Elon Musk calls for Alberta and Saskatchewan separation; premiers and Carney reject it

Elon Musk waded into Canadian separation politics Wednesday, posting on X that "Quebec should separate" and "Alberta and Saskatchewan should separate, too." His posts came days after the separatist Parti Québécois returned to power in Quebec.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, Prime Minister Mark Carney, and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre all rejected Musk's intervention. None elaborated on his motives or engaged the substance of his calls.

Musk, the world's richest man and a first-ever trillionaire, has a decades-long connection to Canada. His mother Maye Musk is from Saskatchewan. His grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, led the Social Credit Party of Saskatchewan. Musk moved to Canada in 1989, attended Queen's University for two years, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. Despite that history, Musk has openly criticized Canada—calling it "not a real country" in a 2025 post that followed a petition gaining more than 375,000 signatures calling for his passport and citizenship to be revoked over his ties to U.S. President Donald Trump. He previously criticized then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as an "insufferable tool" and endorsed Pierre Poilievre in Canadian politics last year.

Experts offered competing interpretations of Musk's posts. Quinn Slobodian, a Boston University professor of international history and co-author of "Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed," suggested "with Musk, there's often usually another game being played at the same time." Canadian tech journalist Paris Marx, host of the podcast Tech Won't Save Us, characterized Musk as a "right-wing troll who has a problem with countries he perceives as being more progressive or left-leaning relative to his personal politics or that he feels aggrieved by." Marx said Musk sees separatist movements as an opportunity to weaken governments' legitimacy.

But Marx also cautioned against reading too much into Musk's posts. "Many people reply to posts online with knee-jerk reactions. Elon Musk's replies just get news articles written about them because he's incredibly rich and powerful," Marx said. He does not believe Musk's posts were part of a calculated strategy and suggested Musk likely hasn't given much thought to the ramifications of provinces separating.