Our former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was very proactive when it came to climate change. Alberta’s biggest industry is oil and gas, so this pissed them off because they weren’t making as much money as they could have been. Their oil and gas sectors also make a lot of money for the country and they are upset that some of it gets sent to Ottawa and redistributed. And Alberta doesn’t have much say in federal elections because their population pales in comparison to Ontario and Quebec, who have more voting power to reflect that.

So the separatists gathered enough signatures to have a referendum but the courts ruled that down because it violates the agreements the government has with First Nations. So the premier changed it by making it a referendum to have a referendum, which bypassed this legal restriction.

The separatists groups have been collaborating with the Trump administration, who are backing the separatist side of the campaign which has caused a lot of anger here in Canada.

The separatist side is very unpopular, even within Alberta, and this is widely considered to be a waste of time and resources. But Alberta has very permissive laws around direct democracy, so the threshold for triggering a referendum on any topic is quite low, you just need a relatively small number of signatures.