One hundred and seventy-seven thousand people.
That’s roughly 3.5 per cent of Alberta’s population. It’s also the amount of signatures that will be needed to force a separation referendum designed to take those five million people and their land out of Canada.
Alberta independence groups had already been gathering online registrants who were keen to add their names to a petition drive when the law required far more Albertans — around 600,000 — to sign up to trigger a constitutional referendum.
