Fakiha Baig

Fakiha Baig reports on politics for The Canadian Press, with a focus on how Alberta’s debates over separation, resource development and new technology shape questions of national unity and democratic practice. Her coverage brings together political strategy, legal constraints and expert analysis to explain what is at stake for governments, Indigenous communities and everyday residents. She moves between hard political reporting and longer explanatory pieces, using detailed interviews and case studies to ground national issues in specific Alberta stories.

Alberta separation and national unity

Baig’s recent work centres on Alberta’s separatist movement and the province’s referendum on whether to pursue a path to leaving Canada. In one analysis she sets Alberta’s separatist campaign against secession movements in other democracies, showing how the absence of a distinct language, religion or shared nationhood makes the Alberta push an outlier in global comparisons.

She draws on political science experts to unpack how grievances over federal energy and environmental policy differ from the identity-based claims that drive movements in places such as Scotland and Quebec. Another line of reporting explores how Indigenous treaty rights create a major legal obstacle for separation, emphasizing that any bid to redraw borders must contend with existing constitutional and treaty frameworks.

She follows party leaders into this debate, including coverage of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s appeal to Alberta voters to remain in Canada and “become even more Canadian” as a response to frustration with federal policies.

Inside the legislature, she tracks how members of the governing United Conservative Party and the opposition New Democrats position themselves around citizen petitions for a referendum, documenting both overt displays of loyalty to Canada and concerns about the process used to trigger the vote. Across these stories she keeps the focus on what separation would mean for national unity, federal–provincial relations and the practical mechanics of holding and legitimizing such a referendum.

Energy projects and resource politics

Resource governance and energy infrastructure are a second pillar of Baig’s political coverage.

She reports on the federal government’s decision to grant national special interest designation to a major pipeline carrying Alberta oil to the British Columbia coast, explaining how that status is intended to streamline consultations, environmental safeguards, financing and partnerships with Indigenous communities. Her story on the pipeline traces timelines to construction and startup, connecting these to broader debates about how quickly Canada can move large resource projects through regulatory and political hurdles.

In her separatism reporting she returns repeatedly to the role of Alberta’s natural resources and long-standing grievances over federal energy policy, showing how these economic issues feed into wider feelings of western alienation. She also covers grassroots responses to new forms of energy infrastructure, including protests against proposed artificial intelligence data centres in Alberta, where local residents raise questions about power use, land impacts and community consultation. Taken together, these pieces show her interest in both high-level decisions about pipelines and the local-level tensions that emerge around new energy and data projects.

Technology, policy and daily life

Baig often tracks how emerging technology intersects with politics and public life. In a recent piece she reports on experts who view Alberta’s separation referendum as a case study in how artificial intelligence could shape democratic processes, exploring concerns about misinformation, deepfakes and targeted political messaging.

Her reporting on planned protests against AI data centres in Alberta looks at the people organizing resistance, their worries about large-scale computing facilities and how provincial policy handles rapid growth in the sector. Beyond technology firms, she follows how broader global and security considerations affect everyday decisions by institutions, such as school boards across Canada cancelling or revising international field trips under what officials describe as an evolving global context.

Across these stories she presents technology and global risk not as abstract trends but as forces that alter how governments, schools and communities make choices in practice.

Community and social change features

Alongside politics, Baig writes features that document communities living through historical memory and social change.

She has reported on members of the Vietnamese diaspora marking 50 years since the fall of Saigon, recounting individual journeys out of Vietnam and how the events of 1975 continue to shape family identities decades later. In another piece she covers Edmontonians learning to mend clothing and sew as part of efforts to live more sustainably, framing the story around the skills, motivations and environmental values of participants. Her science coverage includes explaining the discovery of a new mineral inside a deep-Earth diamond, translating technical work on high-pressure geology into clear language about how such finds inform understanding of the planet’s interior.

Across these features she maintains the same deliberate reporting style as in her political work, using specific voices and detailed description to show how big historical and scientific themes land in the lives of particular people.

Her portfolio for The Canadian Press therefore spans high-stakes questions about Alberta’s constitutional future, national resource and technology policy, and quieter stories of communities adapting to changing circumstances, always grounded in careful interviews and clear explanations.