Former prime minister Stephen Harper (pictured centre) and former Ontario premier and Canada’s ambassador to the UN Bob Rae (pictured right) told Ontario insurance brokers that separatist movements in Alberta and Quebec pose less of a threat than Canada’s trade fight with the United States and the barriers that still divide its own provinces.
Speaking on a panel moderated by Colin Simpson (pictured left), CEO of the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario (IBAO), at the association’s 2026 convention in Toronto, Harper said neither movement had kept him up at night.
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“I’m going to maybe give you a surprising answer, which is I have been, on one level, not really worried about these separatist movements in either Alberta or Quebec,” Harper said.
Alberta voters went to the polls on October 19, 2026, on 10 referendum questions, including one on staying in Canada versus beginning a legal path to a binding separation referendum. Preliminary results showed approximately 76% opted to remain within Canada, and Elections Alberta said official results would be released on October 29. Harper said he had predicted support for separation of about 25%.
“The real separatists are maybe 5%. The rest are just people who’ve been very angry, trying to send a message,” he said.
In Quebec, the separatist Parti Québécois won the October 5 provincial election on a promise to hold a vote on leaving Canada after US President Donald Trump leaves office, though it fell short of a majority government. Harper said that pledge undercuts itself.
“Support for separatism in Quebec has never been lower in my lifetime. It’s in the mid-20s,” he said. “If it’s not a good idea now, I don’t know why it’d be a good idea in the future either.”
Harper said the results matter most for what they free Ottawa to focus on.
“The worry has been that the federal government and the current prime minister – I think he understands this – they cannot be fighting Quebec and Alberta at the same time as we have this challenge from the United States. That is the real problem,” he said.
Rae, who sat across the aisle from Harper in Parliament, opened his answer by siding with him.
“I agree with everything Mr. Harper has said. That’s a first,” Rae said.
He said premiers cannot afford to pursue their own priorities at the expense of the national one, because “what matters right now is Canada and our relationship with the United States and our ability to perform better domestically and globally.”
“We don’t want to go back into the constitutional swamp,” Rae said.
Simpson brought the discussion to the insurance industry. When brokers and insurers push to break down barriers on licensing, or on moving adjusters across the country after natural catastrophes, he said, they get “the usual response of we’re special, so we have to do it slightly differently.” Canada’s property and casualty industry has been increasing its calls for the country to drop interprovincial barriers to claims adjuster mobility, with a coalition of P&C insurance associations calling on regulators to establish a licensing reciprocity regime.
Rae said restrictions on procurement, contracting and product access across provinces make little sense.
“I think skilled trade barriers are still there in some cases in terms of training and access. These make no sense, and they hold the country back,” Rae said.
Harper, who said his own government had little success on the file, argued that Ottawa is the wrong target.
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“I think what people need to understand about this is the problem is constitutional. The provinces have the powers, and frankly, the federal government’s levers for forcing those to break down are very limited,” Harper said. “People need to stop asking the federal government to solve this problem and ask the provinces to solve it.”
He pointed to the Alberta-British Columbia Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA), signed in 2006 by premiers Ralph Klein and Gordon Campbell. Saskatchewan signed on in 2010 through the New West Partnership Trade Agreement, which included almost all of TILMA’s provisions.
“All other provinces have to do is sign on to that agreement, and it would eliminate most of the interprovincial trade barriers,” Harper said. “The provinces have this in their power to deal with it themselves.”
Simpson said the industry ran into the same friction when the federal government sought provincial support for a national flood portal that would give consumers information on flood zones. Support from Ontario was not fully forthcoming, he said, because of distrust over where Ottawa would take the project, with the Ford government pointing to child care as an example of the federal government starting a program and leaving provinces to fund it.
Rae said that distrust has deep roots, recalling Ontario premier John Robarts describing medicare as a “Machiavellian scheme” when it was introduced.
“You’ve got to make sure that if the federal government wants to drive something, the money can’t just be there … to say, well, we’ll do this for now, and then we’ll pull back,” Rae said.
Harper said the obligation runs both ways. “It’s incumbent on the premiers to really unite with the federal government on the issue of dealing with the United States, but of course at the same time incumbent on the prime minister to make sure that he is genuinely hearing the views of those premiers,” he said.
Rae said governments too often use federal spending to score political points, then hand programs to the provinces to run.
“I don’t think Mr. Carney wants to do that. I think he knows the problem,” Rae said.
