While Quebec parties have long sought independence, the secret meetings by unelected Albertans with US officials have been branded treasonous by some
A separatist push for a referendum on independence from Canada. Meetings with foreign officials perceived to be sympathetic to their cause. Accusations of treason and sedition.
Ahead of a 1995 referendum, leaders of Quebec’s independence movement made a string of provocative overtures to foreign governments, including a trip by the province’s premier to France. In a move that outraged anglophone Canada, the mayor of Paris gave Quebec’s Jacques Parizeau a welcome befitting a national leader.
Three decades later, reports of a far more covert visit to the US by a group of would-be separatists from the western province of Alberta have provoked a similar backlash, reviving longstanding anxieties about foreign involvement in domestic unity debates.
“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that,” British Columbia’s premier, David Eby, told reporters. “And that word is treason.”
