Danielle Smith muses about holding binding separation vote before next year’s general election

If Alberta separatists manage to eke out a victory in Danielle Smith’s Oct. 19 referendum, she says she’ll “have to” move quickly to a binding referendum before voters have a chance to pass judgment on her United Conservative Party Government in a general election. 

So say couple of far-right, pro-separatist outlets that are normally simpatico with UCP positions on most issues, anyway. As of last night, no one else seems to have reported the Alberta premier’s remarks at a closed-door UCP party members’ town hall in Lethbridge. 

I’m inclined to believe the Western Standard on this one, though, if only because the online publication bases its story on a recording by a separatist social media bloviator. If the recording’s the real thing – and the short fragment posted sure sounds as if it is – the quotes in the story are accurate. 

A questioner can be heard asking if the referendum result is “that a majority want a real referendum, would you say we’ll get that referendum in the spring?”

Ms. Smith responds: “That’s what I would hope to do, yeah. I think we’d have to settle it before the next election.”

“If I get that direction in October,” she continues, “I would do two and a half months of consultation (with First Nations) and then I’d get the feds to approve the question in January-February, and then we would have it in March or April.”

Of course, it’s completely on brand for a premier who never uttered a whisper about roiling the country for months with a separation referendum in her 2023 general election campaign to now start talking to her party’s separation-influenced supporters in southern Alberta about rushing into a binding referendum vote before Albertans have a chance to toss her party out of office.

And to do so, moreover, when it’s clear that Elections Alberta has neither the resources nor the know-how to conduct and count a fair referendum vote, let alone do anything about the massive foreign disinformation campaign now inundating Alberta or the purloined list of nearly three million Albertan voters and their personal information that’s somewhere out there in the wind. This is especially true in light of the UCP’s mutually exclusive demands that the count of nine murky and complicated referendum ballots on election night be done by hand and within 48 hours. 

We’ve all heard the reports that Elections Alberta is having to look outside the province to recruit warm bodies to help run the vote on Oct. 19 and 20. In a recent column, Postmedia political columnist Don Braid quotes former Alberta Election Commissioner Lorne Gibson suggesting that the Oct. 19 balloting alone will cost $130 million, three times what it cost to hold the 2023 general election.

We can argue all day about whether Ms. Smith is covertly aiding the separatist cause or if she’s just using provincial resources to gin up a situation in which she can declare herself Alberta’s saviour no matter what happens, and thereby stay in power. 

There’s no question, though, that the premier’s whole referendum escapade is both irresponsible and dangerous, with high potential for economic harm to both Alberta and other Canadian provinces and a real possibility of violence perpetrated by radical elements in her own party’s base that she’s now stirred up. 

Given the premier’s habitually casual relationship with the truth, it’s possible she imagined she could say something like this to the seppie bros at a party meeting in Lethbridge and something entirely different to a more cautious future audience, say a chamber of commerce meeting in Calgary or Edmonton. 

By the sound of commentary on social media, it would seem that even Ms. Smith’s peeps are starting to notice and distrust her motives as much as the rest of us. 

Instead of contemplating any more risky and divisive referenda in hopes of somehow remaining in power, maybe it’s time for Ms. Smith to start channelling the Clash and ask herself: “Should I stay or should I go?”

We really ought to let her know. I don’t know about the rest of you, but this indecision’s buggin’ me!