Kenney slams Alberta separation talk as ‘bananas’ and dangerous

September 15, 2025

RED FM News Desk

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney is blasting renewed talk of separation, calling it a fringe idea that risks tearing apart the very communities it claims to defend.

“It’s bananas if we allow a tiny, perennially angry minority to drag the whole province through a deeply divisive debate,” Kenney said in a recent interview at Calgary’s Bankers Hall, where he now works as a senior adviser to a law firm and serves on corporate boards.

Kenney, who led Alberta from 2019 to 2022 and was a longtime federal Conservative cabinet minister, said a referendum on leaving Canada would have destructive consequences far beyond politics.

“If this gets to a ballot, there will be marriages that break up over it. There will be businesses where partnerships collapse. There will be churches and community organizations that split apart,” he warned. “That’s how explosive this is.”

He argued that letting a small minority dictate the agenda on separation would be reckless and destabilizing for Alberta’s social fabric.

Kenney’s comments come as Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government pursues a dual strategy: advocating for Alberta to remain in Confederation while also making it easier to hold a referendum on independence.

The province recently lowered the threshold to trigger such a vote, requiring just 177,000 signatures—collected within four months—in a province of five million people.