Pick a province.
See the bill.
Nothing here is a projection. It is arithmetic on published figures, and every line shows its own working.
| Line | Low | High | How it is calculated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lost output, per year | $19B | $28B | 4% of provincial GDP at a 5% rise in trade friction with the rest of Canada; 6% at 8% friction. Tombe, University of Calgary |
| Share of federal debt | $155B | $178B | Population share of the $1266B federal accumulated deficit. The high column adds 15% for the negotiation going badly. Public Accounts, March 2025 |
| Building a state from zero | $98B | $107B | Army, navy, air force, coast guard, central bank, passports, borders, customs, foreign service. Scaled per person from the Alberta Prosperity Project's own $98–$107B estimate. APP, fully costed plan |
| Defence, per year | $17B | $24B | 5% of GDP, the NATO pledge adopted at the Hague in 2025. The low column is the 3.5% direct-military portion. NATO Hague summit, 2025 |
| Day one, before anything is built | $253B | $285B | Debt share plus standing up a state. The output loss and the defence bill recur every year afterwards. |
A thing worth noticing
The day-one bill per resident lands at roughly$50,047 whichever province you pick. That is not a coincidence and it is not a bug: both of its parts — the share of federal debt and the cost of standing up a state — scale with population. Leaving costs about the same per person everywhere. What differs is what each province gives up afterwards, which is the number above it.
What this leaves out
Treaty obligations, environmental closure liabilities, currency reserves, and the cost of the negotiation itself. Alberta's oil and gas closure liability alone runs from $36.6B on the regulator's books to $260B in its own worst-case slide. Every omission here makes separation look cheaper than it is.
Population · Statistics Canada 17-10-0009, most recent quarter · GDP · Statistics Canada 36-10-0222, 2024, current prices