Leaders of the movement for Alberta to separate from Canada have a simple, foundational argument for voters: independence will make you wealthier.

By Iain Boekhoff A republic of Alberta, they say, would be able to keep more of its oil and gas wealth for its own people, unencumbered by the far-away, allegedly corrupt federal government in Ottawa. But the secessionists aren’t winning their case.

Albertans will vote Monday in a referendum that asks whether they’d like to begin a process to separate from Canada, or stay a province. Recent polls have shown a big lead for the remain side. Support for the independence path is sitting around 25%, largely unchanged since Premier Danielle Smith, a conservative, called the vote in May.

The issue has dominated Alberta politics for the past year, casting a shadow over the province of 5 million people even as its economy hums along with the surge in crude prices.

One thing all sides seem to agree on: the nine years of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s rule were tough times for the resource-abundant province. Oil prices crashed in 2015, just as he was taking office, and his environmental policies contributed to the cancellation of a number of projects that would have helped Alberta’s economy.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was raised in Alberta, has taken a markedly different approach. His government has repealed or loosened Trudeau-era rules that restrict fossil-fuel development and is putting its own financial muscle behind a new pipeline capable of shipping an additional 1 million barrels a day via the west coast.

Carney sought to rally the stay-in-Canada vote in Calgary, the province’s largest city. “A vote against Canada is a dangerous bluff that will lead to years of deep uncertainty and lost opportunities for Albertans and for Canadians,” he told a crowd Thursday evening.

His promises have raised expectations in the energy sector and have taken some of the wind out of the separatists’ campaign.

But the pro-Canada side has also been given a boost by a series of reports that have created significant doubt about whether Alberta really would be better off on its own.

A study commissioned by the provincial government and done by the University of Calgary contemplated different economic scenarios. Even if things went smoothly, secession would mean an immediate hit to Alberta’s economy, it said. Annualwages per person would fall by C$1,200 ($846) and gross domestic product would decline by 2.2% in the short term, before improving over the long haul.

But there’s another possibility, the report said. If an independent Alberta had difficulty negotiating a settlement with the rest of Canada, and had trouble establishing the credibility of its own currency, the result could be economically calamitous. Alberta’s GDP might fall by 10%, with workers seeing their wages tumbling to C$5,500 below what they would be earning within Canada.

Recovery would be long and painful. It’s “a scenario where Alberta’s economy could be weaker and its finances much worse, not just immediately but for many years to come,” the report said.

One challenge for the separatists’ cause is that Alberta is already, on paper, perhaps the most prosperous part of Canada.

As a province that produces more than 4 million barrels of oil a day — most of it exported to the US — it enjoys natural resource revenues that are the envy of other regions. Incomes are higher. Its residents have one of the lowest top rates for income tax of any Canadian province, and it’s the only one without a provincial sales tax.

Yet Albertans also cite affordability as a major worry. There’s a reason for that: their real disposable incomes have declined over the past decade and are now lower than in neighboring British Columbia, according to Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist at Servus Credit Union.

“The average Albertan hasn’t seen an improvement in purchasing power for 10 years,” he said. “And that creates frustration because you would expect that you would be better off gradually year after year and it’s not happening.”And while Alberta still has the highest GDP per capita, in real terms it’s 11% lower than in 2014, St-Arnaud said.

Another factor, he said, is employment rates, which have fallen from around 70% in 2012 to 64% today, affecting mainly younger people and older men, a cohort that’s more likely to support separation.

That decline in relative prosperity coincided with the Trudeau years, but at least some of it has to do with the end of an oil-sands building boom after the 2015 price crash. There’s a “view that the boom years should be the norm, but maybe we have to think that maybe that was a special period of our economic history,” St-Arnaud said.

Separatists point to the high costs of some federal policies and the potential opportunities in keeping the province’s energy riches within its borders.

A group called Let Alberta Decide says the province’s residents send C$20 billion more to Ottawa a year than they get back in services. Its website has a counter on it that increases at a rate of C$634 per second.

A particular pain point for separatists is the federal government’s equalization program, which redistributes tax revenues to poorer regions of Canada. Albertans contribute more to the program than other provinces because of their relatively higher incomes.

“A program like equalization exists in almost all federations in the world,” said Trevor Tombe, an economist at the University of Calgary, because there are always poorer regions that need to maintain basic services. Canada’s equalization formula could be improved, he said, but “no matter what alternative program you have in mind, Alberta would not be a receiving province because we are the richest, highest-income province.”Separatist groups say an independent Alberta would be able to lower taxes and run a budget surplus by keeping all the tax currently collected by the federal government.

But in some cases, their fiscal plans assume an easy transition and don’t factor in things like Alberta assuming a portion of Canada’s federal debt. While they are vague on numbers, their belief is that by keeping all the wealth created by the oil and gas industry within its borders, it will pay the costs of setting up a new country and protect them from any future financial crises.

The Calgary Chamber of Commerce has been vocal in its opposition to separation. It has released a series of reports, including a survey that found many business owners are ready to leave the province if the separation movement gains traction. That happened in Quebec when a pro-independence political party won power in the 1970s.

Alberta’s economy depends on trade, and separation would potentially create new barriers for the landlocked province, the chamber said. Now is not the time to leave the safety of Canada, particularly given Carney’s change of direction on energy development, said Deborah Yedlin, the chamber’s chief executive.

“I think that everybody wants to have the opportunity to invest and create growth and contribute to a stronger Alberta economy,” she said. “There’s nothing that suggests separation or the threat of separation is the way to do that.”