The rift between the Western provinces versus Ottawa escalated after the federal Liberals returned to power for a fourth time–with some even wanting out of the Confederation. But both Alberta and Saskatchewan are also faced with a growing division within their own boundaries that’s changing the political landscape.
Recent provincial elections in both provinces showed a growing gap between the urban and rural votes.
Saskatchewan’s 2024 provincial election saw the right-of-centre Saskatchewan Party return to power for a fourth time, but with a significantly diminished vote in the urban centres. While similar to 2020, the Sask. Party took all but two rural ridings, the left-wing NDP picked up all seats in Regina and Saskatoon save for one. In 2020, the Sask. Party had won most of the ridings in the province’s big cities.
Urban-Rural Divide
This rift between the urban and rural vote is part of the transition that all modern societies including Canada have been undergoing for years, as people move out of rural areas to major cities, explains Ken Coates, professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan’s Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.Coates says it’s a phenomenon that adds to the rural voters’ grievances, seeing those living in major cities in the east getting more representation in the government. The same rural-urban divide is seen politically in other provinces as well, he says, such as British Columbia.
“The powerful positions go to people in the cities,” he said in an interview. “Rural areas, for very good reasons, feel left out with very small representation and very little power.”
He says this grievance is amplified when ministers from major urban centres make comments or create policies that don’t match the reality of those in rural areas. At a federal level, he says an example was when then-Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault said last year that the government no longer needed to invest in new road projects, while rural areas are struggling with muddy roads and limited infrastructure. Amid objections by premiers such as Alberta’s Danielle Smith, Guilbeault later backpedalled, saying he meant that the government doesn’t need to invest in megaprojects.
The Divide in Provinces
Coates says that at a provincial level, although the New Democratic parties in Alberta and Saskatchewan are not the same as their federal counterpart—often taking diverging positions when it comes to issues such as resource development projects—people in the rural areas don’t see the provincial New Democrats as understanding their needs, while many of those living in the urban areas tend to feel the same way about the two governing parties.“In rural areas, you talk about farmers and forestry operators and miners and oil and gas workers. And in the cities, you’re talking about urban professionals and service-culture people. And there’s nothing wrong with either of them, you need both to survive in the bush. But in fact, it’s not an even balance, and I think the rural areas increasingly feel that they’re on a very downward trajectory,” he says.
Marco Navarro-Génie, president of the Haultain Research Institute, says part of the shifts in support for the two ruling parties in Alberta and Saskatchewan could be explained by incumbent fatigue. But he also says the bigger factor is the growing urban-rural divide.
He adds that in the cities, the NDP gets a huge boost from unions such as those representing teachers and government workers, which in turn puts pressure on the governing parties in both provinces to sway public policy in their favour in order not to raise further opposition in the cities.
He says that’s part of the reason why Alberta’s former Premier Jason Kenney was ousted by his party before his first term as premier ended.
“He failed to connect with the people in the rural ridings–not the people themselves, actually, but with the representatives, which is different. I think he didn’t manage that as carefully as he could,” Navarro-Génie says.
Kenney, who united the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose under the UCP and led the party to victory against the ruling NDP in the 2019 election, stepped down as leader and premier in 2022 after receiving just over 51 percent of the party support in a UCP leadership review vote. Kenney had come under heavy criticism from factions in his party due to the province’s pandemic policies and mandates.
In many ways, so far as the rural areas maintain the population base and seat count allocation to play a decisive role in choosing government, Navarro-Génie says leaders of the right-of-centre parties face a bigger threat to maintaining power from their own base rather than the general population.
That’s why he says Premier Smith can’t just ignore or suppress the separatist movement brewing in her province after the April 28 federal election returned the federal Liberals to power, even though she doesn’t support secession herself.
Smith has said that while she wants Alberta to remain a part of Canada and will fight for Alberta’s interests within a united Canada, she would allow a citizen-led petition on separation to go to public vote if it meets the legislated requirements of qualifying as a referendum. She has also said that those wanting to separate shouldn’t be marginalized or called “traitors.”
Provinces Versus Ottawa
But while the vote may be splitting along urban and rural lines when it comes to provincial politics, both rural and urban voters in the Prairies have remained fairly united against Ottawa when it comes to provincial interests.For the past several federal elections, Alberta and Saskatchewan have consistently voted for Conservatives in overwhelming numbers in both rural and urban areas.
In the 2021 election, only four non-Conservative MPs (two NDP and one Liberal in Edmonton, and one Liberal in Calgary) were elected in Alberta, and Saskatchewan sent only Conservative MPs to Ottawa. In the 2025 election, Alberta elected just three non-Conservative MPs (one NDP in Edmonton, two Liberals in Calgary), while the Liberals managed to win one seat in northern Saskatchewan.
An analysis by The Epoch Times also showed that in the major cities in both provinces, the popular vote for the conservative versus progressive parties remained virtually the same between the two elections.
“Canada loves provincial-rights politics,” Coates says. “That’s a fairly strong tradition in the country.”
“Alberta is one of the provinces in which people assimilate the quickest when people come here, regardless of where they come from,” Navarro-Génie says. “Albertans have a very sort of homogenous attitude towards newcomers. ‘Can you do the job you came here to do?’ And people don’t much care about the colour of their skin or what religion they are.”
He says the other part of it is the different kinds of festivals the province has, such as the Calgary Stampede, that instill a sense of Western pride in residents. The result is that the migrants coming into the province also join in the struggle with the federal government to ensure the prosperity of the industrial sectors important to the province, Navarro-Génie says.
He says this struggle with the federal government, and the fact that a Liberal government is once again in Ottawa, is in fact boosting support for UCP and the Sask. Party, even in the cities.
“There is a pattern that when there is a Liberal in Ottawa, a lot of the provincial governments tend to go the other way, and vice versa,” he says.
Coates says the Sask. Party has made some adjustments to win more support in the cities, including with the announcement of more expenditure in education and health care, “most of which are within the cities.”
In the case of Alberta, however, he says the post-election conversation “has been distracted by federal developments” and the province’s confrontation with Ottawa.
