‘Yahoos’: Preston Manning Claps Back at Alberta Secession Leader

Preston Manning received a standing ovation when he spoke at Reform UK’s annual conference in Birmingham, England, in early September 2025.

After shaking hands with a beaming Manning onstage, Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage paid homage to the then 83-year-old. Calling Manning an “inspiration,” Farage said his far-right populist party had been modelled after Manning’s Reform party, which he credited for transforming modern conservatism in Canada.

Polling shows Farage’s party is within striking distance of forming the next government, a startling scenario to many political observers and economists.

As the architect of the Brexit campaign, the charismatic Farage galvanized voters to narrowly support the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union in 2016, a decision a growing majority of Britons now regret.

But while Manning serves as an inspiration to Farage, he is an object of querulous derision by Jeffrey Rath, the abrasive leader of the Alberta Prosperity Project, or APP, Alberta’s black cowboy-hatted version of the Brexit campaign.

Without prompting during a Feb. 16 YouTube podcast, Rath disparaged Manning, Questerre Energy founder Michael Binnion and Calgary billionaire Ron Mannix, accusing them of trying to rein in the APP’s burgeoning independence.

Manning has responded by calling Rath’s comments “highly inaccurate,” and telling The Tyee that Rath’s appearances on CBC and other media create an impression that “western secession is mainly being pushed by an ill-informed group of cowboy yahoos.”

On the Feb. 16 podcast, Rath told host Rachel Parker that he and several other APP leaders had been called to a meeting last summer at the Ranchmen’s Club, near downtown Calgary.

Parker is the wife of David Parker, the founder of Take Back Alberta, another separatist organization. The Ranchmen’s is a private club that has catered to Calgary’s power elite since 1891.

At the meeting, the APP leaders were told that a decision had been made, Rath said, “that we could not be the pointy end of the spear for Alberta independence because we're embarrassing to them, we're going to wreck everything for them.”

Thanks to a legislative boost by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party, the APP, operating as Stay Free Alberta, is busily gathering signatures in town halls around the province in support of an October referendum vote on Alberta’s separation from Canada. The referendum petition requires about 178,000 signatures.

Even if Albertans voted to separate, there would be a marathon of high hurdles to cross, including an amendment to the Constitution and negotiations with First Nations, who have launched legal action to stop the petition process.

Still, Rath said that once the APP gets close to independence, he expects the right’s elite to “swoop in” and “Preston Manning, being one of the adults in the room, is going to have to take over, and then he will negotiate for us.

“But he is not going to negotiate independence; he is going to negotiate what these clowns call Re-Confederation.”

Populist divides

Rath’s public slagging of Manning, a revered figure in Canada’s conservative movement, and the other respected Calgary businessmen, exposes the growing fissures within the far-right sovereignty movement in Alberta as it gains national and international attention.

Since first being elected as a Reform MP in 1993, Manning has rallied support around the slogan “The West Wants In.” He has argued for a “Re-Confederation” with Alberta and other provinces being granted more autonomy within Canada.

In stark contrast, Rath believes the country is irreversibly broken, and he claimed “everybody realizes that.”

“Every time [Canadian Prime Minister Mark] Carney opens his mouth and does something else, we realize that it is a fool's errand,” he told Parker, adding that “all of those people have just really been discredited, insofar as any hope of negotiating Alberta staying in Canada.”

“Re-Confederation,” Rath said, “is basically what Danielle [Smith] is talking about: a strong Alberta within a united Canada.

“Those guys [Manning, Binnion and Mannix] are the puppet masters that make her mouth move.”

Rath said Binnion and the others now realize that the independence movement has “run past them exactly as I warned them it would.”

“I said, ‘Look, you guys either get on board because this is an express train, or you can just stand on the tracks and be run over by the train.’ And I think that is basically what is happening. All these so-called Re-Confederationists have just been flattened by the express train of Alberta independence.”

Rath told Parker he doesn’t need any help from the wealthy, and the political elite on the right, to separate Alberta from Canada.

“I'm convinced that we can convince everybody, just on a straight-up basis.

“And, quite frankly, the Michael Binnions of the world, the Preston Mannings of the world, the Ron Mannixes of the world, that have been manipulating things in the background forever, they have no place in this movement, other than to get on board.”

Binnion said Mannix was not invited to the meeting and did not attend.

Mannix did not respond to requests for comment from The Tyee.

Rath declined an interview request in which he was asked to explain how he came to believe that Mannix was at the meeting.

Rath previously has spun out a conspiracy theory that was proven to be false.

As reported by The Tyee, Rath was captured on video in an Edmonton hotel bar regaling strangers with a bizarre story about a conspiracy hatched by former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s former chief of staff Marshall Smith and several “senior high-powered gay deputy ministers” during a holiday in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Kenney told The Tyee he had never been to Puerto Vallarta.

Binnion’s version of the Ranchmen’s confab

Much has been written about Michael Binnion, mostly due to his founding of the pro-oil, anti-carbon-tax advocacy group Modern Miracle Network.

In 2019, the Globe and Mail revealed Binnion’s network had organized a private conference near Calgary. Top Conservative politicians, including then-leader Andrew Scheer, and Alberta oil industry executives brainstormed strategies to defeat Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in that fall’s election.

The Trudeau Liberals narrowly lost the popular vote but still formed a minority government.

Binnion is well connected among Alberta’s energy entrepreneurs and he and his wife have been major donors to conservative politicians, including more than $6,000 to the failed Conservative party leadership bid of libertarian Maxime Bernier.

On Feb. 26, Binnion provided a Questerre Energy corporate update in Oslo, Norway. His wife Maria posted a photo of Binnion with the caption, “As always, so proud of my husband, speaking in Oslo about the pros and cons of Donald Trump at a dinner function. The U.S. president is for his country and working to Make America Great Again, which is not what’s happening in Canada.”

In an email and a subsequent interview, Binnion confirmed he had organized a meeting at the Ranchmen’s. About 20 people — “a group of leaders who had spoken out about reforming Alberta’s position in confederation” — were invited.

On the podcast, Rath said: “The whole point of that meeting was basically to try to tell all of us to behave ourselves and not do anything that would, quote, unquote, discredit the movement.”

But Binnion said the meeting wasn’t about Rath or the APP and they were not summoned to the meeting. They were invited, just like others, as part of a roundtable discussion about Alberta’s position in Canada, specifically informed by ideas contained in a paper Binnion had written for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a right-leaning public policy think tank.

The paper, he said, explores “a constitutional approach using the doctrine of responsible government to advance Alberta’s interests.”

“In my view there was interest among others in the meeting in the concept of responsible government as the constitutional doctrine that led to Canadian independence from Britain and how it could be applied to provinces like Alberta with interest in greater autonomy,” Binnion said in an email.

Rath and his fellow APP leaders “were clear that they didn’t want to compromise on their pro-separation ambitions,” Binnion said.

Rath’s account ‘highly inaccurate’: Manning

In an email from Australia, where he is on vacation, Manning said Rath’s description of the meeting was wrong.

Binnion, he said, had invited a “broad range” of people to the meeting “simply to try to get a handle on all the various views and positions that were being considered or offered on the constitutional future of Alberta.”

“Unlike Jeff, I did not get the impression that Michael was pushing any particular position,” Manning said.

“With respect to Jeff's comments, while I think it is clear that he favours secession, his representations on the views of others, including mine, on that subject and the alternatives, while colourful, are highly inaccurate.

“As you have no doubt noticed, the central Canadian legacy media, including the CBC, love to interview him as he reinforces their preconceived opinion that western secession is mainly being pushed by an ill-informed group of cowboy yahoos.”

In fact, Binnion said someone at the meeting told Rath, a lawyer who serves as APP’s legal counsel, that wearing a cowboy hat, his trademark, probably wasn’t the best look for gaining general support from Albertans for his cause.

“I didn't find that a fair criticism, and I told Jeff after [the meeting] that I didn't agree with that at all,” Binnion said. “Whether you're a rancher, a farmer, a cowboy, whatever, I don't think that has anything to do with this issue.

“But that was probably the only thing that was said that I found to be unfair or, in any way, shape or form, was trying to tell Jeff Rath what to do.”

Manning said Rath was also “confused” about Re-Confederation. He told The Tyee his publicly stated position is that “in the unlikely situation where some province, most likely Quebec, were to actually get the support of a clear majority on a clear question to secede, it would force a federal-provincial conference to significantly amend the current Constitution — a Re-Confederation scenario, if you will.”

Rath vows ‘house cleaning’ once Alberta is independent

Rath’s diminution of Manning and the others, and their polite but firm clap back, may be in the end pointless political theatre. Recent polling by Ipsos shows Albertans are frustrated about the province’s place in the country but most would not vote to separate.

About 51 per cent agreed with the notion that Alberta doesn’t get enough from Confederation. But when asked if their province would be better off if it separated, 59 per cent disagreed, compared with only 25 per cent who agreed. The remaining 16 per cent were neutral on the question.

Undaunted, Rath dismissed a Financial Times report, based on unnamed sources, which confirmed that while he and other APP leaders had met three times with U.S. State Department officials, the meetings were routine, no commitments were made and there would be no further meetings.

“This just demonstrates that Trump hasn't reached down far enough into the State Department to fire all of the Hillary Clinton and Obama holdovers,” Rath said, adding later that, if Alberta separates, 60 to 70 per cent of Alberta’s civil service would be purged.

“They are all creatures of Jason Kenney and Marshall Smith,” he said, referring to his previously discredited conspiracy theory. “They all need to be rooted out.

“Not only do we need to liberate ourselves from Ottawa, but there is some major house cleaning that has to be done in Alberta.”

Rath claimed he has had more discussions with his State Department contacts.

“They told me just to ignore all this, and they are in the process of tracking down all of the unnamed sources who didn't have authority to speak on these issues — things will proceed from there.”

Rath insisted there will be a fourth meeting in Washington, within the next month.

“Everybody is busy,” he said.

“President Trump is busy saving the world and bringing peace to the world. We're busy freeing Alberta from Canada.”

If you have any information for this story, or information for another story, please contact Charles Rusnell in confidence via email.