Even as President Donald Trump threatens to absorb Canada, some Alberta voters are determined to break it apart.

A long-simmering secession drive in the oil-rich province appears poised to reach the ballot this year, asking residents whether to stick with the rest of Canada or strike out on their own. Alberta would become a landlocked nation of 5 million people, controlling one of the world’s largest reserves of crude.

It’s still considered a long shot. But should the secessionists succeed, the implications for the rest of Canada would be dire.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is banking on oil exports to survive Trump’s trade war and keep Canada’s U.S.-dependent economy afloat. A portion of Alberta’s oil wealth also helps prop up the budgets of less-prosperous provinces — a fact many Albertans resent.

That resentment is fueling a petition drive to place secession on an October ballot, with just 177,732 signatures required by May to trigger a public vote. That number is considered such a low bar, representing 6% of the voting-age population, that even some opponents say they fully expect the measure to make the ballot.

Trump has often talked about making Canada the 51st state, and leaders of the secession drive say they’ve met with members of his administration — without ever revealing who. Some of the movement’s supporters say they’d be happy for Alberta to join the U.S., though that question wouldn’t be on the ballot.

Still, the grievances fueling secession talk are real enough that both the Liberal Carney and Alberta’s Conservative premier, Danielle Smith, are working to defuse them. They reached an agreement last November that could lead to new pipelines to export the province’s crude and are trying to convince Albertans that Ottawa is finally giving them more respect.

“Our agenda is to do what we can to try to give Albertans hope again, and to try to address some of the very real pressure points that have disaffected so many,” Smith said in an interview. “I’m seeking a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada, and I’m doing everything I can to make Canada work.”

However, Smith’s party is one of the main reasons secession may face a vote.

Smith, a former talk show host and lobbyist, cleared the path to a plebiscite by slashing the threshold for how many signatures trigger a referendum and giving organizers more time to get their petitions signed. Unlike other Albertans, a majority of her party’s voters either back secession or are leaning toward it, according to polls. She also called the Oct. 19 referendum in which the secession question may appear, alongside nine other propositions, most concerning immigration.

Smith says she’s giving power to the people, but her opponents claim it’s the latest instance of Smith trying to harness rebellious, populist sentiments for political gain. Corey Hogan, a Liberal lawmaker representing part of Calgary, said separatists are making headway thanks to the “free range they’ve been given by some actors around them.” The debate, he said, “will split families, and it will scare away investors.”

The province — defined by rolling prairies and razor mountains — has long considered itself a place apart. It’s often likened to Texas and is about the same size. Many residents chafe at federal rule from Ottawa 1,700 miles (2,736 kilometers) away, protesting the redistribution of wealth to the country’s east and policies that hold back development of its oil reserves, the world’s fourth-largest after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

What frustrated Albertans call “Western alienation” worsened under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who passed new environmental laws. Oil production and export routes increased during his tenure, but not as fast as many Albertans wanted. Alberta is still the wealthiest province per capita, and its workers earn higher-than-average pay. But their wage advantage over the rest of Canada isn’t as great as it used to be.

“The best way to get Albertans to want to stay in the country is for the economy, the Alberta economy, to be very strong,” said Adam Waterous, executive chairman of Canadian oil producer Strathcona Resources Ltd. “When the animals are well-fed, the jungle is quiet.”

Most Albertans currently say they don’t favor a split. Just 21% of residents recently polled by Leger said Alberta should break away from Canada, with 4% saying it should join the U.S. Other surveys this year put support slightly higher.

While the numbers look low, sentiment and turnout can be fickle. Most polling indicated the UK would not vote to leave the European Union, with one poll a year beforehand putting the popularity of Brexit at 22%. Separatists, meanwhile, say they have enlisted thousands of canvassers to gather signatures. They’re taking clipboards from cities to small towns, even to Arizona and Florida to catch “snowbird” Albertans who fly south for warmer weather.

Some separatists are actively seeking a helping hand from the U.S., despite inviting backlash from patriotic Canadians.

The main group promoting separation, the Alberta Prosperity Project, says it’s held meetings with the U.S. administration. The group’s lawyer, Jeffrey Rath, told Bloomberg it’s exploring the feasibility of a $500 billion “U.S. credit facility,” so the newly independent state could resist fiscal coercion from Ottawa.

His efforts have been called “treason” by the leader of Alberta’s neighbor, British Columbia. Courting Washington could also backfire: 71% of Albertans disapprove of Trump, according to Abacus Data, a polling firm.

A White House official said: “Administration officials meet with a number of civil society groups. No support or commitments were conveyed.”

“None of us are talking about being part of the U.S.,” Rath told Bloomberg in a January interview. Rath’s blog, however, argues for the “advantages” of Alberta joining the U.S., and he has also floated the idea on Fox News.

In January, the movement held its largest rally since the petition campaign began, filling a 4,000-capacity hall in Calgary. A song playing attendees in and out had the lyrics “our resource they hate, our taxes they waste” and “goodbye elites in Ottawa.” Merchandise sported slogans like “I Love Oil & Gas” and “Drill Baby Drill.”

In his speech, Rath referred to Carney, who grew up in the province’s capital of Edmonton, as helping the “Illuminati” and said the ruling Liberal Party wants to “destroy our culture” and “destroy our children.” Attendees complained about taxes, inflation and house prices. Some traced their distrust of Canada’s establishment to Trudeau’s use of emergency powers to quell 2022 protests in which truckers paralyzed Ottawa over Covid-19 vaccine mandates.

Tammy Haney, a 45-year-old realtor, said Canada’s “been leaning on us, and we’ve just been bleeding out, and we’re done. I don’t want to participate in funding the rest of Canada, or Ukraine, or anywhere else.” Her children were wrapped in U.S. flags to show “we need the United States” as a trading partner and to recognize an independent Alberta, she said.

A newly independent country encircled by Canada and the U.S. would face hard fiscal questions.

The Alberta Prosperity Project published a plan envisioning an unshackled, libertarian petro-state. It would eliminate income taxes and projects a one-time cost as low as C$2.8 billion ($2 billion) to establish new borders, policing, pensions, health, defense, courts and diplomatic machinery. The plan sees a net annual gain up to C$47 billion from ending federal tax contributions and says Alberta would more than double oil production by 2045.

Those rosy forecasts require “heroic assumptions,” said University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe. Borrowing costs for the province would likely rise, he said, because separation is a new source of risk. Gross domestic product would take a hit with impeded trade to the rest of Canada.

And Canada would have a strong incentive to make Alberta’s separation difficult, Tombe said, to deter other provinces from following suit — just as the European Union did with the UK after Brexit.

Some Albertans who want to stay with Canada are pushing back.

Thomas Lukaszuk, the province’s former deputy premier, flipped the secession question on its head and organized a petition drive last year asking citizens to vote in favor of staying in Canada, which got more than 400,000 signatures. His petition, however, did not call for a public vote on the issue, and he has asked Alberta’s legislature to hold its own vote affirming the results. There’s a chance lawmakers won’t act on it until after October, so now he’s campaigning against the Prosperity Project’s effort.

Indigenous groups, meanwhile, have sued the province for permitting the petition drive to proceed. Treaties spelling out their relationship with the federal government were signed years before Alberta joined the confederation in 1905, and they say the province has no right to interfere with them.

Still, the risk of secession is sending tremors through Alberta’s business community. Some 28% of Alberta businesses say separation discussions are affecting them, with 92% of those calling the impact negative, according to a February survey commissioned by the Alberta Chambers of Commerce. The uncertainty stopped investors from making an investment decision for a major hydrogen project, Albertan energy company Atco Ltd. told the Canadian Press.

“It’ll be on the risk register of every company and every board, and it will be discussed at length,” said Deborah Yedlin, chief executive officer of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

She and others point to the cautionary tale of French-speaking province Quebec, where rising separatist sentiment in the 1970s prompted businesses like Sun Life Financial Inc. to abandon Montreal for Toronto. Quebec voters eventually rejected secession in a 1995 vote, but only by 1%.

After that, the Canadian government wrote new legislation and sought a Supreme Court ruling on secession. The court found that any unilateral attempt by a province to break away is illegal under Canadian law. But if an independence referendum resulted in a clear majority in favor, the rest of Canada would have to negotiate over terms of a split, it said.

Naheed Nenshi, who leads Alberta’s left-leaning New Democratic Party, said Smith risks making the same mistake former UK Prime Minister David Cameron made with Brexit. Cameron called the 2016 referendum on EU membership, campaigned to stay in, and lost. Now his political nemesis, Nigel Farage, is leading in polls.

“Once these things are out in the wild, they are hard to control,” Nenshi said.

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—With assistance from Robert Tuttle, Josh Wingrove and Cedric Sam.

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