How a UCP bill renewed Alberta separatist bid to force referendum, after court shot it down

Alberta separatist leaders expect to start canvassing in January to get their independence referendum question on the ballot, thanks to the provincial government’s latest legislation to make it easier for them to succeed.

Were it not for the United Conservatives’ speedy passage of Bill 14 this week, the Alberta Prosperity Project’s citizens initiative would have been in peril, thanks to a judge’s ruling that the existing initiative law didn’t permit a referendum on independence.

That new bill revives the separatists’ project by removing the ability for Elections Alberta — or anyone — to vet a proposed question’s constitutional validity.

But more than that, Bill 14 forced Elections Alberta to consider that the existing question proposal was never actually made, leaving the court ruling against it moot — and let the independence group reapply immediately to have their petition drive considered again, without the hurdles that dogged it the first time.

With that, APP head Mitch Sylvestre and a supportive lawyer visited Elections Alberta on Thursday and submitted their new application for processing. And their group hailed the government’s helpful legislation which made that possible.

“Bill 14 receives royal assent — Alberta’s sovereignty era begins!” a post on APP’s website declared triumphantly.

To a leading opponent of the separatist movement, it’s a sign of Premier Danielle Smith kowtowing to the extremists in her party base.

“Premier is bending over backwards to facilitate this separation referendum,” said former Tory deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk. He led the successful Alberta Forever Canada petition drive, which proposed a referendum asking Albertans to say yes to staying in Canada — the reverse of the separation question.

While the United Conservatives and their leader remain officially and vocally in favour of a united Canada, they have now passed two pieces of legislation that make it easier for fans of a fractured Canada to give Alberta a separation referendum.

Eight months before Bill 14, the UCP government passed legislation that lowered the threshold for petitioners to force a constitutional referendum, from about 600,000 signatures to roughly two-thirds fewer.

“I think the original big gift was the Citizen’s Initiative Act [amendments] in the first place, taking the number of signatures down to 177,000,” Sylvestre told CBC News in an interview Friday.

Assuming that the new APP application passes the now-reduced number of criteria, Elections Alberta will approve its question by early January, starting the four-month petition drive to gather enough signatures soon thereafter, Sylvestre said.

It means canvassing in the frigid Alberta winter, but the APP executive said they don’t have to search too hard for supporters. That’s because his group had about 250,000 people registered on its website by this spring, all saying they were committed to signing the in-person petitions.

On top of that, APP has recruited 1,900 canvassers, and trained half of them, said Sylvestre, who has spent much of the year hosting dozens of pro-independence gatherings in cities and rural communities throughout the province.