Canadians Outside of Alberta Overwhelmingly Want Alberta to Stay in Canada

A strong majority of Canadians outside of Alberta want to see Alberta remain in Canada, Only Quebeckers (69%) were less likely to say they wanted Alberta to remain, and this may be due to solidarity sentiment among separatists.

Canadians across Canada were also overwhelmingly against their own province separating from Canada. Again, Quebec was the outlier, with 62% saying they would vote to stay in Canada, compared to 29% of Quebeckers who said they would vote to separate.

The numbers suggest that Canadians are untied in both supporting Alberta remaining part of Canada, as well as their own province.
 

Despite discussion over separation in both Alberta and Quebec, Canadians are more united than they were in 2019.  

While 48% of Albertans say their province does not get its fair share from Confederation, that number has dropped from 65% in 2019 and 51% in January 2026.  Likewise, only 22% of Albertans now say their province would be better off if it separated from Canada, compared to 33% in 2019. 32% of Albertans now feel their views are adequately represented in Ottawa, now close to the national average and up 14 points since 2019.  And less Albertans – 28% now compared to 38% in 2019 – say they feel less committed to Canada than they did a few years ago.

These numbers suggest that Canada has become more united, and Albertans – with the exception of a diminishing minority – are becoming more aligned with the national norms on measures relating to national unity.  

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.

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.
 

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between September 18 and 22, 2026, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,500 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online, including 600 Alberta residents and 900 rest of Canada residents. These data were statistically weighted by region, age, gender and education to ensure the sample composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to Census data. The precision of Ipsos polls containing online data is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the overall poll of 1,500 Canadians is accurate to within +/- 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all adult Canadian residents been polled. Questions asked of Albertans only (n=600) have a credibility interval of +/- 4.9 percentage points. Questions asked of Canadians outside Alberta (n=900) have a credibility interval of +/- 4.0 percentage points. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

For more information on this news release, please contact:
Darrell Bricker, PhD
Chairman, Ipsos Canada
+1 416 324 2001
[email protected]
 

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