Patrick Lennox is a Canadian writer based in Edmonton. He worked to counter foreign interference for over a decade in both Ottawa and in Edmonton with Canada’s security and intelligence community. He first started writing about Canada-US relations 20 years ago, and has a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto. He’s a frequent contributor to The Walrus.
The extraordinary tale of how Alberta has come to have a referendum vote on the province’s future within Canada.
The stakes could not be higher. The Alberta Separatists claim to have collected enough signatures on their petition to force a referendum this fall on whether the province should cease to remain part of Canada. But this isn’t an organic political movement founded in genuine grievance. This is a plot to end Canada by a nefarious group of individuals tied to the global far right.
Framed as an investigation into the treasonous nature of this separatist movement, On Treason: Alberta Separatism, Foreign Interference, and Canada’s Survival in a Revolutionary Age explains how the movement has been aided and abetted by foreign actors and disinformation in an attempt to fracture the remaining liberal democracy in North America. This treasonous course has not only been marked and furthered by foreign interference, it has been spurred on and enabled by a provincial government more aligned with the Trump Administration than with its own federal counterparts.
By situating the story in the revolutionary geopolitical context of a collapsing rules-based international order, and the US’s quest for hemispheric domination as articulated in its National Security Strategy, On Treason is about a referendum as much as it is about Canada’s survival.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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