disclosure or a question about disclosure, that could be treated as a yellow flag to be examined.” Prior to 2024, the Ezra Institute’s transfers to other organizations remained below the $10,000 mark. 

The CNCF is a major financial intermediary within Canada’s charitable sector, moving tens of millions of dollars each year. The foundation ultimately plays a central role in deciding where charitable money is directed. 

CNCF board member Jonathan Wellum told Ricochet he was not familiar with the Ezra Institute’s 2024 transfer of $3.87 million to the foundation. 

While Canadian law allows cross-border donations and transfers between organizations, there is limited transparency regarding where funds flow through layers of organizations, donor-advised funds and intermediaries, (including across jurisdictions). This lack of transparency is significant given its intersection with political advocacy. 

This is not accidental. Jean-Christophe Boucher, an associate professor of public policy and political science at the University of Calgary, said, “Most organizations are smart enough to not send money directly to political parties but rather advocacy groups or religious groups.” 

The not-so-secret plan to turn Canada into a ‘theocracy’

Many of the same names appear repeatedly across faith-based institutions, media platforms, and organizations, connected in some way to the promotion of Alberta separatism discourse, as well as the Niagara Declaration, the manifesto calling for biblical authority to extend across all areas of public life and every sphere of society.

The document was co-written by three men with close ties to the Ezra Institute: its founder, Joseph Boot; Thiessen; and Aaron Rock, pastor at Harvest Bible Church in Windsor, Ontario. Both Thiessen and Rock also took part in trucker convoy protests, CBC reports. Several signatories of the Niagara Declaration have participated in, and organized, anti-Pride and anti-drag demonstrations. 

On social media and in his writings, Boot has made a number of anti-LGBTQ statements, including comparing gender-affirming care to slavery.

Thiessen is also the founder of Liberty Coalition Canada, the advocacy group that seeks to “transform our country to better reflect Biblical principles” by implementing the principles of the Niagara Declaration. 

At a fundamentalist Christian conference in 2023, CBC investigative journalist Jonathan Montpetit reports that he heard a Liberty Coalition Canada official say that the organization “has a plan to help Christians infiltrate the political system.”

Liberty Coalition Canada claims to have helped more than 100 candidates run in municipal and school board elections across Canada, with the ultimate goal being the “most powerful political disruption in Canadian history” armed with a secret plan to turn Canada “into a theocracy.” 

To do that, it has partnered with the Leadership Institute, a well-funded think-tank based in Virginia that is known for training conservative politicians.

At a conference in Welland Ontario last year, called “All Hail the King: Christ & Government,” hosted by the evangelical Cántaro Institute, the keynote speaker was Idaho-based pastor Doug Wilson, spiritual leader to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and infamous for advocating for the repeal of women’s right to vote and defending chattel slavery. 

At the conference, Wilson participated in a panel alongside Alberta separatist leader Michael Wagner, who is also a senior columnist for the Western Standard, a Canadian right-wing media outlet that achieved some legitimacy in recent years. 

In 2025, Wilson said that Canada, along with the rest of the Commonwealth, has a “covenantal obligation to God.”

Ezra Institute’s founder, Joseph Boot did not fully respond to Ricochet’s questions, however in an email he writes, “We are not a political organization or lobby group and are not involved in lobbying government representatives concerning Alberta separatism.” 

Thiessen has promoted Alberta separatism and other far-right political content in Canada and the U.S., through Ezra Institute’s YouTube channel and the Liberty Coalition Canada’s podcast, Liberty Dispatch, which gets between 10,000 and 50,000 monthly listeners and ranks it 10 among Christian political podcasts, according to Feedspot. 

Through its podcasts and fundraising efforts, Liberty Coalition Canada appears to be seeking a broader audience. In 2023, it raised $1.3 million to recruit hundreds of politicians and campaign staff to run at all levels of government, reports the CBC.

Since 2025, the podcast has become increasingly interested in the question of Canadian sovereignty, releasing a four-part series on the future of the Canada-U.S. relationship in April. Two of those episodes focused exclusively on Alberta. In the same month, the podcast also featured Ezra Institute founder Joseph Boot in an episode titled “Theocracy is inevitable.” The podcast discussed separatism as Alberta’s only option, with host Matthew Hallick and pro-separatist Michael Wagner. 

Wagner told Ricochet they all “share many views about the role of Christianity in government and politics” and would like to see “biblical Christianity have a greater presence in public affairs.” He admits advancing the rhetoric around Alberta separatism, writing in an email that he “spent a lot of time and effort to generate and encourage support for Alberta separatism over the last several years. I hope my endeavours are having an impact.” 

Jonathan Wellum is not only a sponsor of Thiessen’s podcast, but also the Ezra Levant Show (distinct from the Ezra Institute) on Rebel News, a Canadian far-right website.

Rebel News and Levant’s show have both openly advocated for a referendum on Alberta separatism. The Rebel has even publicly announced that they were “officially registering as a third-party campaign group in Alberta to support the upcoming independence referendum.” 

Wellum described Levant as an important counterweight to mainstream news. “Ezra [Levant] keeps all the politicians on their toes,” he said, adding that he would “probably agree with most of his points.”

He said his goal is to advance Christian principles in politics. “I’m a Christian, and I believe that the Christian worldview is the correct worldview,” he said. “I would like to see those principles advance… through trying to elect individuals who share those values and principles.” 

Despite the legal and constitutional hurdles, Wellum called the separatist discourse an expression of genuine frustration and a legitimate form of political leverage against Ottawa.

Far-right, anti-trans, oil-loving separatists still fringe in Alberta

Popular assumptions based on the actions of a small and vocal fringe minority have given the rest of Canada an inaccurate impression about just how conservative most Albertans really are.

Despite perceptions of Alberta being dominated by white, middle-aged ranchers and oil rig workers, Alberta is one of the most urbanized and ethnically diverse provinces in Canada. On social issues such as abortion, gender equality, healthcare, same-sex marriage, and wealth inequality, Albertans consistently poll within the Canadian national average.  

Calgary elected North America’s first Muslim mayor, Naheed Nenshi, in 2010. Alberta has also elected more female premiers than any other province, one of whom, Rachel Notley, led the NDP to a historic majority government in 2015, ending 44 years of Conservative rule in the province.

In a comprehensive survey conducted in nine waves between October 2019 and July 2024, Albertans said they were most likely to self-identify as “moderate,” and second-most likely to identify as “progressive.” 

The same survey also asked participants to place their own political opinions and the political opinions of an imagined “typical Albertan” on a left-right scale. On average, they imagined the typical Albertan to be twelve points further right than they actually were. 

Albertans consistently elect members of the Conservative Party to represent them in Parliament, but according to experts, the province’s long standing loyalty to the Conservative Party has more to do with regional rivalries and a prevailing perception that other parties do not take Albertans’ concerns seriously than any real commitment to social and fiscal conservatism. 

A love of cowboy hats, country music and rodeos may produce an aesthetic similar to Republican states in the southern U.S., but Alberta’s political culture cannot be mapped neatly onto the American political spectrum. Christian reconstructionists are unlikely to find the traditionalism they imagined in the real Alberta. 

“When we talk about the religious landscape in Canada versus the religious landscape in the U.S., we’re really in two different worlds,” said Gagné. 

Alberta is also one of Canada’s least religious provinces. In the most recent census, 2021, a smaller percentage of Albertans identified as Christian than any other province or territory except the Yukon and British Columbia. 

Acuña is optimistic. He says, “We’re seeing the polling numbers right now. Consistently, we’re seeing numbers under 20 per cent of Albertans that would actually vote in favour of separating and voting to leave Canada.”

So, he said, the separatist movement “remains a fringe.”

With files from Alexia Chambers