Alberta separation talk already affecting more than a quarter of surveyed Calgary businesses

Ongoing discourse around the prospect of Alberta separation is emerging as a top concern for Calgary businesses, half of whom say the debate is already impacting the local economy, a new Calgary Chamber of Commerce survey suggests.

In a survey the chamber released Monday, 28 per cent of respondents said talk about Alberta’s separation from Canada was affecting their business, and 88 per cent of them said the impact was negative.

Fifty-one per cent said separation talk was impacting the provincial economy. Of those, 93 per cent said the impact was negative.

When respondents ranked a set of issues facing businesses by importance, 53 per cent put “Alberta separation” at the top of the list, ahead of securing a tariff-free deal with the United States or building new pipeline capacity.

Respondents were also asked where the impact of separatist discourse on Alberta’s economy would most likely be felt. They most commonly identified:

The chamber conducted the survey in partnership with the Alberta Chambers of Commerce (ACC). A total of 594 participants responded, of whom almost 100 were Calgary-based.

Across Alberta, the ACC said that in 2026, 56 per cent of companies found the current discourse around Alberta separation from Canada was impacting the provincial economy.

The push for Alberta to become its own country has led to the chamber’s email inbox being more active than usual, says chamber head Deborah Yedlin.

“Everybody’s talking about it. Are they talking about it publicly? No,” Yedlin said. “But it is a topic of conversation. And certainly, we are getting our inboxes inundated.”

Quebec’s business community is more alert to separatist politics, Yedlin noted. After René Lévesque’s 1976 election, economic activity stalled and parts of the financial sector moved to Toronto.

The prospect of Quebec separatism has once again made headlines in the wake of the Parti Québécois leading the polls in advance of this fall’s provincial election.

“The business community in Quebec is very live to this … they’re more inclined to be visible on issues like this, because they’ve already walked this path and they don’t want to walk it again,” Yedlin said. 

“If it comes to pass that there will be a referendum in Quebec, you won’t see any reticence from the Quebec business community.”

Conversely, Alberta business leaders have been largely quiet on this point. Yedlin isn’t sure when that will change.