The western Canadian province of Alberta will ask its citizens this October whether they want to remain part of Canada or kick-start the process of holding a binding referendum on separation, marking a major test of the country’s unity, the first in decades.
Alberta’s leader, Premier Danielle Smith, announced the coming vote on 21 May in a televised address.
She said she herself supports a unified Canada.
EDMONTON — Influential Alberta independence advocates offered differing reactions to Premier Danielle Smith’s October referendum question on Alberta remaining in Canada, as the UCP faces an internal struggle among party members.
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OTTAWA—In a measured and conciliatory message to Alberta, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday that he is working to make Canada “better” after the province’s premier revealed she will stage a vote that could trigger a historic separation referendum and set off a potential threat to national unity unseen in a generation.
Appearing in the 19th-century parliamentary library during a tour of ongoing renovations to the Centre Block, Carney cited former prime ministers Joe Clark, Stephen Harper, and other Alberta politicians who made “huge contributions” in Canada’s Parliament and other areas of national life.
Premier Danielle Smith says Albertans will be able to vote in the fall on whether they want the province to hold a binding referendum on separating from Canada.
In a pre-recorded speech broadcast Thursday evening, Smith said a question will be added to a provincewide referendum in October that will ask, “Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”
The misguided decision by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to accept Ottawa’s demands to increase the province’s effective industrial carbon tax to $130 per tonne by 2040 will impose an estimated additional $33 billion in cumulative carbon costs (an average of $1.26 per barrel across all oil sands production) on the oil sands sector between 2030 and 2040.
Is Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s strategy for getting a bitumen pipeline to B.C.’s northwest coast about to reach its breaking point?
Sure, she’s got two Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with Prime Minister Mark Carney that pave the way for the pipeline but there’s still a lot of terrain to cover before it becomes a reality. And the thing that could hold it up is her persistent support for a separation referendum that will likely be held in October.
A court has struck down one Alberta independence petition,” says Keith Wilson, the St. Albert lawyer and advocate for Alberta’s separation from Canada. “This does not mean the referendum is over.”
“The legal path to an Alberta independence referendum remains open,” he declares on his YouTube channel, “and Alberta’s cabinet still has the authority to put the question to voters in October.”
Alberta’s separatist sentiment has borrowed heavily on what you might call Quebec envy. But make no mistake, the direction it is taking now veers far from the well-worn Quebec separatist path.
Though Alberta’s discontent in the federation goes back a long way, it was only in the past decade or so that it sharpened into a focus on getting Alberta the same kind of leverage that Quebec has used in Canada.
You started to see it with demands for Alberta to have more control over immigration, or its own pension plan, as Quebec does, or for the province to have more say on judicial appointments, including to the Supreme Court.
On Friday morning in Calgary, Mark Carney and Danielle Smith shook hands, then signed and posed with official copies of an “implementation agreement for the Canada-Alberta memorandum of understanding,” an eight-page document bound up in profound questions of climate change, resource development, economic sovereignty and national unity.
“Today is a good day for Alberta,” the Alberta premier said. “And it’s a good day for Canada.”
“Today,” the prime minister said, was about “building trust in a Canada that works” — a country “rooted in co-operative federalism, where we build together, pragmatically and ambitiously, to achieve our shared ambitions.”
If the goal of Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard was to fuel the separatist fire, she’s doing an exquisite job.
On Wednesday, Leonard quashed a petition that separatists in the province had organized to trigger an independence referendum in the fall. Why? Because the chief electoral officer who allowed the petition to go forth in the first place didn’t adequately consult the Indigenous peoples of the province.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith trumpeted a new energy accord she signed with Ottawa on Friday as a salve for separatists in her province, while some First Nations and her counterpart in British Columbia slammed it as a reward for bad behaviour.
Ms. Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday unveiled the details of the pact designed to smooth the path for a bitumen pipeline to the West Coast. Alberta agreed to increase the carbon price it imposes on oil producers, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carbon capture and storage, while Ottawa agreed to support a pipeline to tidewater.
I dunno about this. Carney is blarney.
An Alberta court decision this week derailed a proposed referendum question on the province’s separation from Canada. The ruling focused on the issue of Indigenous consultation. Legal experts say the long-term impact of the ruling is unclear, with a planned appeal to the higher courts, and other open questions about previous Supreme Court of Canada decisions on secession and Indigenous consultation.
For decades, Alberta has learned one hard political lesson over and over again: Ottawa only “hears” Alberta when Alberta becomes impossible to ignore. Not when Alberta asks politely. Not when Alberta negotiates in good faith. Not when Alberta contributes tens of billions to Confederation. Only when Alberta becomes politically dangerous.
On Wednesday, in its Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation v Alberta decision, the Alberta Court of King’s Bench quashed the province’s secession referendum process. In particular, the judge quashed the chief electoral officer’s decision to allow signatures to be gathered to call for a referendum. Whatever your view on Alberta secession, the decision warrants attention for the readiness of the judge to prohibit a democratic process based on Indigenous rights claims.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is avidly wooing the west — but will his own caucus trip him up? Last Friday, Carney met with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to reassure her that Ottawa’s got her back on a second bitumen pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s West Coast. After the tête-à-tête Smith said, “This morning I said ‘if’ a deal gets signed, and afterwards I said ‘when’ a deal gets signed,” describing it as “an indication of my improved level of confidence.”
