By Rob Huebert, August 26, 2026
One of the arguments now appearing in the Alberta independence debate is that an independent Alberta’s landlocked status would not prevent it from obtaining access to tidewater because international law provides landlocked states with rights of access to the sea. The Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), for example, explicitly identifies Part X of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as one source of leverage that an independent Alberta would acquire.
The important question, however, is what that leverage means. A right to negotiate transit and access is not the same thing as a right to compel a neighbouring state to construct a pipeline. A careful examination of UNCLOS suggests that the former is available to a landlocked state, while the latter is not.
The starting point is Part X of UNCLOS, which establishes rights of access to and from the sea for landlocked states. Article 125 provides that landlocked states shall have a right of access to and from the sea and shall enjoy freedom of transit through the territory of transit states.
At first glance, this appears to provide a powerful legal protection for a newly independent Alberta. The provision, however, does not establish an unconditional right to any particular route or form of transportation. Article 125(2) states that the terms and arrangements for exercising freedom of transit are to be agreed between the landlocked and transit states through bilateral, subregional, or regional agreements. The right is therefore a right to obtain transit arrangements within the framework of the convention, not a right to dictate the infrastructure through which that transit must occur.
This distinction becomes decisive when pipelines are considered. Article 124(2) specifically provides that landlocked and transit states may, “by agreement between them,” include pipelines and gas lines as means of transport. The language is important. Pipelines are not an automatic entitlement under Part X. Their inclusion requires agreement between the states concerned. Consequently, even if Alberta became an independent landlocked state and acceded to UNCLOS, Article 124(2) would not give it a legal power to compel Canada or British Columbia to construct, approve, or permit an oil or gas pipeline to the Pacific. It would provide a legal basis upon which Alberta could seek to negotiate such an arrangement.
This is an important distinction because the existence of a right of transit does not mean that a landlocked state has the right to determine how that transit will occur. A state may have a legitimate interest in obtaining access to international markets without possessing the legal authority to require a neighbour to construct particular infrastructure. Pipelines require rights-of-way, environmental approvals, land-use decisions, investment, port facilities, and, in the case of Alberta’s oil exports, access to marine terminals and tanker routes. None of these automatically follows from Article 125.
The convention also makes clear that the rights of landlocked states must be balanced against the sovereignty and interests of transit states. Article 125(3) states that transit states, in exercising their “full sovereignty” over their territory, may take measures necessary to ensure that the rights and facilities provided to landlocked states do not infringe their “legitimate interests.” This is particularly important in considering a potential pipeline through British Columbia. A pipeline is not simply a means of transportation across territory. It involves questions of land use, environmental protection, Indigenous rights, economic policy, infrastructure, and ultimately the movement of oil to marine terminals and tanker traffic. Part X does not require a transit state to disregard these interests in order to accommodate a landlocked neighbour.
This limitation is particularly relevant to British Columbia. The province has a long record of opposition to expanded oil tanker traffic on its coast, particularly in relation to proposals to move Alberta oil to Pacific tidewater. The federal Oil Tanker Moratorium Act provides particularly concrete evidence of this policy position. The Act prohibits oil tankers carrying more than 12,500 metric tonnes of crude oil or persistent oil from mooring, anchoring, or unloading at ports or marine installations along the designated northern British Columbia coast. It also restricts loading and the transportation of oil intended to circumvent those prohibitions. Whatever position one takes on the environmental or economic merits of the moratorium, its existence demonstrates that restrictions on oil tanker traffic along the northern BC coast are an established matter of Canadian public policy rather than a hypothetical objection that might arise only after Alberta became independent.
An independent Alberta would therefore confront a transit state and coastal state that already has a demonstrated interest in restricting the movement of oil through portions of its coastal waters. Canada and British Columbia could argue that such restrictions reflect legitimate environmental and public-policy interests. Article 125(3) does not require those interests to be subordinated automatically to Alberta’s economic interests. Indeed, the purpose of the provision is precisely to preserve the sovereignty and legitimate interests of the transit state while providing landlocked states with access to transit.
There is another important obstacle that is often overlooked in discussions of Alberta and UNCLOS. Alberta is not presently a party to the convention because it is not a sovereign state; Canada is the state party. An independent Alberta would therefore first have to become a sovereign state and then accede to UNCLOS before it could invoke the convention as a party in its own right. Article 307 provides that the convention is open for accession by states, while Article 306 establishes the related process of ratification and formal confirmation. This is not simply a procedural point. Alberta could not automatically inherit Canada’s treaty status merely by declaring independence. It would need to establish itself as a state capable of becoming a party to the convention.
Even if Alberta successfully acceded to UNCLOS, however, doing so would not fundamentally alter the underlying problem. Membership in the convention would place Alberta within the same legal framework that protects the rights of both landlocked and transit states. Canada would continue to enjoy the protections afforded to transit and coastal states under Articles 124 and 125. Alberta’s accession would therefore create a basis for negotiations, but it would not generate a legal mechanism capable of compelling Canadian or British Columbian compliance.
The broader record of international legal precedent also points in the same direction. The most relevant example is the long-running dispute between Bolivia and Chile over access to the Pacific Ocean. Bolivia, which lost its coastline during the War of the Pacific, asked the International Court of Justice to declare that Chile had a legal obligation to negotiate in order to reach an agreement granting Bolivia sovereign access to the Pacific. In its 2018 judgment, the Court rejected Bolivia’s claim, finding that Chile had not undertaken a legal obligation to negotiate sovereign access. The Court nevertheless noted that the two countries could continue their dialogue and negotiations if they wished to do so. The distinction is important: international law did not prevent Chile from negotiating, but neither did it compel Chile to do so.
The Bolivia case is significant because it illustrates the fundamental distinction between a recognized problem and an enforceable legal obligation. International law recognizes that landlocked states face serious geographical disadvantages and establishes mechanisms intended to facilitate their access to the sea. It does not, however, eliminate the sovereignty of coastal and transit states. Even Bolivia’s long-standing claim to sovereign access to the Pacific did not result in an international legal obligation requiring Chile to negotiate such access. The Court’s judgment specifically concluded that Chile had not undertaken a legal obligation to negotiate sovereign access for Bolivia, while also making clear that the two states remained free to continue negotiations if they wished.
The same principle would apply to an independent Alberta. Part X could provide Alberta with a stronger legal and diplomatic position than it possesses as a province within Canada. It could seek transit agreements, negotiate pipeline arrangements, and invoke the protections provided to landlocked states. It could not, however, use UNCLOS to force Canada or British Columbia to construct a pipeline, approve a tanker terminal, or permit increased oil exports through the Pacific coast. Article 124(2) makes pipeline transit dependent upon agreement, while Article 125(3) explicitly preserves the sovereignty and legitimate interests of the transit state.
The claim that UNCLOS would somehow solve Alberta’s landlocked problem therefore confuses a right of access with a right to dictate the means by which that access is provided. Part X offers a legal framework for negotiation and co-operation. It does not provide a legal mechanism for compulsion. For an independent Alberta, the central problem would remain what it has always been for landlocked states: geography creates dependency, and international law can mitigate that dependency, but it cannot make a sovereign neighbour act against its own interests.
Rob Huebert is the director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies and professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
