51st state? The ultra-right Canadian separatists going behind Carney’s again to satisfy with Trump on secession | EUROtoday

One of Donald Trump’s newest strikes has left America’s neighbor to the north accusing U.S. officers of meddling in Canadian politics as relations between Ottawa and Washington hit a brand new low.

With Donald Trump’s commerce dispute and bullying of fellow NATO nations over management of Greenland rocking the worldwide political panorama, relations between the U.S. and Canada have taken on a sharply oppositional tone.

In January, the Trump White House’s ambassador to Canada warned that the U.S. can be pressured to change the phrases of the NORAD settlement and even fly its personal F-35s into Canadian airspace ought to Canada backtrack on shopping for the planes from the U.S. And one other growth now threatens to shake up the tense understanding Trump now appears to share with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Members of Trump’s staff have been revealed to be in talks with far-right separatists in Alberta centered across the group’s effort to push the province to secede from Canada, which Trump has lengthy stated he wish to make the “51st state.” The revelation shocked Canadian politicians and shortly resulted in accusations of “treason” being lobbed on the group by top-ranking Canadian politicians, like British Columbia Premier David Eby.

Carney and others swiftly denounced the information. He demanded that Trump and the U.S. keep out of the Alberta independence motion, and declared at a information convention final week: “I expect the U.S. administration to respect Canadian sovereignty.”

Eby added in an interview with the CBC on Monday: “If you are crossing a border to seek the support of a foreign government to break up our country because you don’t have the support and the resources and the ability within our own country to advance that conversation, and you’re asking the Americans or any other government, I mean that is the definition of treason.”

Officials on the U.S. State Department have been revealed to have carried out conferences with representatives of the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), a gaggle of right-wing activists searching for the province’s separation from Canada, over the course of 2025. A report from the Financial Times claimed that the group was planning, after a yet-to-be-held independence referendum, to hunt a $500 billion line of credit score from the U.S. Treasury to bankroll the formation of a brand new impartial authorities.

State Department officers and the White House each confirmed the conferences happened, although the U.S. aspect was cautious to say that no commitments have been made.

The APP itself, nonetheless, says reviews of the conferences have been overblown and at the moment are being utilized by the group’s opponents to polarize opinion in opposition to the group inside Canada by tarring it as an effort to affix the United States, relatively than set up Alberta as an impartial state. Trump talked repeatedly all through 2025 about pressuring Canada to affix the U.S. as a state, earlier than shifting his focus to Greenland after vital backlash from the north.

Mitch Sylvestre, the APP’s CEO, spoke with The Independent by cellphone one week after the Times article revealed his group’s conversations with U.S. officers. Sylvestre denied outright that his group had broached any ideas a few $500 billion line of credit score, and careworn that the group hadn’t overstepped its authority or crossed any traces. He’s a longtime critic of Carney and Canada’s Liberal Party, who he has blamed up to now for “destroying our relationship with the United States”.

“You can discuss money; we’re not in a position to discuss money with the U.S. Treasury,” stated Sylvestre. “That’s what they’re using to say, ‘Okay, well, the Americans are coming here, where we would become the 51st state [of the U.S..]’”.

“We’re not in a position to negotiate a half billion dollar line of credit with anybody. So you know, it could never be more than a conversation. And if you’ve ever been to a bank personally, you understand what they want for collateral, and we’re not in a position to do any of that, right?

Sylvestre claimed that Carney’s party and other APP detractors were “100%” attemping to unfold false claims about supposed needs to affix the U.S. as a scare tactic.

“Fear of the U.S. is what cost us the last election,” he stated, pointing to Carney’s resounding win final April. “The reason that they’re pumping that is to scare the hell out of everybody that we’re going to become a 51st state and lose our autonomy and go from one government to the next.”

But the APP’s motion does bear some similarities to MAGA. The core of the group’s message facilities round Alberta’s oil and gasoline industries and a need for native management over a serious driver of financial development and prosperity for the province, which the APP says is being unfairly restricted by Ottawa and Canada’s Liberals. The group’s website additionally faults the federal authorities for its supposed “support of wokeness, cancel culture, critical race theory, the rewriting of history, and the tearing down of historical monuments.” Sylvestre himself vocalised help for “Replacement Theory”, the assumption that whites are being supplanted by different races in western nations, at a city corridor occasion final month.

“If we have control over immigration, we can control who comes here,” stated the APP chief in a single pitch for independence at that occasion, in response to the Edmonton Journal.

One key distinction, although: The group’s restrictions on citizenship hardly go so far as the extremes of Trump’s MAGA coalition. At that very same Jan. 7 city corridor, Sylvestre reportedly referred to as to restrict grants of citizenship to “people who are born here” — the very type of birthright citizenship Trump’s allies are presently attempting to get rid of on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In his interview, Sylvestre recognized one widespread concern the U.S. and APP did share: Fears over Canada’s deepening relationship with China because the U.S.-Canada commerce relationship deteriorates. It may clarify why Trump’s State Department selected to interact with the APP at what Eby, the British Columbian premier, stated was the “worst possible time” for these talks to happen.

Trump has made his opposition to a brand new commerce settlement between Ottawa and Beijing clear. On Saturday, he informed reporters aboard Air Force One that the U.S. would mount a “very substantial response”, together with doubtlessly 100% tariffs on Canadian exports, if a deal was signed. Sylvestre and his group are closely skeptical of broadening Canada’s relationship with China on the expense of the U.S.

“Like why would you not…use the opportunity with the biggest economy in the world, of a people that share your language, most of your values, and basically, you know, are as close to what Canadians are as any other country in the world? Why would you not have a partnership with those people as compared to dealing with communist China?” he requested.

For Trump’s staff, the dialogue with the APP was primarily based on fact-finding, Sylvestre stated. The State Department was within the authorized pathway to secession, which Sylvestre says is constant apace because the group approaches a May 6 deadline for referendum signatures. Those signatures will then go to Alberta’s premier, who will determine whether or not to carry a referendum as soon as the signature threshold is reached.

If nothing else, the endeavor is probably going an effort by the U.S. to press Mark Carney at a time when the president is attempting to get his northern ally to again down on not simply commerce points but in addition his need to amass Greenland, which has shaken up each the U.S.-Canada relationship in addition to relations with NATO nations together with Denmark, which owns Greenland.

The president’s second time period continues to be characterised by his staff’s whole willingness to annihilate international coverage norms and search a rewriting of the worldwide political panorama. With Canada’s proximity to the U.S. in location and tradition, it’s dwelling via the total brunt of Washington’s new outlook.