Trump official backs Canadian secessionists amid feud with prime minister

President Donald Trump holds a Cabinet meeting, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in the Cabinet Room. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

A key official in Donald Trump's Cabinet backed a separatist movement in one of Canada's provinces, according to CTV News, amid an escalating feud between the president and Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared on the right-wing news channel Real America's Voice on Friday, where he touched on the Canadian government blocking the construction of an oil pipeline in Alberta. The secretary suggested that the province ought to leave Canada and either partner with or fully join the U.S. CTV News noted that Bessent is seemingly the most high-ranking American official to back Alberta's separatist movement.

"I think we should let them come down into the U.S. and Alberta's a natural partner for the U.S.," Bessent said. "They have great resources. The Albertans are very independent people... [There is a] rumor that they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not."

He later added, "People are talking. People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got."

Bessent's comments come amid an escalating feud between the Trump administration and the Canadian government. Earlier this year, Carney was able to defy political gravity and lead the Liberal party to an electoral win by strongly opposing Trump's claims that Canada should become the 51st American state. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, Carney gave a speech in which he claimed that the old world order defined by American hegemony was over, and urged the "middle powers" of the world to join forces and stand up to the U.S.

“Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said. “I will talk today about the breaking of the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraint. Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry.That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

In his own Davos speech later, Trump suggested that Canada ought to be "grateful” for the “freebies" it gets from the U.S. and claimed that "Canada lives because of the United States." He also later rescinded Canada's invite from his contentious "Board of Peace" initiative, which has been poorly received by all but the most Trump-friendly nations.

Alberta's separatist movement has been active since the 20th century, basing its arguments largely on conflicts with the Canadian federal government over the province's major petroleum industry, as well as its supposedly distinct cultural identity from the rest of Canada and its major reliance on trade with the U.S. A petition is currently gathering signatures in an effort to prompt a referedum vote on formally separating from Canada.

Despite that history, separatism remains a largely unpopular position in Alberta, even if the support for it is not negligible. In a survery released earlier this month, Pollara Strategic Insights found that three-fourths of respondents in the province opposed leaving the rest of Canada, though organizers of the referendum position claim that this is not reflected in the enthusiasm they have seen in the field. Other polls suggest that while many Albertans are frustrated by their relationship with Ottawa, they do not view leaving the country entirely as a viable solution.

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