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An overwhelming majority of Canadians want Alberta to remain part of a unified Canada and would vote for their own province to do the same, according to new data from Ipsos exclusively for Global News.
A full 81 per cent of respondents outside of Alberta said they want the Wild Rose province to remain part of Canada, with just nine per cent saying they want the province to leave.
The desire for Alberta to remain in Canada was weaker in Quebec, which is having their own conversation about independence. But 69 per cent of respondents in that province still wanted Alberta to reject separation.
Overall, Ipsos said their data suggests that Canadians are feeling more united despite separatist sentiment taking up the oxygen in Quebec and Alberta.
“The country’s more united right now, especially around the (trade) war with the United States … and dealing with Donald Trump and other issues, than they were in 2019,” said Gregory Jack, a senior vice president with Ipsos Global Affairs.
“(That’s) despite the fact that, you know, it feels like the country is really divided with a potential referendum in Quebec and a referendum here in Alberta.”
Just 16 per cent of respondents nationally — excluding Albertans — felt that their provinces would be better off if they separated from Canada, and just 22 per cent of Albertans agreed. Both numbers are down since Ipsos asked the same question in 2019, when 33 per cent of Albertans said they’d be better off alone.
Only 23 per cent of Canadians outside of Alberta said they felt less committed to Canada than a few years ago, with 28 per cent of Albertans saying they felt that way. Again, the percentage of Albertans who agreed with the sentiment was down sharply since 2019.
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Canadians outside of Alberta were less likely than those in Alberta to feel their province was not getting its fair share from Ottawa, with just 26 per cent of respondents saying their province doesn’t get a fair shake. Nearly one in two Albertans (48 per cent) told the pollster their province didn’t get a fair deal from Confederation.
Among Albertans, that number is down from 51 per cent in January 2026 and 65 per cent in 2019.
“The major outlier is the measure on whether the province gets its fair share from Confederation, where Albertans remain more likely than other Canadians to believe this is the case,” Ipsos said in its polling results.
“The data suggest Albertans, while feeling closer to the national average on many measures, still want a discussion on benefits from Confederation, but that it doesn’t necessarily translate to desire to separate.”
Albertans will vote in a referendum next month that asks, among other questions, if they want to start the legally required process to hold a formal vote on separation. A victory for the separatists on Oct. 19 would kick off campaigning in earnest for both the separatists and those who want the province to remain within Canada.
Ipsos found that a strong majority (70 per cent) of Albertans want to remain part of Canada, while 20 per cent want to hold a referendum on separation. But Ipsos found that the separatist vote may be softer than believed.
If the province moves to holding a binding referendum on separation, the number of respondents who would vote to stay rises to 84 per cent, while just 16 per cent would vote for separation. That suggests more people want to hold a referendum than want to actually leave the country.
“Rural Albertans, older Albertans and male Albertans are more likely to say that they want to go and younger Allbertans, more urban Albertans here in Calgary or in Edmonton are more likely to see that they’re going to want to stay,” Jack said.
“We should see perhaps some more movement in the next couple of weeks as the referendum gets closer, but a lot people have a position on this. I think that they took it earlier in the campaign and they haven’t really changed their position whether they’re on the ‘yes’ side or the ‘no’ side.”
Both Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party are committed to campaigning for Alberta to remain a province in Canada — although Ipsos’ had some surprising numbers about which politician might be better suited to arguing that position with Albertans.
In more bad news for Poilievre, Ipsos’ findings suggest Carney is more popular than he is in Alberta — traditionally the Conservatives’ heartland, and the province Poilievre now represents in the House of Commons.
Just over half (51 per cent) of Albertans said they had a favourable view of Carney, compared to 35 per cent who viewed the prime minister unfavourably. For Poilievre, support was more divided — with 44 per cent of Albertans viewing him favourably, compared to 40 per cent unfavourably.
“That’s something we don’t often see in Alberta,” Jack noted.
“(Carney) hasn’t played a key role so far in the referendum, but obviously these numbers suggest that he could in the future.”
The Ipsos poll was conducted for Global News between Sept. 18 and 22, and surveyed 1,500 voting-aged Canadians — 600 in Alberta, and 900 in the rest of Canada. A similar poll of 1,500 Canadians would be considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points. Regional and demographic breakdowns are less accurate than overall numbers.
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