Alberta and secession, Premier Danielle Smith opens to referendum: “In 2026 if petition signatures warrant”

by Marzio Pelù

EDMONTON – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is once again “winking” at the separatists. After announcing a bill to reduce the number of signatures needed to call for a referendum, the governor of the “rebel” Canadian province said – in a video posted on social media on Monday – that she will call a referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada next year if citizens collect the necessary signatures. 

An explosive statement, just days after a separatist demonstration of several hundred people in front of the Alberta Parliament. In her online speech, Smith actually hit both ends of the stick: she said she wants a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada, but she also stressed that a growing number of Albertans are dissatisfied with “Confederation” and are organizing petitions to ask the province to leave it.

“The vast majority of these individuals are not fringe voices to be marginalized or vilified. They are loyal Albertans” she said. “They’re frustrated, and they have every reason to be…”. Smith listed those reasons, starting with hostile federal Liberal policies that, she said, have not only taken an unfair share of Alberta’s wealth but have also undermined the oil and gas industry that drives its economy. Smith said the Liberal government has turned Canada into an international laughing stock over the past decade.

“We have the most abundant and accessible natural resources of any country on Earth, and yet we landlock them, sell what we do produce to a single customer to the south of us while enabling polluting dictatorships to eat our lunch…” she said, reiterating several times “…we want to be free, we want the freedom to make the right choices for our people…”.

And then she added: “It’s that the same Liberal government, with almost all the same ministers responsible for our nation’s inflation, housing, crime and budget crisis, and that oversaw the attack on our provincial economy for the past 10 years, have been returned to power…” she said, referring to the “handover” from Justin Trudeau to Mark Carney.

She then announced that she would appoint a negotiating team to try to end federal policies that have long irked the province, particularly on infrastructure projects like oil pipelines, and that she would chair an “Alberta Next Panel” which would host a series of public meetings to hear ideas and grievances from Albertans. “We will likely put some of the more popular ideas that we discussed with the ‘Panel’ to a provincial referendum, so that all Albertans can vote on them in 2026” she said. That vote, we said, could also involve Alberta’s secession: the bill to reduce the requirements to request a provincial referendum would change the rules of the popular referendum, requiring a petition signed by 10% of eligible voters in the previous general election, compared to 20% of total registered voters. Applicants would also have 120 days, instead of 90, to collect the 177,000 signatures required.

And separatist associations have already started working: the “Albertans” who have signed the petition proposed by the Alberta Prosperity Project in support of a possible referendum for the sovereignty of the province have already exceeded 145,000…

In the pic above: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, in a screenshot taken from the video published on Monday on her social networks (Twitter X – @ABDanielleSmith) and also available here below