'Make Alberta Great Again' hat
© NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesA 'Make Alberta Great Again' hat during the event Help Us Make Sovereignty for Alberta Happen, organized by the Alberta Prosperity Project in March last year.
A new bombshell report in Financial Times says that US officials have held recent talks with Canadian separatists seeking to break Alberta, Canada's oil-rich western province, away from Ottawa.

"Officials in the [US President] Donald Trump administration discussed loaning Alberta $500 million to break up Canada and make it the 51st state," one source told the FT.

This follows on the heels of Trump earlier this month posting a fictitious map showing Canada as part of the United States. The report also comes days after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech in Davos before the World Economic Forum (WEF). He called out President Trump for creating a "rupture" in the existing world order.

Carney has also told his parliament, "The world has changed. Washington has changed. There is almost nothing normal in the US now - that's the truth."

Trump famously fired back: "Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements" while adding that Carney "wasn't so grateful" and that Canada "gets a lot of freebies from us."

Recall too the words of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at Davos: "Alberta is a natural partner for the US. People are talking. People want sovereignty. They want what the US has got."

And now the FT article, along with other media, claim Trump is destabilizing Canada by these secret meetings between the Canadian separatists and "very, very senior" officials in the US administration.

Jeff Rath, legal adviser to the movement in question - the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) - has gone so far as to proclaim that Washington is pushing for an "independent" Alberta.

APP leaders are now seeking follow-up meetings with the US State and Treasury Departments next month to request a $500 million credit facility to bankroll secession, while also pressing for US recognition and new pipeline routes that would bypass Canadian federal approval, according to the reports. They are said to be 'taking advantage' of the ongoing friction between the US and its northern neighbor.


Comment: It's all about the oil.


Sources briefed on the discussions told the Financial Times that representatives from the province, where it turns out Carney himself was raised, have met with US State Department officials in Washington on no less than three separate occasions over the past nine months.

Per The Daily Beast, a State Department spokesperson has admitted that the meetings took place but suggested nothing has been agreed to, stressing that "no commitments were made."

That same report cites Carlo Dade from the Canada West Foundation, a Calgary think tank, who described: "The Americans are more than happy to continue to play Canadians off each other."