Alberta premier Danielle Smith is using publicly funded propaganda campaigns to push Alberta one step closer to potential separation from Canada. She’s doing this by manipulating public sentiment in support of pulling out of the established Canada Pension Plan (CPP) to create an Alberta Pension Plan (APP).

The premier is discussing the possibility of holding a referendum on Alberta’s future within the CPP, seemingly to appease Alberta separatism, which currently accounts for 22 percent of the population and appears to be on the rise. To support this, her government has released a report, initiated by her predecessor Jason Kenney but never released, claiming that an APP would be entitled to more than half of the CPP’s assets. This dubious calculation is based on the total contributions made by Albertans to the plan since its inception in 1965.

In essence, Smith is running a $5 million USD publicly funded partisan ad campaign to convince Albertans of the merit of gambling away their life savings. Meanwhile, her government has launched a preposterous online survey to gather opinions on how the assumed savings from the APP should be allocated. Notably, the survey fails to address the crucial question of whether respondents favor withdrawing from the CPP. If this survey yields the intended results, it could serve as a pretext for moving forward with a referendum on the matter.