What Separatists Offered the United States, in Smith’s Strange Blinders

Early last May, news media reported that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had received a “top secret” security clearance. Really?

A report in Saturday’s Globe and Mail with new details about what a group of self-proclaimed separatist leaders are up to in Washington, DC in 2025 raises interesting questions about Smith’s security clearance.

According to the detailed Weekend Globe report, when the leaders of the so-called Alberta Prosperity Project met with as yet unnamed US State Department officials three times in 2025, they offered “access to fresh water and royalties on crude oil, in exchange for help with the transition to independence. Or to put it another equally accurate way, for help breaking up Canada.”

With her top secret security rating, one would think that Smith would have said so at her first briefing. Or do Canada’s security agencies have no idea what happened at those meetings in April, September and December last year?

On May 7, Smith’s press secretary, Sam Blackett, told reporters for several news organizations that the prime minister had been granted what the federal government publicly says is its highest level of security clearance, allowing her to “receive briefings on matters related to national security.”

This followed news reports in March that quoted Premier Smith as complaining that the RCMP had not told her what she needed to know about foreign interference on security issues related to the Oct. 19 secession referendum, which is now just two weeks away.

“The RCMP does not brief our government, I’ve made that clear, and no, I’m not happy with that fact, so we have to go to alternative sources to get intelligence,” Smith said on March 18. She stated that she had been informed by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS.

It was obvious at the time that Smith was peeved when she learned that BC Premier David Eby already had a top-secret security clearance. Perhaps she was also irritated because Eby had sharply attacked the same Alberta separatists named in the Saturday Globe story, who at the time appeared to be Smith’s political allies. “To go to a foreign country and ask for help to break up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is treason,” the BC premier said in February.

In a follow-up story yesterday to the Globe’s Saturday Scoop, Blackett was quoted as saying his boss “has no knowledge of these alleged meetings.”

This is hard to believe because the occurrence of the meetings was widely reported and confirmed by the participants, although some of the details offered by the Globe this weekend were new. Presumably, however, what Blackett meant was that Smith had no knowledge of what happened during the meetings.

But does that mean Canada’s security agencies didn’t know either? Or just that they didn’t tell Smith? Or what?

Certainly, Blackett’s assertion raises interesting questions about the true nature of Smith’s security clearance.

Even without her pro-American ideological history, I wrote back on May 10, “Smith is temperamentally a bad risk for a security clearance. She is a political opportunist and a blabbermouth. Conservative commentator Andrew Coyne recently compared her to a magpie. There is no way, secret information she can use to her political advantage that she is able to withstand security, we can withstand security. Agencies understand.”

It is not entirely clear who is responsible for giving politicians security clearances. For government officials, CSIS should conduct the investigation. According to news reports at the time, the Privy Council Office, or PCO — meaning the Cabinet Secretariat — is responsible for issuing security clearances to provincial officials.

I wondered at the time if we could take it on trust that the security clearance Smith received was really top secret, as Blackett believed. “Probably the PCO decision was purely political, and the secrets to which Smith will have access – only in the form of oral reports – will definitely not be of the ‘top’ shelf, let alone unspecified levels above Top Secret,” I wrote then.

And now Smith’s office says she knew nothing about the information uncovered by the Globe. This suggests several possibilities, none of which can be proven, and none of which is particularly reassuring. These include:

• that the Prime Minister just did it by having top-secret clearance and no one contradicted her;
• that she was not actually given a top secret clearance, but was told that she had been;
• that she issued a top secret statement but never went back and asked for a briefing on the 2025 meetings in Washington;
• that she has been briefed on the Alberta Prosperity Project “negotiators” antics and is untruthful when she says she knows nothing; in the
• that Canada’s security services had no idea what happened at the meetings.

Perhaps one could ask Alberta Public Safety Minister and Deputy Premier Mike Ellis. Last spring, the former Calgary police officer was said to have also sought a top-secret clearance. There don’t seem to be any reports of whether he succeeded or not.

Canada requires a legal ban on freelance diplomacy

Yesterday’s Globe follow-up story focused on a call by Calgary Confederation Liberal MP Corey Hogan to consider a law that would ban such freelance negotiations with foreign governments.

Ironically, if the shoe had been on the other foot and, say, Minnesota separatists had sought Ottawa’s help to secede from the United States, their activities would have clearly been illegal.

Since 1799, the Logan Act has made it a crime for an American citizen to conduct unauthorized negotiations with foreign governments. This includes well-intentioned negotiations, as well as direct efforts to betray the country to foreign powers.

The Logan Act has remained on the US law books ever since – for the obvious reason that there is a real need to prevent such interventions, all the more so in the globalized and corporatized world of the 21st century. His mere presence is a useful reminder of the necessity of a nation’s government maintaining a monopoly on diplomacy.

The need for a similar ban in Canadian law on freelance diplomacy remains an urgent matter for the defense of the realm. Maybe this would be a good project for Hogan.