Danielle Smith's reform is nudging Alberta separation vote from 'if' toward 'when'
CBC
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.
And then, the day after the federal election delivered a fourth consecutive Liberal government, Premier Danielle Smith's government tabled electoral reform legislation that suddenly made it far, far easier for activists to put Alberta's existence within Canada on the ballot for voters.
Alberta Prosperity Project, a group that was already plotting a referendum petition drive before the Mark Carney Liberals' win, claims that it now has a sufficient number of people registered online to become signatories to meet this lower threshold.
This was a federal election fought around how Canada could best unify in the face of the threat of U.S. tariffs and President Donald Trump's expressed desire to swallow our country whole. And now, dissatisfaction with that vote's results have stoked those who want a permanent rupture in Canadian unity.
Alberta separatism is widely known as a likely losing proposition — Smith herself noted to media Thursday an Angus Reid poll in early April showed 25 per cent support and 75 per cent opposition.
But what she wouldn't acknowledge is that her government has helped her province's separatist movement get much closer to what they were looking for.
"I'm not going to prejudge what citizens are going to do for a petition," Smith told a news conference, despite all the recent activism and publicity developing around one such petition in particular.
The premier instead extolled the virtues of making it easier for citizens to practice the "purest form of democracy" on, oh, any old issue of public importance.
Whether that was intended to be a wink to the grassroots anti-Liberal conservatives who form her political base or not, United Conservative Party president Rob Smith chose to see it that way.
"This announcement is giving you the pathway some of you are seeking today," he posted publicly on Facebook. "And making it easier…"
When a commenter said: "We want to hear a path charting to independence or 51st state," the party president replied: "Please read her announcement, Mr. Carson! It's in there…"
Rob Smith (no relation to the premier) referred all questions about his social media remarks to the premier and justice minister.
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