CALGARY – The silence from many Alberta business leaders on the upcoming provincial referendum comes as no surprise to one corporate governance expert.
Monday’s vote includes 10 questions: one on whether Alberta should remain in Canada or move toward a binding separation referendum; five on immigration and four on constitutional matters.
Business advocacy groups have been vocal in warning of the economic fallout from a split, as well as measures that could make it harder to attract newcomers into the provincial workforce. But relatively few individual corporate CEOs have taken a public stand.
“It’s hardly surprising that a majority of CEOs are not speaking up,” said Richard Leblanc, a professor of governance, law and ethics at York University. “You can alienate customers. You can alienate investors, so there’s more to be lost than gained, generally, by speaking up about a political matter.”
CEOs of public companies answer to their boards of directors and shareholders, who are often loath to take on undue risks to a firm’s reputation, he added. Top executives are often limited to speaking on matters that directly affect the company itself.
“There’s a tradition in Canada of really staying in your lane,” Leblanc said.
But he said there may be times a company’s board of directors agrees that a CEO should speak out on a matter that affects the well-being of the business in general, as Alberta taking steps toward a potential break from Canada arguably would. Various economic analyses have flagged higher trade costs, decreased investment and reduced employment should Alberta choose to go it alone.
Some corporations have former prime ministers, premiers and cabinet ministers as directors on their boards, who can advise on when and how to weigh in on politics, Leblanc noted.
Atco Ltd.’s board includes former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, who has been a fervent voice in favour of the province staying in Confederation, as well as former federal cabinet minister Rona Ambrose.
Leblanc said customers and employees may have “legitimate expectations” that a CEO take a public stand on something that could affect the business.
“Sometimes the risk of not doing something can be far greater than doing something and dealing with the blowback.”
However, getting board sign-off on the message is no easy feat and there are likely to be divisions among directors, he added.
A handful of leaders at big, publicly traded companies are among the more than 80 signatories to an open letter from the Calgary Chamber of Commerce warning of the economic fallout of separation. Those include the CEOs of AltaGas Ltd., Keyera Corp., Atco Ltd. and Capital Power Corp. Also signing on are the heads of Berkshire Hathaway Energy businesses BHE Transmission and AltaLink.
Financial disclosures filed with Elections Alberta show Calgary-based energy infrastructure company AltaGas has donated $5,000 to the third-party advertiser group Vote to Stay.
No prominent corporations or executives can be found on the disclosures of pro-separation groups.
A few top executives have made their views known.
“We believe a strong Alberta and a strong Canada go hand in hand,” Imperial Oil chief executive John Whelan wrote on LinkedIn last month after delivering that message to a Calgary Chamber of Commerce luncheon featuring Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
Atco’s Nancy Southern, who describes herself as a proud Albertan and Canadian, told reporters after the company’s annual meeting in May that she can’t imagine how businesses could operate efficiently if Alberta were to be a separate country.
“To actually have this segmentation, I think, is disruptive to families. I think it’s disruptive to business,” she said.
Cenovus Energy Inc. CEO Jon McKenzie told a conference in mid-2025 — as separatist sentiment bubbled up following the federal Liberals’ election victory — that the movement is rooted in legitimate grievances with federal policy, but is not a constructive way to address those issues. He said he expected separatism to dissipate once those concerns were addressed.
Since that time, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has made a number of policy moves embraced by the oilpatch. Several Trudeau-era environmental policies have been rolled back, legislation has been brought in to speed up infrastructure approvals and Ottawa has deemed a new million-barrel-per-day Alberta-to-B.C. pipeline to be in the national interest.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX:ACO.X) (TSX:IMO) (TSX:ALA) (TSX:KEY) (TSX:CPX) (TSX:CVE)