Have you noticed how Alberta separatists who a few months ago were boldly predicting a massive separation victory on Oct. 19 have turned to whinging about how we need to “send Ottawa a message”?
Even Keith Wilson, the St. Albert lawyer behind the Let Alberta Decide group, could recently be found pleading with voters who want to stay in Canada to vote for separation anyway, you know, to give Premier Danielle Smith “leverage” with the feds. And according to the pundits, Mr. Wilson is supposed to be the sensible person’s separatist.
What’s going on? Have Alberta’s bold secessionists stopped marching confidently toward a petroleum-drenched future in their lederhosen and taken to plaintively wailing about how we all need to tell Ottawa how bad they feel?
Well, there comes a day when we all have to put on our big boy pants. This is starting to sound like a traditional federal NDP campaign when there’s a popular Liberal prime minister in Ottawa – like, say, right now.
If this keeps up, I fully expect that as soon as the dumb referendum-on-a-referendum votes have all been counted on Oct. 20, or whenever, Alberta separatists will declare that they have just won a “moral victory.”
Take it from an old New Democrat, boys, when that happens, your irrelevance looms. Hope you had fun! Don’t forget to remove your big blue signs from the boulevards before Bylaw carts them off to the dump.
Back on May 3, 2025, as his first year as leader of the Alberta NDP drew to a close, a still relaxed and confident Naheed Nenshi sharply challenged Premier Danielle Smith’s flirtation with separatism.
“To Premier Smith, I’m talking to you directly now, stop playing games,” he told more than 1,000 cheering NDP supporters at the Edmonton Convention Centre. “You have two choices: denounce separatism once and for all, and do it today, or let Albertans decide.”
A few moments later, he continued: “You want a referendum? Give us the referendum now!”
Cooler heads prevailed, unfortunately. That kind of rhetoric went down the Memory Hole when it started to look as if Mitch Sylvestre and the Alberta Prosperity Project/Stay Free Alberta gang, aided and abetted by Ms. Smith and her separatist-dominated United Conservative Party Caucus, would get their way and have a binding separation question on a ballot right about now.
Eventually, stuff happened – including a couple of rulings from a court about the wording of the APP/SFA question and the lack of consultation about the vote with First Nations – so we got stuck with Ms. Smith’s dumb-ass referendum on a referendum instead.
I’m starting to think that Mr. Nenshi’s instinct was right, though.
If we had proceeded directly to a binding separation referendum, just like Mr. Sylvestre and company insisted they wanted and Mr. Nenshi challenged the premier to deliver, we’d be 18 days away from a crushing defeat for the separatists.
Leastways, despite a lot of protests to the contrary from the separation gang, and the nagging worry that complacent voters who want no part of separation will nevertheless fail to show up on voting day, the auguries suggest that things are not going particularly well for the seppies, as they have come to be unfondly known by Albertans.
“With time running out, new poll suggests Alberta separatism support is slipping,” said the headline on a CBC story about the Janet Brown Opinion Research poll that was in the field from Sept. 8 to Sept. 21.
Plus, the professional number crunchers keep reporting in, and the headlines they generate don’t exactly reinforce the seppie case.
The day before yesterday, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce waded in with a report by University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe that painted yet another grim picture of life after separation.
“An 8 per cent rise in both interprovincial and international trade costs, which is informed based on the Brexit experience for the United Kingdom, would lower real GDP per capita by about 6 per cent, reduce employment and population by nearly 7 per cent (about 175,000 workers), and shrink the province’s overall economy by $62 billion a year (in 2026 dollars),” wrote Dr. Tombe.
It’s wordy, but if you’re inclined, you can read the whole thing for yourselves here. Plus, of course, it’s just one of several studies with similar messages, like the report of the Alberta Government’s own “independent advisory panel,” economist Jim Stanford’s False Promises, Big Dangers study, and former Alberta finance ministry official Lennie Kaplan’s analysis.
Newsies are trained to be fair, so some of the coverage of the Calgary Chamber’s contribution included bleating by separatists that Dr. Tombe was too gloomy.
“It’s not an accurate report,” Mr. Wilson complained. “It’s a model.” Anyway, he added, “the vote on the 19th of October isn’t for separation.” Count on it, though, that’s exactly how a vote for Option 2 would be taken, by Alberta, Canada, and the world. And Albertans are smart enough to know that.
Still, the slide of support for separatism would have been much steeper and more dramatic if this were a binding vote coming up, and at the end of the day this whole ridiculous secession referendum would be one and done. The APP would have been left with SFA.
Instead, I suppose, we’re going to have to put up with a lingering possibility that Premier Smith will find a way to ignore the likely result on Oct. 19 – or whenever Elections Alberta manages to get finished counting – and manipulate us into facing yet another referendum before she has to face the electorate in an election.
If it’s either lose her job to the restive separatists in her caucus or try to gin up a neverendum, she might very well roll the dice again.
It’s the polls – and no doubt the reception canvassers are getting on the doorstep – that explain the separatists’ lame pivot to sending Ottawa a message.
One MLA already chose to have a true referendum on separation ( https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ucp-mla-alberta-referendum-seperation-red-deer-jason-stephan-9.7364658). It looks that Smith has lost control of her caucus.
Peter: It’s a safe bet that there are more separatists in the UCP. If there are ones who aren’t, they are very silent. This is because they are very afraid of being pushed out, as their true concern is only for themselves.
Regardless of who the NDP has for their leader, the media will still continue to ignore them, or lie about them, when they do mention them, while openly supporting the UCP and Danielle Smith, and letting their major missteps go unchallenged. They did that with Rachel Notley, and that’s why the NDP lost in the provincial election in Alberta, three years ago. That’s not going to succeed this time, because the UCP and Danielle Smith are so bad, and in so many different ways, and more Albertans aren’t happy with what they are doing wrong. It’s going to be interesting to see the UCP and Danielle Smith get walloped.
Yes, things are not looking so good for the seppies now. Whatever momentum gained from the various ways Smith helped boost them seems to be fading. It also turns out her tears are not enough, although they are more likely related to thoughts of her own political future than Alberta’s.
However lest we become too complacent, the seppies seem to have raised a surprising amount of money and they will likely still turn out to vote in a referendum that may not be as well run as it should be. I do wonder if some of that money comes from foreign sources, particularly to our south. The US is chock full of tech billionaires, some of whom like to meddle in politics elsewhere in order to get the kind of society they want, not just in the US, but elsewhere in the world too.
Of course the send a message theme they are now focusing on is both a sign of their weakness, but also a recipe for a more drawn out campaign that could cause more political and economic damage to Alberta and Canada if successful. Fortunately most Albertans seem to already realize this and are reluctant to open this Pandora’s box to take a peek. We’ve seen how Brexit and MAGA turned out.
Smith’s political career is on the ropes now too because, despite all her manipulations, she has failed to be helpful enough to the separatists. I don’t know if at some point she imagined she could be the first president or governor of the new republic or state. However, like with her Wildrose betrayal she was not going to reveal that until she was ready to proceed, but sentiment now seems to have shifted against it. So she is left with her Plan B, playing an unconvincing and tepid federalist again.
However, if we can get past the distracting and divisive referendum questions, there is a truck load of problems Smith has put off or not dealt with well. Those chickens may soon come back to roost for her, if her separatist leaning party does not get rid of her before that.
In paragraph 13, it sounds a little confusing “If we had proceeded directly……Mr. Nenshi challenged the premier to deliver, we’d be 18 days away from a crushing defeat for the separatists.” Perhaps that should be “we wouldn’t be 18 days away”?
As is usually the case with Dingy Smith, we have the pivot to pipelines and trains to distract from the real problems Albertans are facing.
Old AB: I think what our host may have meant by this is that had the government scheduled a straight up and down referendum on separation, instead of this wispy-washy “referendum on a referendum”, it would have led to a “crushing defeat” for the separatist cause.
At least, that’s how I read it.
How illegitimate are our so-called grievances with Canada that our inability to persuade others leads us to make threats instead?
Yes, rhetorical.
If the Separatists lose this refendumb, the signs will still be up (although faded) and their gums will keep flapping, because, they’ll get a second kick at the cat in the 2027 provincial election. They’ll still be blaming Trudeau and Ottawa, for their perceived problems and still refusing to either work with Canada as a Canadian, or move to the rosy U.S. of A. My Grandfather fought in WW1, my Uncle, Father, Step Fathers and Father in-Law fought in WW2. I Canadian, proud of it, is Canada perfect, LOL, no, but no country is. And all these separatists, that are moaning poor us, can take a flying F at the moon!
And now the new British P.M. has begun a process that would allow the U.K. to rejoin the E.U.!!! Seems Alberta is several years behind.
What a great model to emulate. The EU is a ruin. After 2008 their capitalists took all the bailout money that came from the US banks that own it, and they sunk it back into Wall Street and the City of London. They invested nothing in the actual European economy. Now they’re cut off from Russian energy and being pushed into carrying on the US war against Russia. And because the liberals can no longer govern, the far-right overt Nazis are beginning to fill the political void.
As a disabled person, I mailed my ballot weeks ago. Should I expect confirmation of receipt by Elections Alberta?
Could Canada bifurcate the Alaska Highway to address any Trump threats of invasion? This would perhaps spell the end to that ancient cult of Hyderization and its objective of US-Canada harmony?
Yes, you can check the status of your returned ballot in the “Special Ballot Request Confirmation” email that Elections Alberta sent to you. Search “ballot” in your emails. It will read:
“Your application for a special ballot has been submitted successfully. Your confirmation code is XXXXXXXX.
To view the status of your application, click the link below.”
Go to the link and enter your surname to track the status of your returned ballot.
Now if you’re like me and mailed your ballot at a mailbox inside a post office along with other family members’ ballots, you might be wondering why theirs were confirmed in the system two days later and your is still missing weeks later. It’s a mystery!
You can still vote if your missing ballot never arrives. Just go to the advance polls. The last date of entry for the mailed ballots is one day before the last day for the advance polls. That leaves you one day to vote at the advance polls. My advance poll mysteriously moves to a new location for one day only on the final day of advance voting. It is a location with a horrific mess of a parking lot, so you may need assistance to navigate yours. Check your advance poll location(s).
You can also vote on October 19.
I can’t understand how ballot envelopes mailed at the same time in the same indoor post office mailbox could meet such different outcomes, but this seems to be part for the course in this litter box of a referendum. I don’t have much hope my ballot will show up, it it would have already done so. It’s a pity they picked mine to “disappear”.
Worked perfectly. Now if someone understood “hyderize” which is named after a US-Canada border crossing way up north.
YYC: To be “Hyderized,” one needs to drink Everclear (75% alcohol) in Hyder, Alaska. Not worth the trip. DJC
I’ve kept a screen print of my “unreceived” ballot, along with the one that was mailed at the same time and received by Elections Alberta. I will be taking these to the last day of the advance polls to vote in person, at the special “one day only” location. These will serve as “proof” that I did mail my ballot but it was not counted, in case anyone tries to accuse me of voting twice. I will also take a printed copy of the rules stating that this is allowed (and a hat, gloves, warm footwear, lawnchair, thermos, etc. for the wait, because it is outdoors at this location). I find it difficult to trust an organization that has waylaid my ballot. Canada Post delivered the other one, so where is mine?
Yes, if you requested the special ballot online and chose to receive the confirmation by email, you would have received a Confirmation Code as well as a link (https://specialballot.elections.ab.ca/status/8400/xxxxxxxx where the last digits represent the confirmation code) to track the status of the application (Submitted date, Approved date, Mailed date of the package, Received date “Your kit has been received, and your ballot has been cast.”). There were 11 days between the Submitted-Approved and Mailed dates, but only 5 days between the time I mailed the completed package back and the time my ballot(s) envelope was cast.
My neighbour went down to Elections Alberta on Kingsway Ave. to vote directly with ID in hand, and there were no issues.
If you requested your Confirmation Code by mail, there should have been a link supplied to track the progress.
I’ve read that Danielle Smith will attempt to claim that a vote to stay in Canada is a vote for a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada. It is not. I would like to remind her of her Q and As:
“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?”
“Option 1: Alberta should remain a province of Canada.”
“Option 2: The Government of Alberta should commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada.”
Option one is simple: Alberta should remain a province of Canada.
Spin as she undoubtedly will, there is nothing in her question or the answers to indicate a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada”. She is the one that engineered this referendum and the questions. She will have to live with the results. She’s been so busy spinning that she tied herself in knots.
As for Derek, I wonder why he would generate an AI image of himself in traditional Bavarian beer hall gear during Oktoberfest?
A sovereign Alberta within a united Canada is what the original other nine questions are about, not the separation one.
Keep in mind that there is currently no “legal process required under the Canadian Constitution” to hold a secession referendum, nor, for that matter, any mention of secession at all in our nation’s highest legal document.
A referendum asking if Albertans would like to secede if it were legal is a different question. It’s already been answered with respect any and all provinces by the SCoC which ruled that no province may unilaterally secede. Point final. That was a quarter century ago.
The “Option 2” question is incoherent, misleading, and therefore not in compliance with the federal Clarity Act. It can be interpreted in different ways, neither of which makes sense in light of the SCoC ruling: since a government certainly cannot be bound by any means to do something unconstitutional, “binding” in Option 2’s context can only be read figuratively to mean the government will promise to hold a referendum on whether Albertans would like to secede if it were constitutionally legal to do so —a hypothetical question which can’t result in secession and therefore does not need to comply with the Clarity Act.
But can a government be legally bound to do anything by way of referendum? Most legal opinion says no. The figurative use of the word “binding” would alone disqualify it under the Clarity Act, but more importantly Option 2 incorrectly and misleadingly implies that a majority of ‘yes’ votes would by itself legitimize secession. Even if there were a constitutional mechanism to secede, what Option 2 asks cannot be accepted under the Clarity Act.
Perhaps the question should better ask whether the voter approves of the governing party promising to hold a referendum whose sole purpose is to send Ottawa a message that X-proportion of Alberta’s electorate would like to separate from Canada if one day it were ever legal to do so. As a hypothetical question that doesn’t ask voters to weigh in on actual secession, it can be asked by any government, by any political party, by federalists or by separatist organizations, by news-media, by professional pollsters, or by any interested group and the results published or not. So the real question: why does the government need to spend a lot of pubic dollars on a divisive exercise when the proportion of Albertans (and/or voters in any province) which wants to secede is almost always available from other less-expensive and less-divisive sources? In any case, if it leaves the ball in Ottawa’s court, the federal government can respond with either: Gosh!—we better meet all your demands; or Gee! We better make sure it’s never legal to secede. Ottawa is wisely much more reticent to show its hand concerning hypotheticals.
By all impartial accounts separatism has never had enough support to win any kind of referendum, neither a dubious “binding” one nor a mooted legal one. Indeed support for secession is shrinking from its zenith of emotional controversy back to its usual single-digit levels (lately surveyed at less than one-in-four and continuing to drop as more voters realize secessionism’s constitutional mootness and the purely performative partisanship ulteriorly motivating the governing UCP).
The larger question is naturally obscured by Danielle Smith’s forked-tongue bafflegab typified by her “Sovereign Alberta Within a United Canada” Act tendentiously presented to mean that Alberta may opt out of federal laws the UCP and its Maple MAGA base don’t like (firearms registration, trans-jurisdictional pollution, certain sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, &c), yet suggesting Alberta somehow remains part of the federation while pretending to belong to a confederacy where each confederate is joined to a weak central government on its own, unique terms. At the same time it’s not untrue that Alberta is sovereign—but as a federate which, like each and every other province in equal measure, relinquishes a minimum part of its sovereignty so that altogether a federation of provinces can function, not as a confederate that Smith’s doublespeak implies. The ‘send-Ottawa-a-message’ motive is evident in a number of UCP legislations that appear to be provocatively unconstitutional and intended to rack up grievances against Ottawa that are supposed to rationalize secession.
Danielle is notoriously cagey, this time because her leadership is sitting on a bubble the separatist Take-Back-Alberta faction of her party can burst at any time, just like it did to party founder, first leader, and first premier, Jason Kenney. She leaves herself enough wiggle room to claim that by “the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution” she really means the process the SCoC recommended over a quarter century ago—that is, to insert into the Constitution criteria for legal secession if a sufficient number of provincial legislatures and Canadian citizens approve of the amendment. As such, she has left herself an ‘out’: she can still claim that any reference to separation —her referendum-on-a-referendum, for example—is really asking Albertans if they approve of their government initiating the constitutional amendment process to insert criteria for legal session into the Canadian Constitution.
So far Smith has not offered any reasons why she has not initiated the constitutional amending process—that is, as usual, we can’t know what she really means despite whatever she claims. The recent court of King’s bench decision which found the original secession referendum question unconstitutional might have forced Smith to reword it so that it doesn’t ask voters to directly weigh in on secession, but outside the context of real events betraying real intent she can now claim the referendum cart is no longer before the constitutional amendment horse, thus leaving her the out that the amendment route was the “legal process” she was referring the all along while not-so-stealthily accommodating a range of separatist ardour from plodding legalism to radical rebellion.
She’s carefully ambiguous (which doesn’t necessarily except her as often quite gormless) in hopes she can appease both her TBA masters who have commandeered the party apparatus and the general electorate which decides who represents riding interests, two positions which are getting more diametrically opposed every day now as the referenda near and more Albertan voters (as well as observers in the ROC) are better apprised of the legalities involved— or lack thereof. Already separatists have fired shots over Smith’s bow warning her to keep sweet with their secessionist agenda, yet surveyed support for separation among the electorate—or at least the academic question regardless its legal mootness— continues to decline while her party’s electoral fortunes, which can’t be conclusively known until the next general election, are merely sort of meh. Two mutually opposing Petitions, signatories of one recommending a secession referendum be held ASAP and of the other that no referendum should be held at all were close enough—well, at least in the same order of magnitude (the federalists collecting over 400 thousand signatures, the separatists claiming somewhere around 300 thousand) that Smith could conflate and interpret them to mean 700 thousand Albertans approve of holding a secession referendum. Not too, too twisted she might concede given her dilemma otherwise.
The TBA faction could oust Smith as leader, but it can’t take away her own seat, even if it kicks her out of the party. Remember: she has belonged to three different parties in the Alberta Assembly, leader-without-a-seat for a time in two, has been hired and fired from public offices, won and lost riding nominations, and been a former party leader by floor-crossing and becoming a former MLA. From her perspective, as long’s she can keep the as-yet empty threat of secession alive there’s always a place for her in Alberta politics, even if it’s as an unelected spokesperson, possibly as radio talk-show host, for a perennial separatist fringe, just like her geriatric, superannuated, Triple-“Eh?” mentor.
If one definition of sovereign citizenship is keeping a small pustule of separatism alive whence it periodically erupts as a threat more or less worthy of our attention, then Danielle Smith definitely has it. Though she can’t take all the discredit, her premiership has undeniably brought Alberta separatism one flap closer to the sun than it’s ever been before, ensuring tales of the heroine Boudicca of Bitumen will hold children’s raptured attention around LED-fireplaces for many a future generation. If Danielle can ultimately sing, ‘Don’t cry for me, Alberta: I kept my promise [at least that Alberta’s threat of separation will never die, if nothing else…]’ then she will go down in the history books. How far down we’ve yet to see.
Unfortunately, this misery will drag on after October 19 because there’s merch to sell!
Seppie influencers and podcasters have been flogging ball caps, t-shirts, hoodies, flags etc for months. They have stock. Most of it made in China – a country they profess to despise, but whatever. (Hint – Proud Berta Dad has a sale on now. The Alberta Independence hoodie is marked down to $30. Previously selling for $67.50. And the Alberta Independence Snapback hat flat brim is listed at $35, down from $52.50.) And there’s also the money they’ve been raking in from social media appearances and town hall events. Plus, allegedly, support from the UCP war room??
Too many people making too much money to let the independence grift fade away.
Get your Alberta Independence, now 56 percent off! They’re selling like fascist pancakes.
The seppie “leaders”, have made it very clear. They don’t care. They will carry on with their divisive rhetoric and actions.
And now the Globe and Mail has exposed why. These unelected separatists are giving away our water, land, trees and minerals. Free while supplies last to Republican Christians! The separatists get power, the Republicans get everything else and Albertans get nothing. If they aren’t already hiding out in Texas, they should be. Surely the Republicans can refuse extradition.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-alberta-separatism-canada-united-states-republican/
Your post today is positive news for Canadian Remainers. But I worry good news may cause Remainers to relax their efforts in support of Canada.
The poll that counts is October 19. Please be sure to vote and convince others to vote. I want to see a result that ends the push to separate. “Stay in Canada and no to the nine.” Remember the nine questions are a black door allowing the UCP to disrupt the federation and keep their separatism fuse burning.
It’s been clear all along that the separatist fantasy was headed for a crash. Smith and her sovereignist colleagues like Rob Anderson have always understood that it would never fly, which is why they never wanted a referendum on it and when they had no choice because their party is full of these fantasists, including part of their caucus, they made it very clear they would vote remain.
What Smith really believes in is an Alberta where corporations are free to do whatever they want. They oppose the federal government when it’s in the hands of Liberals that threaten maximum returns to shareholders. They love natural gas (hence the moratorium on renewables), oil corporations generally, data centres (as long as they run on natural gas), for-profit health care, private schools, pipelines that private investors won’t touch and high-speed rail projects involving the Premier’s husband. They also realize that the current federal government is also corporate friendly and they can work together with it on big “nation-building projects”. Smith and Anderson want the freedom to shield themselves from federal legislation when it threatens corporate interests and to collaborate with the federal government when it favours those same interests. They call this “sovereignty within a united Canada” because it sounds so much better than “corporate heaven”.
Q: With all these new Alberta betting apps coming online, are they allowed to post odds on non-sporting events, such as the over/under for the number of days for all the referenda ballots to be counted? Could be a few bucks to be made if the government is going to hold to to their mandated 48 hours.
No matter the outcome on Oct. 19, Alberta’s fate is destiny is to be left in an eternal state of the Never-endum.
As I’ve stated in another comment, Smith is pushing for a sovereign Alberta. This is separation, independence.
Newsies are not trained to be fair or we would have had a media in the US Empire that explained why Martin Luther King called the US, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” (this is why US intelligence murdered him) and one that went to great lengths to explain how European emissaries of imperialist finance dispossessed the people who lived on the territory that is now Canada of 95% of the land. (it wasn’t residential schools). This goofy liberal notion of the media is about as stinky as a honeybucket in a homeless camp in August. An industry operated by the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Baron Wideload of Crossharbour is not predicated on ethics. People have generally figured that out, but the void has been filled by various Five Eyes social media projects like QAnon. And so you get Maple Maga and the APP deadbeats.
I fully expect to be returning to the polls in the next 6 months; the unknowns are what question and who calls it.
Might be a referendum, might be a general election. Could be Smith, could be her replacement. The crystal ball will be a tad clearer after the chaos parties AGM.
I’ve been thinking that a “go” vote below 25 percent would be ideal. Any vote significantly above that, and I’m afraid the separatists will begin a cycle of “neverendums” like Quebec’s every time there’s a public health emergency, court reversal, or stalled pipeline riling them up.
The lengthy Globe piece this week suggests that the strongest indicator of separatist sympathy seems to be evangelical Christianity. That’s not surprising, considering their resistance to Covid restrictions on gatherings and the networks they share with similar US groups. Some of it, of course, is deeply embedded in the “pioneers and cowboys” version of Alberta history and rural culture, as the article also notes, along with deliberate fostering by Preston Manning and his pals at the University of Calgary.
whinging