Western alienation, in the context ofCanadian politics, refers to the notion that theWestern provinces—British Columbia,Alberta,Saskatchewan andManitoba—have been marginalized within Confederation, particularly compared toCentral Canada, which consists of Canada's two most populous provinces,Ontario andQuebec. Expressions of western alienation frequently allege thatEastern Canada is politically over-represented and receives out-sized economic benefits at the expense of western Canadians.^[1]

Western alienation has a long history within Canada, dating back to the nineteenth century. It has led to the establishment of many Western regional political parties at both the provincial and federal levels and from both theright andleft sides of the political spectrum, although since the 1980s western alienation has been more closely associated with and espoused by conservative politicians. While such movements have tended to express a desire for a larger place for the west within Confederation, western alienation has at times resulted in calls for western separatism and independence. Given this long history, western alienation has had a profound impact on the development of Canadian politics.

According to a 2019 analysis byGlobal News, Western alienation is considered especially potent inAlberta andSaskatchewan politics.^[2] However, alienation sentiments vary over time and place. For instance, a 2010 study published by theCanada West Foundation found that such sentiments had decreased across the region in the first decade of the twenty-first century.^[3] More recently, a 2019Ipsos poll found historically high levels of support for secession from Canada in both Alberta and Saskatchewan.^[4]

UponConfederation in 1867, the new Dominion of Canada consisted only of Ontario, Quebec,New Brunswick, andNova Scotia. However, what was then known as the North-West—much of it officiallyRupert's Land and owned by theHudson's Bay Company—was already a significant factor in Canadian plans.^[5][6] Among the country's founders,George Brown was particularly insistent that the North-West was the key to Canadian prosperity, offering resources, plentiful land for agricultural settlement, and the potential for a captive market for eastern manufacturers.^[5][7] In 1869, HBC gave up its control of Rupert's Land, which became part of Canada in 1870 under the nameNorth-West Territories.^[8]

The first CanadianPrime Minister,John A. Macdonald, designed theNational Policy to integrate the North-West Territories into Canada and to develop it economically as part of a Canadian economy. The key planks of the National Policy were the building of atrans-continental railway that would connect the east to British Columbia, help to settle and populate the west, and easily ship goods across the country (mostly grain and agricultural products grown in the Prairies, manufactured goods produced in central Canada); immigration to populate the Prairies withhomesteaders; andtariffs to protect Canadian manufacturers.^[9][10] The protectionist tariffs were an immediate issue in the North-West, as it effectively forced western farmers to purchase more expensive equipment from eastern Canadian manufacturers rather than less-expensive farm equipment from manufacturers in theUnited States, and it impacted prices for farm products—farmers of the North-West Territories therefore favoured free trade between Canada and the U.S.^[11] This began a long battle between farmers on the prairies and the federal government and led to the establishment of farmers' organizations to help control grain shipping and marketing, and to agitate politically for free trade and economic protection for farmers as well.^[12] Eventually, farmers entered the political sphere directly, formingUnited Farmers parties and theProgressive Party, both of which helped to lay a foundation for a national democratic-socialist party,Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).^[13][14]

The first province established in the North-West was Manitoba, and it entered Confederation under unusual circumstances. Negotiations were instigated at the behest of theMétis atRed River, who were wary of losing their land and rights as Canada encroached upon the territory. After the quelling of theRed River Resistance, Manitoba entered Confederation as a small province—it was jokingly derided as the "postage stamp province"—with limited rights, including a lack of control over its natural resources.^[15]

British Columbia negotiated its own entry in 1871, but it was better positioned than the rest of the North-West and demanded and got a promise of the construction of a trans-continental railway.^[16]

By the turn of the twentieth century, agitation for provincehood for the rest of the North-West increased as the land settlement grew. NWT premierFrederick Haultain proposed the creation of a large province between Manitoba and British Columbia, for which he favoured the nameBuffalo.^[17] However, some in the federal government, wary of creating too powerful of a province, opposed the creation of such a large province in the west.^[18] The result was the 1905 establishment of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, both of which were not given control of their resources, like Manitoba a generation earlier.^[19] To protest this, Haultain led theProvincial Rights Party in Saskatchewan from 1905 until 1912.

While each of these provinces received federal grants as compensation for this lack of resource control, it remained a significant issue until 1930, when theNatural Resources Transfer Acts finally gave those provinces control of their own resources.^[20]

The Prairie provinces were by far the most impacted by theGreat Depression. The economic depression was deepened on the Prairies by drought anddust bowl conditions, and all together farmers across the region were impoverished. Getting little in the way of relief from the federal government, the region was the slowest to recover from the Depression, which only passed with the arrival of theSecond World War and the consequent revival in manufacturing, primarily benefiting business interests inCentral Canada.^[21] The depression caused the establishment of two parties that would dominate politics in Alberta and Saskatchewan for much of the next half-century-Social Credit and theCCF, both of which drew on the legacy of theUnited Farmer movements. The two new parties sought to transform economic and social conditions on the Prairies, albeit from different ideological positions, and their successes contributed to a tempering of western alienation for much of the middle of the twentieth century.^[22] A related factor was an increased focus on resource development on the Prairies. This succeeded, filled provincial coffers and buoyed a recovery from the Depression.^[23]

WhenJohn Diefenbaker became prime minister as the leader of aProgressive Conservative government in 1957, this also marked a shift in western relations. Diefenbaker, hailing from Saskatchewan, considered himself an unabashed champion of western interests, and his popularity helped to align conservatism at the federal level with the needs of Prairie farmers.^[24]

Before the Second World War, western alienation was principally rooted in a sense of being unequal in Confederation and held back in economic development—in a sense, the notion that the west was a colony of eastern Canada. This changed after the war, when the prairie provinces in particular became more prosperous, based largely on newfound resource wealth. Feelings of alienation returned in the 1970s, but by then were based principally on a sense of unjustified intrusion by the federal government into western economic interests. In part, this was an outcome of the expansion of the federal state in the postwar period, and in part this was due to the rising economic power of the prairie provinces. It had largely to do with debates overfederalism versus decentralization in Canadian politics.The1970s energy crises led to rapid increases in energy resource prices, which produced windfall profits in the energy-rich western provinces. The1974 federal budget fromPierre Trudeau'sLiberal government terminated the deduction of provincial natural resources royalties from federal tax. According toRoy Romanow—then Saskatchewan's attorney general—this move kicked off the "resource wars", a confrontation between Trudeau's federal government and the prairie provinces over the control of and revenues from natural resource extraction and energy production.^[25]

Following an increase in the worldprice of oil between 1979 and 1980, Trudeau's government introduced theNational Energy Program (NEP), which was designed to increase Canadian ownership in the oil industry, increase Canada's oil self-sufficiency, and redistribute the wealth generated by oil production with a greater share going to the federal government.^[26] While the program was meant to mitigate the effect of higher gas prices in eastern Canada, it was extremely unpopular in the west due to the perception that the federal government was implementing unfair revenue sharing.^[27] In response, a quote from future Alberta PremierRalph Klein—then the mayor ofCalgary—featured prominently onbumper stickers in that province: "Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark".^[28] The program was ultimately repealed in 1985.

Resource rights were prominent in negotiations of thePatriation of the Canadian Constitution in the early 1980s. Alberta and Saskatchewan premiersPeter Lougheed andAllan Blakeney negotiated to ensure that provincial resource rights were enshrined inSection 92A of theConstitution.^[29]

Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives replaced the Liberals with an historic majority in the1984 election. However, Mulroney was seen as similarly neglectful of western Canada, which led to the establishment of the conservativeReform Party in 1987.^[30] Led byPreston Manning—son of former Alberta Social Credit premierErnest Manning—Reform campaigned on the slogan "The West Wants In". Despite controversy over the party'ssocial conservatism, it surged to third party status in 1993, winning 52 seats—all but one of them in Western Canada—in thefall election while the PCs were reduced to just 2. In the 1997 election, Reform became the Official Opposition. In 2000, Reform rebranded as theCanadian Alliance in an attempt to appeal to voters beyond Western Canada; in 2003, the party merged with the PCs to form theConservative Party of Canada, the power base of which has since resided in the west.^[31]

The twenty-first century has seen a resurgence of western alienation sentiments, which coincided again with the boom and bust of commodity prices.^[32]Paul Martin stated that addressing western alienation was one of his two priorities when he became prime minister in 2003.^[33] In 2007, he said he had learned that the phenomenon ebbs and flows, and by the end of that decade such sentiments were reported to have decreased.^[3][33] However, particularly since the 2015 election of a Liberal federal government under the leadership ofJustin Trudeau—the son of Pierre Trudeau—western alienation has reached heights not seen since the 1980s.^[34][35] This has largely to do with perceptions of federal overreach by a governing party that has frequently been shut out of much of the Prairies. In particular, federal environmental policy and efforts at addressingclimate change, such as thePan-Canadian Framework, have been at the core of contemporary western alienation, stoking fears of a forced economic downturn for key resource industries. However, this resurgence of western alienation also coincided with a major downturn in commodity prices after 2014.^[36]

Governments in both Alberta and Saskatchewan have characterized federal environmental policy as an attack on their respective resource industries, and therefore as a threat to their provinces' economic stability. TheSaskatchewan Party, especially under the leadership ofScott Moe since 2018, and since its formation in 2017 Alberta'sUnited Conservative Party—currently under the leadership ofDanielle Smith—have positioned themselves in opposition to Ottawa, and sought greater autonomy within Canada. At the same time, polling has consistently suggested that Alberta and Saskatchewan residents perceive the federal government as harmful to their province's interests.^[2][4][35] Moreover, residents in British Columbia and Manitoba have also indicated a sense of rising resentment towards Ottawa, and residents in all four western provinces indicated that they would support a new "Western Canada Party" at the federal level to advocate for the region's interests.^[37]

Also at question is the degree to which westerners identify more with their region or province than with the country. 2018 polling suggested that 76% of western Canadians felt a sense of "unique western Canadian identity", the same percentage that said so in 2001.^[38] Governments have at times contributed to such sentiments. For example, Scott Moe in 2021 called for recognition of Saskatchewan as a "nation within a nation"—drawing on terminology frequently employed by Quebec nationalists—and argued that the province has its own "cultural identity".^[39] In 2023, Saskatchewan made it mandatory for schools in the province to fly theprovincial flag, which the government indicated was meant to increase pride in provincial identity.^[40]

The federal effort to institute acarbon tax across the country has been a significant point of contention. Saskatchewan—which was later joined by Alberta along with Ontario—challenged the constitutionality of theGreenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act in court. The challenge was first launched in April 2018, and in March 2021 theSupreme Court of Canada ruled that the Act is constitutional.^[41] The western provinces found some success in their constitutional challenge against federal environmental impact assessment legislation, as the Supreme Court ruled in October 2023 that portions of the 2019Impact Assessment Act dealing with "designated projects" outside of federal jurisdiction were unconstitutional.^[42] An amendedImpact Assessment Act received royal assent in June 2024.^[43]

In 2022, both Alberta and Saskatchewan passed new legislation to affirm their control over natural resources and to try and mitigate the encroachment of federal power. TheAlberta Sovereignty Act and theSaskatchewan First Act were both introduced in November 2022.^[44][45]

Alberta and Saskatchewan have made other efforts to distance themselves from Ottawa. Both have frequently criticized the equalization payment scheme as unfair. In his call for "A New Deal with Canada", Moe has signaled a desire for more control over taxation and immigration, and Saskatchewan has introduced plans to create a provincial police force.^[46][47] Smith has opened discussions about Alberta withdrawing from theCanada Pension Plan and starting its own.^[48]

Since 2019, a number of popular protests have organized convoys to Ottawa to take demands directly to the federal government, something that has a long tradition in western Canada dating back to the early twentieth century, including the attemptedOn-to-Ottawa Trek during the Great Depression. In particular, large convoy protests in 2018 and 2022 have received international attention.^[36][49][50] The first of these convoys was organized by the "yellow vests movement", which drew inspiration from the 2018 Frenchyellow vests protests. The Canadian protest demanded, among other things, the elimination of the federal carbon tax. The second was the self-styled "freedom convoy", which purported to be focused on protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but shared many of the same organizers and resources as the 2018 protest. In both cases, the extent to which the convoys were supported by western Canadians was a subject of debate; for example, a 2022 study suggested that fewer than 20% of Albertans thought positively of the convoy protest.^[51] Moreover, several studies have indicated that these protests included a high degree offar-right political elements, including xenophobic and conspiratorial elements.^[52][53][54]

Particularly since the 1970s, when the resource-based economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan began to see rapid growth, the idea of separatism and independence for western provinces—on their own or in some combination together—has at times gained political traction and led to the creation of new movements and parties working towards that end. Such sentiment did not arise in a vacuum, with agitation forQuebec sovereignty reaching new heights in the 1970s. The extent to which agitation for western sovereignty has merely been a "bargaining tool" for the west, as former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau characterized it in 1980, has been debated, and western Premiers, including Peter Lougheed, have tended to downplay any push for secession.^[55] Parties advocating for western secession have tended to fare poorly at the polls.

While movements like theReform Party stated that they were dedicated to realizing a bigger role for the west within Canada, other movements, like theWestern Canada Concept, founded in 1980, argued that the west would be better off carving out its own nation, and was politically and economically capable of doing so.^[56] Although envisioned as a federal movement, Western Canada Concept never ran candidates in a federal election. However, it did field provincial branches in each of the western provinces. It found its biggest success in Alberta, whereGordon Kesler won a 1982 by-election under the WCC banner; in that year's general election, the party was one candidate short of a full slate and earned 12% of the vote, although none of its candidates were elected.^[57] During Saskatchewan's20th Legislature, two sitting MLAs—Bill Sveinson andLloyd Hampton—took up the WCC banner. However, the party failed to have any candidates elected in the 1986 election.

The short-lived Unionest Party in Saskatchewan offered another separatist option in that province. Former Progressive Conservative leaderDick Collver founded the party in 1980, and advocated for a secession of western provinces and a subsequent union with theUnited States—Unionest was a contraction of "best" and "union". This was seen as "traitorous" by some, and somewhat ironic given that one factor in Canada's acquisition of the west was to avoid its annexation by the US.^[58]

Other such movements that arose to advocate for secession include theWestern Independence Party, which fielded candidates in federal and provincial elections from 1988 into the twenty-first century, and theWestern Block Party.^[59]

Separatist sentiment began to re-emerge ahead of the2019 federal election, with one study indicating record levels of separatist sentiment in Alberta and Saskatchewan.^[18][34] In the wake of the 2019 election—which saw the governing Liberal Party shut out from both Alberta and Saskatchewan—the "Wexit" movement consolidated this new wave of separatist sentiment.^[36] A play on the British "Brexit" movement, Wexit established federal and provincial branches to advocate for western secession, and adopted a reversed version of Preston Manning's slogan: "The West Wants Out".^[60] In 2020, Wexit Canada rebranded as theMaverick Party;^[61] Wexit Alberta merged with theFreedom Conservative Party to form theWildrose Independence Party;^[62] and Wexit Saskatchewan rebranded as theBuffalo Party.^[63] Wexit BC was de-registered in 2022.^[64]

In the2020 Saskatchewan provincial election, the Buffalo Party ran just 17 candidates but received 2.6% of the popular vote, more than any other third party, and finished second in a handful of rural ridings.^[65] The result prompted Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe to state that his Saskatchewan Party—which handily won a majority government—"share your frustrations", and to call for more "independence" from Ottawa, although he downplayed talk of secession.^[66] Ahead of the2021 federal election, the Maverick Party stated that it was trying to emulate the model laid out by theBloc Québécois.^[67] However, the party failed to gain traction in the election, earning just over 1% of the vote in each of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Then-interim leaderJay Hill acknowledged after the election that focusing on separatism created "a certain degree of discomfort with most westerners who aren’t prepared at this point to go that far."^[68] Although Maverick did not officially endorse the 2022 convoy protest that occupied Ottawa, many of its members supported it and one of the party's secretaries,Tamara Lich, was a key convoy organizer.^[69] The party ultimately lost momentum and was de-registered in 2025.^[70] There are also signs of the movement losing traction in Saskatchewan. After its surprising 2020 performance, the Buffalo Party fell to sixth place in the2024 provincial election, earning less than 1% of the popular vote.^[71]

In the wake of the2025 Canadian federal election, which resulted in the Liberal Party being re-elected to a fourth term, this time under the leadership ofMark Carney, United Conservative Party members reignited agitation for Alberta separatism.^[72] The day after the election, Danielle Smith introduced legislative changes to make it easier for citizens to trigger a referendum.^[73]

It was revealed in 2014 that Roy Romanow'sNew Democratic Party government in Saskatchewan held secret meetings to discuss contingencies for the event of a successful secession vote in the1995 Quebec referendum, including the possibility of following suit and potentially courting annexation by the United States. Romanow stated that Allan Blakeney had held similar discussions ahead of the1980 Quebec referendum. He further explained that, in his view, secession for Saskatchewan "would not make sense economically and socially".^[74]

In the 1980s, Pierre Trudeau called talk of western alienation and separatism a "bargaining tool" for the west, and urged the west to find ways to get more representation in the federal government.^[55] For his part, given the lack of Liberal representation in the west—his party won only two seats west of Ontario, both of them in Manitoba—Trudeau took the uncommon step of appointing westernsenators to his cabinet.^[75][76]

Amidst criticism that the federal government was inhibiting pipeline development, Justin Trudeau's Liberals purchased theTrans Mountain pipeline in 2018 to try and help ensure the completion of itsexpansion project, which has before and since been mired in financial uncertainty.^[77][78]

First Nations leaders have often asserted that they have been forgotten in discussions of western alienation. Given that First Nations in Canada have direct relationships with the federal government, and the large number of First Nations in western Canada, such assertions complicate those discussions. This is particularly true in British Columbia, where a large number of First Nations have never entered into treaty agreements with the federal government.^[79]

In recent years, Indigenous leaders have pushed back against talk of western alienation, particularly talk of western separatism. In 2019,Assembly of First Nations National ChiefPerry Bellegarde said that First Nations consent would be required for any secession, given that "provincial boundaries came after treaty territories", further adding that western leaders "have to be careful when you go down that road of Western alienation... We have inherent rights... and those are international agreements with the Crown."^[80]Saskatoon Tribal Council Chief Marc Arcand added that any western province "does not have the authority to decide if they want to separate".^[80] First Nations chiefs fromTreaty 8 territory also released a statement in 2019, declaring that they were "strongly opposed to the idea of separation from Canada."^[81] In 2025, two First Nations chiefs in Alberta again pushed back against separatist rhetoric, addressing a letter to Danielle Smith, urging the Premier to respect Treaty rights and stop stoking separatist sentiments.^[82] First Nations leaders have been similarly vocal in their opposition to the 2022 Alberta Sovereignty and Saskatchewan First Acts, arguing that they infringe on treaty rights and circumvent their relationship with the Crown. Both Acts were drafted without consultation with Indigenous communities.^[83]

The following is a list of federal and provincial political parties that were founded in response to western alienation, to advance western interests within Canada, or to promote western independence. Some such parties, like the CCF and Reform, have merged with other entities to become truly national parties.

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