By Daniel Béland

January 3, 2026

After Donald Trump returned to the White House nearly a year ago, his trade war and talk about Canada becoming the “51st state” fostered a greater sense of national unity on this side of the border, reflected at the time in polling data suggesting a surge in national pride across the country.

At the same time, 2025 witnessed ongoing discussions about possible independence referendums in two provinces: Alberta and Quebec.

Today, the consequences of such referendums could include increasing economic and political uncertainty and creating a potential window of opportunity for foreign interference, most ominously within the hemispheric resource-appropriation designs of Donald Trump as telegraphed in his recent National Security Strategy and, in a development still unfolding at this writing, his regime change-operation in Venezuela.

In Alberta, Danielle Smith’s government cut the threshold of signatures needed to trigger an independence referendum from 20% to 10% of eligible voters, making it much easier for supporters of independence to catalyze the process of separation.

Currently, there are two approved citizen initiative petitions circulating: Alberta Forever Canada, which is backed by anti-independence former MLA Thomas Lukaszuk, and A Referendum Relating to Alberta Independence, an initiative backed by pro-independence Alberta Prosperity Project CEO Mitch Sylvestre.

The first of these two petitions has already attracted more than the number of required signatures, and the second one, which was only approved by Elections Alberta on December 22, has four months in total to achieve the same goal.

A key difference between these two petitions is the formulation of the proposed referendum question at hand: “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada” (Alberta Forever Canada) and “Do you agree that the province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?” (A Referendum Relating to Alberta Independence).

In Quebec, the Party Quebecois (PQ) remained clearly ahead in the polls throughput 2025, a year during which the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government of Premier François Legault faced ongoing public relations disasters such as the backlash against Bill 2 on medical access and physician compensation. Despite all of this, Premier Legault, who is currently the least popular premier in the country, said he was not going anywhere, depriving the CAQ of a leadership race that could sufficiently revive its fortunes to present an electoral challenge to the PQ.

The divisiveness of an independence referendum held in the near future in any Canadian province would make the country look more vulnerable, regardless of the outcome of that referendum.

As for the Liberal Party of Quebec (LPQ), its members picked Pablo Rodriguez as their new leader in June but he resigned in December amid a criminal investigation into alleged financial impropriety during the LPQ leadership race. Although the LPQ will have a new leader by March 15, the party now also faces an uphill battle against the PQ ahead of the scheduled October 5th elections.

At this writing, the PQ is well ahead in the polls less than nine months to go, which is a worrying situation for federalists, especially because the PQ’s leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, keeps repeating his pledge that, if he becomes premier in the fall, his government would hold a referendum on the independence of Quebec by 2030.

All of this should give Prime Minister Mark Carney pause at a time when his government wants to focus on the economy, trade, and Canada-U.S. relations amid the impending review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

An optimist take on the potentially disruptive-at-best/existential-at-worst referendum possibilities in Alberta and Quebec is that the uncertain economic and geopolitical fostered by the Trump administration will stack the odds in favour of national unity, as independence is an especially risky proposition is times of acute uncertainty.

This is the argument of Abacus CEO and founder David Coletto, who reports from his public opinion research that the ongoing prevalence of a “precarity mindset” makes people more risk adverse and therefore less likely to support independence. Drawing on a political psychology perspective, he suggests that support for independence in both Alberta and Quebec is capped because of acute perceptions of economic risks exacerbated by the discourse and policies of President Trump.

In this environment, according to Coletto, “The question is no longer simply Ottawa versus the provinces. It is Canada versus an increasingly unstable North American environment. In that context, Canada looks less like a constraint and more like a shield.” For Coletto, the odds are high that, if organized soon, an independence referendum in Alberta or even in Quebec would lead to a “no” vote and, therefore, the preservation of national unity.

In the case of Quebec, we should add that the current absence of a strong political trigger similar to the death of the Meech Lake Accord, which helped pave the road to the 1995 referendum, would make it harder for supporters of independence to boost the emotional appeal of their option among francophone voters.

Yet it is important to keep in mind that, even when they lead to the preservation of a united status quo, independence referendums have consequences, for instance by increasing the perceived legitimacy of independence as an option.

Certainly, the divisiveness of an independence referendum held in the near future in any Canadian province would make the country look more vulnerable, regardless of the outcome of that referendum.

With a predatory neighbour watching for any domination opportunity to exploit, this is something Albertans, Quebecers, and the Carney government should keep in mind as the debate evolves through 2026 and beyond.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.