Has Danielle Smith just relegated the United Conservative Party to the Boneyard of Broken Alberta Political Brands?

This is not yet clear, but it’s sure starting to look as if it could happen.

Thanks to Ms. Smith’s stupid and divisive separation referendum election last Monday, which from the government’s perspective more or less flopped, the premier appears to have alienated much of the three quarters of Alberta voters who wanted no part of separation and plenty of the perpetually disaffected crowd who did want to separate as well.

As we saw yesterday, pro- and anti-Smith secessionist factions have already fallen to squabbling over the carcass of the Alberta Prosperity Project, one of the most prominent fund-raising and campaign organizations on the separatist side. Since that battle is taking place on social media, it is far from clear which side will emerge victorious. It probably doesn’t matter.

Worse from the perspective of her United Conservative Party, that portion of separatist hard-liners sticking with Ms. Smith for now isn’t helping either. “I encourage Alberta independence advocates to recognize the importance of maintaining conservative unity and working with the UCP to prevent an NDP government from taking office,” separatist leader Keith Wilson pleaded with his followers on social media Thursday. “Such an outcome would risk setting back the progress we have made and delay another referendum for many years.”

So if you want to delay another referendum for many years, dear readers, vote for the NDP!

If the separation referendum and its noxious nine sub-referenda achieved nothing else, their defeat or tepid passage and the resulting fallout for Ms. Smith and the UCP illustrates the profound risks for politicians in a representative democracy who try to use direct democracy schemes to achieve goals that require broad consensus.

Ms. Smith, who has enough brass for a cheap Russian samovar, has always believed she can talk her way out of any blunder. And often she can. Still, the fact that at least one of her loyal MLAs thought it wise a few days before the vote to ensure his constituency association “passed a unanimous motion declaring our unwavering confidence and continuing strong support for Premier Danielle Smith” is not the endorsement Mike Ellis thought it was.

Ms. Smith, meet Baron Cameron of Brexit and Chipping Norton. No one likes him very much nowadays. Alas, thanks to Tubby Black a generation ago, there will be no baronetcy for you.

Readers with long memories will recall how back in December 2014, Ms. Smith attempted to get her entire Opposition Wildrose Party Caucus to join the venerable Progressive Conservative dynasty then led by the late premier Jim Prentice. On Dec. 17, nine of them crossed the floor and five stayed behind.

When that gambit went over with supporters of both parties like the proverbial lead balloon, it started both the Wildrose Party and the PCs on a path to the political extinction that came to an end with the creation of the UCP by Jason Kenney and his comrades in July 2017.

To have destroyed two conservative political brands in one career is a remarkable achievement. To ruin a third might be a world record!

To be fair, the PC brand might still have some life left in it were it not for UCP legislation making it illegal for any other political party to call itself “conservative.” Legal wrangling continues over the use of the name by Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie’s Progressive Tory Party.

Other broken Alberta political brands include the Alberta Liberals (the walking dead), the Alberta Party (now the legal body that serves as host to the Progressive Tories), Social Credit (now possessed by an entity called Pro-Life Alberta) and my personal favourite, the United Farmers of Alberta, a political party that achieved new brand life as a chain of gas stations.

Meanwhile, back in the present, the fall sitting of the Alberta Legislature commences  on Tuesday and will run till Dec. 3. Look for plenty of “culture war garbage,” in the words of the NDP Opposition, and not much of substance. “We’ll fight any attempt to rig or gerrymander electoral boundaries because we believe that voters should choose their politicians,” NDP House Leader Christina Gray vowed.

As for the referendum vote, only one poll remained uncounted just before midnight. With more than two million Albertans voting, 1,544,819 Albertans voted to remain in Canada and 513,885 voted to hold a binding referendum later, although what motivated them is unclear at this point since the seppie side pushed several arguments for the vote. As a result, the true secessionist vote is likely much smaller.

The government’s five confusingly written immigration referenda all passed by narrow margins and its four constitutional questions all failed, leaving the government with very little to show for its $130-million vote and its propaganda campaign to sway voters to its side for the nine referenda.

According to social media posts last night by two prominent figures in the Alberta separation movement, the board of the Alberta Prosperity Project terminated Mitch Sylvestre as CEO and Jeffrey Rath as the group’s legal counsel last month.

However, Mr. Sylvestre, speaking last night at an online video meeting of APP supporters to discuss the next steps for their separation movement and how to get supporters to attend the United Conservative Party annual general meeting next month dismissed the claims as completely false. Mr. Rath was not at the meeting.

The social media comments have been posted in public. AlbertaPolitics.ca has been sent a transcript and recording of the meeting Mr. Sylvestre attended, first reported on social media by journalist and researcher Trevor Scott Howell.

A note on X published at 5:27 p.m. by Chris Scott, owner of the Whistlestop Café in Mirror, which became a centre of opposition to COVID vaccinations during the pandemic, showed an image stating: “Notice of board decisions” beneath labels reading “Alberta Prosperity Project,” “formal public notice,” and “from the board of directors.” The image was produced in the same style as the APP website.

The image states that Mr. Sylvestre, who is still president of the UCP’s Bonnyville–Cold Lake–St. Paul constituency association, and Mr. Rath, a well-known lawyer who served as APP counsel, were “terminated, for cause,” on Sept. 14, and removed as directors at a separate meeting on Sept. 24. “Neither Jeffrey Rath nor Mitch Sylvestre has authority to act for or represent the Alberta Prosperity Project (Alberta Prosperity Society),” it says.

“I had sincerely hoped this matter could be resolved privately,” Mr. Scott said in a post accompanying the image. “In the interest of protecting the integrity and unity of Alberta’s independence and sovereignty movements, every effort was made to reach a resolution behind closed doors. It is therefore with profound disappointment and reluctance that I find it necessary to issue this public notice to the members of the Alberta Prosperity Project.”

A post with the same image published about 20 minutes earlier by Tanya Clemens at her FarmGeek account on X said “I am an APP board member and wanted folks to know that these changes had been made by our board. Please read the notice.”

“We made the decision to wait until after the referendum to share this,” she said in part in another post on X. “We had all worked so hard to get to that point, and the last thing we wanted was to create a distraction when everyone needed to be focused on winning the vote.”

In 2023, Ms. Clemens was an unsuccessful nomination candidate for the United Conservative Party in the Livingstone-Macleod Riding. In the past year, she has become well known as a proponent of the APP.

At the APP’s way-forward meeting, according to the transcript, Mr. Sylvestre said, “Chris and Tanya have never ever been members of the APS board. Okay? So just understand this: the fact that they’re saying that they dismissed anybody from the APS board, they had no authority to do it. They cannot do it, and I’m really concerned with the timing of that.”

“This is all internal stuff,” he continued. “I said I would never, you know, have a fight in public about any of our internal stuff, and I’m going to hold that line. I’m not going to disparage anybody, and not going to do that because that I believe is the whole point here.”

“It’s going to literally make us all look like we’re freaking crazy,” Mr. Sylvestre adds in the recording. “You know, we’re having a fight right after a big success. What I thought is a big success. So as a consequence to that, you know what? I’m just going to move forward.”

The UCP AGM is scheduled to take place at the BMO Centre in Calgary from Nov. 27 to 29.

Meanwhile, last night Elections Alberta was still counting the final 1 per cent of the ballots cast in Monday’s separation referendum.

Listen carefully to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s post-referendum message to the members of her United Conservative Party and you will understand that she is not sternly drawing a line in the sand for the party’s many separatists so much as instituting a gentle policy of “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.”

Secessionists are still welcome in the bosom of the UCP – indeed, the premier desperately wants to keep them there – they need only to agree to keep their lips zipped about their separatism for the time being, especially if they hold party office or run as candidates.

“Now that the referendum is behind us, I hope you know that I do not hold any ill will toward any of our members because of how they voted or which side they campaigned on,” Ms. Smith told the membership in the pre-recorded message posted yesterday on social media. “What matters now is that as a party we accept the results of the referendum and support and implement the clear mandate given to us by Albertans to pursue a strong Alberta within a united Canada.”

Of course, the real message of the vote in the referendum on a referendum foisted on the province by Ms. Smith and her separatist-dominated party is that the overwhelming majority of Albertans want no part at all of separatism, secession, or sovereignty within a united Canada. They are proud Canadians and they intend to stay that way. Period. Full stop.

“A strong Alberta within a united Canada is the position of our party and our government,” Ms. Smith continued, keeping the candle of sovereignty-association flickering brightly enough for the separatist faithful to see and faintly enough for the rest of us to ignore.

“Although members of our party can have whatever views they wish, candidates running under our party banner need to be committed to, and support and abide by, this position from the day they take out their nomination papers, throughout their candidacy, and for the duration of their time serving as MLAs in our caucus,” she said.

“We expect every member of our provincial board and members of the constituency association board across the province to uphold the position of our party on this issue and focus their attention and efforts on one singular objective over the next 12 months,” she went on. (Emphasis added.) “And that objective is beating the NDP in every single riding in the province.”

Premier Smith then sketched out a dystopian fantasy of woke “socialist NDP” rule, pure comedy gold in which children would change their genders without their parents’ knowledge, the carbon tax would return, and Albertans would be forced to receive vaccinations while Opposition Leader Naheed Nenshi’s “boss in Ottawa, Avi Lewis, will be granted a significant amount of control over Alberta’s future.”

So begins Ms. Smith’s version of the Reconstruction Era of the UCP, the party whose unity is in tatters and whose popularity with Albertans, like the premier’s own, is sinking in the wake of a referendum nobody but hard-core separatists wanted.

There’s no way this can be interpreted as laying down the law or reading the Riot Act to the party’s separatists, as many media stories yesterday tried to suggest. It is a temporary pause in secession talk while Ms. Smith tries to manoeuvre the party’s powerful separatist faction not to give her the bum’s rush as they did to her predecessor Jason Kenney.

That was the premier’s real message yesterday, not her performative challenge to “those few who … remain intent on dividing and turning our party into a vehicle for the independence movement. I would respectfully invite them to join a different party.”

Ms. Smith repeated some of the same points to reporters yesterday during a news conference about the referendum results. “I’m asking people to do some self-reflection, and if they are able to accept the results of the mandate that Alberta gave us through a free and democratic process, then we can have a reset. And those who cannot, they have opportunities through other political parties.”

Of course, she is counting on the fact the separatist crowd really don’t have any such opportunities. Only those intent on political suicide would join the Republican Party of Alberta, tarnished as it is with its connection to the leak of the personal information of 2.9 million Alberta voters last spring. What else is there? Wexit?

And while Ms. Smith’s personal reputation has certainly suffered as a result of the referendum debacle, she believes she can talk her way out of any blunder and, in truth, she often can. This will be a test of that talent.

As referendum vote count slowly proceeds, the UCP ‘mandate’ keeps slipping

Meanwhile last night, the noxious nine sub-referenda included to scapegoat immigrants for policy failures by the UCP and give the premier an excuse to engage in endless constitutional fights with Ottawa that have no chance of success – fomenting future regional discontent – were not doing well as the count by Elections Alberta slowly continued.

With 97 per cent of the ballots counted at 10 p.m., Albertans appeared to have voted “No” to all four of the UCP’s constitutional referenda, Ms. Smith’s earlier comments about her mandate notwithstanding.

Surely this suggests Albertans have had enough of the UCP’s constant unproductive bickering with Ottawa.

Standing behind a blue coroplast sign reading “Stronger Alberta within a united Canada” – surely a big step down from the heady days of a “Sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” – Premier Danielle Smith delivered a 12-minute, two-second postprandial peroration on her late, not-so-great separation referendum yesterday evening.

In case you missed it because you were still digesting your dinner, or washing the dishes afterword, it can be summarized as follows: OK. Thanks everyone. Let’s move on!

Pay no attention to the $130 million we spent – were still spending as the premier spoke, actually – on the months-long exercise in uncertainty and bad faith intended to help the premier keep her misnamed United Conservative Party united behind her. We’ll be remaining in Canada, she explained, the Liberals in Ottawa are a changed government, and, um, and could we please just blame the referendum on Thomas Lukaszuk.

I paraphrase, of course. “The question whether Alberta should remain a province within Canada was put on the ballot because of Alberta’s citizen-initiated referendum process,” she explained, misleadingly. “Two petitions were put forward by the people and received hundreds of thousands of signatures from Albertans. Out of respect for that democratic process, that question was added to the referendum.”

This explanation has been spun beyond all recognition. Her government moved Heaven and Earth to get the secessionist Alberta Prosperity Project’s separation petition on the ballot and, when that failed thanks to a couple of court rulings, used the hard work of Mr. Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian petition volunteers as an excuse to put a government-drafted separation question before us instead. The notorious referendum on a referendum, that is. The goal of the Forever Canadian effort was to block a separatist referendum, as Ms. Smith well knows.

Whatever Ms. Smith expected to say tonight when she booked the airtime, surely it wasn’t this: “At the end of it all, the people of Alberta cast their votes in an open and democratic referendum, and the resulting vote from Albertans has given our government a clear mandate. Alberta will remain a province of Canada.”

Anyway, she went on, that’s not a problem because thanks to her – erm, us – the federal government has changed, even if the party in charge didn’t. “Both the federal Conservatives and federal Liberals are united in supporting Alberta and our key industries in a manner we haven’t seen in a generation.”

“Only the marginal voices in the NDP and Green Party say otherwise,” she added, a sly dig at the Opposition Alberta NDP led by former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, which appears to have edged past the UCP thanks to nonpartisan blowback from the referendum.

Tweeted Mr. Lukaszuk moments after the premier’s image disappeared from our screens: “I can’t decide whether I like the last week’s tearful Danielle Smith that coddled separatists and MAGA, or today’s Danielle who appears to have bought a federal Liberal membership and became Captain Canada. Would the real Danielle please stand up!”

Ms. Smith again: “I want to make it clear tonight that for as long as I am premier, I will honor this mandate from Albertans and will not be holding another referendum on this issue.” This was presumably meant to be reassuring – commercial media certainly saw it as the most important part of the story. But it was also a riposte to the threats by prominent separatists to move against Ms. Smith and replace her with one of their own as UCP leader.

Watch out, she seemed to be saying. You may not like me, but it could be worse!

Hand-counting of ballots was continuing as Ms. Smith spoke – a MAGA-inspired UCP policy that has slowed vote counting to a glacial pace – but she took the apparent narrow passage of most of her nine intentionally confusing policy referenda as permission to scapegoat immigrants for UCP failures and push ahead with meaningless constitutional fights with Ottawa.

“Although results are still coming in, it appears that Albertans have directed the provincial government to take greater control over immigration, so we can moderate the extraordinary population growth our province has experienced,” she said. (That is, population growth that earlier in her mandate she was demanding that Ottawa facilitate.)

Some of the votes are close enough, though, that some results could still change. However, as noted in this space in the wee hours yesterday, all the questions are likely to be rendered meaningless by the fight that is soon to erupt over Ms. Smith’s continued leadership and the desire of a large percentage of the UCP’s remaining members to openly declare it to be a separatist party.

“We will be pursuing the reforms approved by Albertans through this referendum in the coming months and years ahead,” Ms. Smith promised, although how many years that might turn out to be remains to be seen.

Then she turned to trying to mollify the separatist cadres within her own party. “Many of you view Ottawa as having threatened your freedoms and blocked your path to prosperity, and I acknowledge the legitimate frustrations you felt, most especially during the Justin Trudeau-Liberal-NDP coalition years,” she said. “But I am convinced that the federal government is no longer targeting and trying to phase out and eliminate Alberta’s largest economic sectors as they attempted to do under the previous prime minister.” That is, the prime minister who bought Alberta a new pipeline to the West Coast.

Possible translation: It’s Trudeau’s fault! Please don’t dump me!

“She should resign,” said Calgary-based political scientist Keith D. Brownsey. “Smith is an embarrassment to the province and country. Nothing has changed.”

In its final moments, Ms. Smith’s address took a maudlin turn, lauding “our impossibly beautiful landscapes and coastlines, our sacred national anthem, our beloved national sport, our shared heritage and history” … Even Terry Fox got a mention!

At the end, it descended into pious drivel, sounding as if it might have been concocted by one of those AI data centres Ms. Smith so loves: “This is our province. This is our country. This is our home and our family. Our true north, strong and free. And together, I know we will keep Alberta and Canada forever strong and free!”

Fade to black. I didn’t make this up. Here’s the read-out.

It was clear the instant results from the first million votes counted in Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s divisive separation referendum flooded in minutes after 11 o’clock last night that the separatist campaign to leave Canada was going down to a definitive defeat.

The vote split as counting continued just after midnight: 76.6 per cent of about 1.3 million votes to remain; 23.4 per cent to hold a binding separation referendum.

How definitive the final result is may not be obvious for a few hours, and there will be no official result until Oct. 29, but it’s safe to say Albertans have not come remotely close to endorsing the idea of holding a binding referendum on the province leaving Canada, and the sentiment to remain Canadian was particularly powerful in the province’s two largest cites.

The biggest loser? Danielle Smith, probably.

Her erstwhile separatist allies are furious at her for what they view with some justice as a profound betrayal. Alberta’s federalist majority is outraged at the impact of the divisive and harmful referendum and its noxious nine additional questions, all of which her government drafted.

Her referendum strategy for increasing Alberta sovereignty appears to be in tatters.

Voting and government-mandated hand counting, overseen by the undermanned and under-funded Elections Alberta agency, was a gong show afflicted by late openings, ballot shortages, and lineups in some locations that kept polling places open long after their scheduled closing hour. The resulting delay in releasing the preliminary results will harm the credibility of the vote, but given the percentages, not enough to change anything.

The biggest winner? Likely New Democratic Party Opposition Leader Naheed Nenshi.

Despite his low-energy leadership of the party he inherited from former NDP premier Rachel Notley in June 2024, Mr. Nenshi could well surf into power in the wake of widespread disgust with the high-risk referendum strategy implemented by Ms. Smith and her separatist-dominated United Conservative Party at a time when Canada is under economic and ideological attack by the Trump Administration in the United States.

Recent polls suggest the NDP was creeping into the lead before the referendum. The latest one indicates it may have arrived.

As for the UCP itself, the U may stand for United, but it is a Disunited Conservative Party as of right now.

Ms. Smith may try to heal the wounds she has inflicted on her own party, but it’s difficult to imagine how the UCP – always a Frankenparty that stitched together separatists, federalists, social conservatives, market fundamentalists and traditional economic pragmatists, and lately a considerable number of MAGA nuts – can hold together for long. As the Good Book says, a House Divided against itself cannot stand.

Even before the vote yesterday, it was clear many secessionist leaders were openly calling on social media for a separatist takeover of the UCP and removal of Ms. Smith as leader, just as they dumped Jason Kenney before her. But if they succeed, who will replace her? The UCP leadership talent pool is shallow.

Nor, according to the first results last night, were the nine referendum questions at the heart of Ms. Smith’s sovereignty-association strategy faring particularly well. Her five questions designed to promote a narrative scapegoating immigrants for Alberta’s problems, were leading, but in most cases not by much.

Three of the four constitutional questions designed to keep the UCP’s fight with Ottawa at a boil, a strategy that worked so well during a Trudeau Government, appeared to be going down to defeat, although it is too soon to declare that a fait accompli. Only the plea to abolish the unelected Senate – a constitutional non-starter – was leading by a hair.

If a significant number of the nine questions Ms. Smith’s government spent $4 million of our own money to promote indeed falter, the premier’s immediate resignation would not be an unreasonable response. Given Ms. Smith’s personality, that seems unlikely, though.

But with the UCP’s annual general meeting set to open on Nov. 27, the party has less than six weeks to pick a lane!

If the party cracks open then, the nine noxious questions won’t matter regardless what their final votes are. If anyone’s got an old Wildrose Party sign in their garage, someone will probably be happy to come and pick it up.

As for the separatists, they will declare a moral victory and remind everyone that they collected something like a quarter of a vote – albeit for a question on which they campaigned to have us merely “send a message to Ottawa.” They will vow this fight isn’t over till its over.

And maybe it isn’t. But their leaders – including the self-appointed U.S.-assimilation negotiating team that talked to someone in Washington – will either have to take over the UCP or form a new political party. Either way, they’ll have to run for office, won’t they? How do you think that’ll work out?

Given what we know right now, it sure looks as if Danielle Smith’s dream Alberta can become Canada’s sovereign friend with benefits is dying. That’s not a pity.

Prime Minister Mark Carney came to Alberta’s capital city Friday evening to say what he had to say about why Albertans need to vote to remain in Canada at a standing-room-only Forever Canadian rally in the old EXPO Centre hockey rink, which was pretty much the same thing he’d said the night before to a capacity crowd in Calgary.

It didn’t matter that there wasn’t much about the prime minister’s message that was new, though. The enthusiastic crowd of 6,000 souls in Edmonton may have heard it all before, but they wanted to hear for themselves what the prime minister had to say. They cheered him lustily throughout the event organized by former Alberta Progressive Conservative deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian organization.

Indeed, the only reason there were fewer in the Edmonton audience than at the BMO Centre inside Calgary’s Stampede Park – where about 8,000 Albertans turned out to hear Mr. Carney’s message – was fire regulations. Both venues were filled to capacity and people had to be turned away at the door both nights.

On Friday in Edmonton, the city where he grew up, Mr. Carney’s primary message was delivered in a dramatic call and response. “Show your pride,” said the prime minister, pausing between each word. “Wear the maple leaf!” (Loud cheers.) “Wear the sweater!” (More applause.)

“Tell your friends, your family, your co-workers, why you’re voting for Canada!” (Loud applause.) “If you haven’t already voted, bring a friend, and vote like Canada’s future depends on it. Because it does!” (Cries of agreement.)

“And don’t, please don’t, let anyone tell you that this is already decided.” (From where I stood, you could hear many shouts of NO!) “Turnout will determine the outcome!” (A shout of, That’s right!) “And don’t be fooled by the idea that you can send a message with your vote.” (More shouts of NO!)

“This is not a game,” Mr. Carney continued to more applause. “This is not poker. A vote against Canada is a dangerous bluff that will lead to years of deep uncertainty and lost opportunities for Albertans and Canadians. Our country and your futures are too precious to play games with.”

“The stakes are high,” he had warned the crowd a few moments before. “This referendum comes at the worst possible time. The world is becoming more dangerous and divided. … There are some outside our borders who are working to break us, so they can own us.” Everyone knew who he had in mind.

And inside our borders too, alas, it must be noted. One of whom, Alberta’s premier – who has lately taken to describing herself as being in favour of remaining in Canada despite months of doing everything she could to enable Alberta separatists who want to break up the country – appeared beside Mr. Carney earlier in the day at a smaller pro-Confederation event in Red Deer.

Come what may, it is Danielle Smith who owns the disruption and division caused by tomorrow’s separation referendum and its noxious nine referenda on immigration and the constitution. I’m pretty sure that if Premier Smith had shown up in Edmonton Friday night, the passionate crowd, many dressed in red and white and waving our Maple Leaf Flag, would have booed her.

“But we know that we can give ourselves more than anyone else can take away,” Mr. Carney concluded that section of his speech. “And we know that when we are united, we become even stronger, fairer, and freer. At this pivotal moment, Albertans have a choice: we can build a stronger Alberta and an even greater Canada to leave for our children, or we can burden them with years of deep divisions and great uncertainty. A decisive result on Monday will settle this question.”

Speaking of heckles, there were very few. From the podium, the prime minister, sounding momentarily irritated but hardly rattled, asked one persistent but unintelligible shouter to show some respect for the Canadian soldiers he was describing in his speech.

My sense Friday night in Edmonton was that a far larger percentage of this audience than usual was made up of what the late Alberta premier Ralph Klein used to call “severely normal Albertans,” proud Canadians and Albertans who viewed the prime minister with respect and even affection. That is to say, not the usual denizens of political events.

Was there any unexpected news, other than the crowd size and its enthusiasm for the PM’s message? Not really, although in reference to the proposed Pacific Link pipeline project, Mr. Carney described how its revenues would “protect the social programs Albertans rely on every day, including health care, dental care, and child care.”

Does this mean Ottawa is committed to ensuring that public health care survives in Alberta, despite the depredations of Ms. Smith’s United Conservative Party Government? Was there a suggestion in this that Ottawa’s dental care and child care programs will be expanded, or at least preserved? One can hope.

As for the other speakers at the professionally choreographed event Friday – Mr. Lukaszuk, Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack, retired Edmonton Oilers star Kevin Lowe, and, via video recording, former NDP premier Rachel Notley – their remarks were short and to the point. It was nice to see former CBC host Mark Connolly back at the mic as the master of ceremonies.

Still, the production was designed to feature Mr. Carney’s message.

“Let’s show the rest of Canada that Alberta is not the weak link in Confederation,” said Mr. Lukaszuk in his introductory remarks. “Friends, we are making history over here, and I know that 50 or 100 years from now, our children and grandchildren will be studying about this moment in their social studies classes, and they will be looking back at us in 2026 and judging us for who we were.”

“How much do we care about Canada? Do we care about Canada enough to go out and vote?”

“They will be judging us on all the other remaining questions,” Mr. Lukaszuk added. “I say to you, let’s set a record and show up at the ballot boxes in unprecedented numbers. Let’s show the rest of Canada, let’s show our Alberta Legislature, and let’s show the rest of this world that this country cannot be broken apart, that we will always be together from coast to coast to coast, because that is our strength.”

In his report on Friday’s event, my blogging colleague Dave Cournoyer has included a transcript of Mr. Lukaszuk’s remarks.

“Let’s talk about those other nine questions for just a moment,” said Mayor Knack in his short remarks. “I think it’s important to say that everyone – and I mean everyone – deserves the same access and opportunity to important public services, like getting to see a doctor or sending their kids to school. This referendum removes focus and resources from addressing these real priorities, and that’s why I will be resoundingly voting no to the nine!”

More than a million referendum ballots have already been cast by Albertans by mail and in advance polls. Advance polls closed last night. All Election Day voting places will be open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. tomorrow.

“A massive voter turnout will shut down damaging and divisive separatist discussion, secure our economic future, and restore stability once and for all,” said Mr. Lukaszuk, echoing the prime minister, in a statement after Friday’s rally.

For their part, Alberta secessions vowed to fight on regardless of the referendum result at a rally yesterday in front of the Alberta Legislative Building. The event was sparsely attended compared to the same group’s rally in October 2025.

Cometh the hour, cometh the book!

Actually, On Treason: Alberta Separatism, Foreign Interference, and Canada’s Survival in a Revolutionary Age is more than a little late. It rolled off the presses only a few days before Danielle Smith’s divisive and treason-adjacent separation referendum is due to take place on Monday.

This short book by international relations expert, former RCMP intelligence manager, Edmonton resident, and one-time federal political candidate Patrick Lennox is an essential quick guide to the plots and politics of Alberta’s separation referendum, the dangers of which should be obvious to all. If they are not obvious to you, they are made so in the pages of On Treason.

Alas, it comes too late to play the role it could have and should have in the continuing “shakedown approach to federalism” orchestrated by Alberta’s premier and her separatist-dominated United Conservative Party.

Never mind. Thanks to the exertions of Ms. Smith and the UCP, we are likely going to be stuck with this damned secessionist subversion for a long time, no matter the outcome of Monday’s perverse referendum on a referendum. This is true even if Alberta’s voters decisively reject breaking up one of the most successful experiments in democracy in the history of the earth, our Canada.

Dr. Lennox’s lucid little book – a sort of Canadian J’Accuse! – will, I strongly suspect, prove its value in the months ahead and help illuminate the way for Canada to grapple with similar disruptions, many more of which we Canadians are likely to face in the coming months and years.

In the best and most accurate sense, On Treason is a jeremiad – that is, a sustained lament combined with righteous prophecy of destruction if the unrighteous will not change their ways. This is a term, I admit, that is usually used with sarcasm in these pages. But not always.

Like all the best jeremiads – including the ones supposedly written by Jeremiah – On Treason hits precisely the right note of what we Canadians risk if we do not face up to the dangers illustrated so clearly by the machinations of the Freedom Convoy culture-war chuds who have come to dominate the United Conservative Party and its leader.

Of the government-drafted Oct. 19 separation referendum and its noxious nine additional questions, Dr. Lennox commences his analysis with the observation that “each question, in its own way, seeks to undermine the very idea of Canada at a moment of great national peril.

“The first five questions deal with matters of immigration, a matter of federal jurisdiction. The next four deal with constitutional issues, which the province of Alberta has no power to change on its own. The last is a question about whether Alberta should even be part of Canada at all. The real question, however, is why such plebiscites are happening in the first place, now, at this revolutionary moment in history.”

Dr. Lennox proceeds to answer that question in a blistering and comprehensive manner. No need for an alert: The spoiler is in the title. It’s treason. Perhaps not treason as defined by the Criminal Code of Canada, but treason nevertheless, as normally defined now and throughout history by normal people.

When Premier Smith and the UCP plunged ahead with their referendum on a referendum and its nine absurd side dishes, Dr. Lennox asserts, it was an act of treason.

For some of us, that may seem like a step too far, too fast. But throughout the 202 pages of argument (excluding footnotes, acknowledgements and the like) Dr. Lennox makes a persuasive case that this is so. He walks readers through how, despite frequent claims to the contrary, Alberta’s 21^st Century grievances with Confederation have little to do with the traditional complaints of western Canadians. They were “born of fraud and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Criminals and conmen and hucksters and conspiracists and collaborators are leading this separatist movement,” he writes. “They are dangerous, illiberal actors whose delinquency in the face of and complete disregard for the standards and regulations of their chosen professions and our electoral and criminal laws have been demonstrated. They have wrested control of the democratic levers of Alberta and are using the seemingly innocuous vehicle of a provincial plebiscite in a way that invites the foreign interference operations of their global far-right brethren.”

“It terrifies me to write this,” Dr. Lennox adds, “but I think we are woefully unprepared for what is coming for us. Our misguided belief that Canada is somehow immune from the dangers that confront the rest of the world renders us inert at a time when we must be most engaged.”

Herein lies the core of the author’s argument: “This referendum on whether to hold a referendum on Alberta’s future in Confederation is a big lie,” he writes. “This lie is foisted upon the nation and intended to reshape perceptions of Confederation.

“Canada is a representative, constitutional democracy. Not more than a single percentage of the Alberta electorate voted for one of the fringe, separatist candidates in the general election in 2023. And twice over the last year, the courts have ruled that a secession referendum would be unconstitutional and a violation of the treaties.

“To nonetheless move forward with the referendum is an act of treason. It is a form of psychological warfare conducted against us in alliance with the Trump administration’s continual and escalating efforts to have us question our right to exist as a sovereign nation.”

I don’t buy every single argument in this short book – part of publisher Biblioasis’s “Field Notes” series on public interest topics – but every key point is well researched and its core conclusions are very hard to dispute.

In the final chapter, Dr. Lennox offers his prescription for fighting back in defence of Canada. He is not a lawyer, but he is a PhD in international relations, and is clearly familiar with the law. There are some answers there, he suggests. However we approach this crisis, though, “Canada is worth defending militantly, urgently, and with the same level of intensity with which it is being attacked and betrayed.”

I can’t quote the whole book. So you’ll need to read it for yourselves. At $24.95 in paperback and $20.99 for an ebook, it shouldn’t break the bank. If you’re looking for a short form summary, Dr. Lennox authored an op-ed making some of the book’s arguments in a recent edition of The Globe and Mail.

NOTE: Readers will know that I seldom publish book reviews in this space. Indeed, this is only the second one in nearly 20 years of publication at AlbertaPolitics.ca. But the experience of those two decades tells me that what Dr. Lennox has written accurately captures the crisis in which we Albertans now find ourselves. DJC

Hats off to Thomas Lukaszuk and the Forever Canadian campaign for getting Prime Minister Mark Carney to agree to show up at the group’s remain-in-Canada rallies in Calgary and Edmonton tomorrow and Friday. 

Mr. Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, is enormously popular right now throughout Canada, including supposedly rebellious Alberta, so that should help sustain the wave of pro-Canadian sentiment that seems to be building in the province as we enter the final days before Premier Danielle Smith’s divisive and stupidly dangerous separation referendum.

Speaking of hats, the Black Hat guys from the separatist crowd won’t be tipping their Seppie Stetsons to Mr. Lukaszuk, the former Progressive Conservative deputy premier who’s been fighting the good fight to keep Alberta in Canada right from the start of Premier Smith’s treason-adjacent MAGA mischief. Anyway, they’re busy right now pivoting to ginning up a false “stop the steal” narrative about the Oct. 19 vote in anticipation of the expected outcome.

Like Mr. Lukaszuk, the Alberta NDP Opposition led by Naheed Nenshi has not been shy about speaking up for Canada since the separatist-dominated United Conservative Party started this subversive nonsense, and NDP volunteers are door-knocking now to get out the vote for Canada. Those facts deserve to be acknowledged and remembered.

Also mentioned in dispatches should be Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie, the only member of Premier Smith’s cabinet who had the intestinal fortitude to stand up to her party’s corruption and who now sits in the Legislature as the only representative of the pro-Canadian Progressive Tory Party. 

Likewise, Heather McPherson, the NDP’s only Alberta MP, has been consistently fierce in and out of Parliament in defence of our country in the face of waves of disinformation and misinformation from the United States and other foreign adversaries of Canadian unity. 

Meanwhile – better late than never, one supposes – manifestations of a stay-in-Canada nature by former premiers Alison Redford, Ed Stelmach, Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney are suddenly in the news. Ms. Notley and Mr. Kenney appeared before a presumably sympathetic audience at a Canadian Chamber of Commerce event in Alberta’s capital Tuesday. And according to The Globe and Mail, an op-ed by Ms. Redford and Mr. Stelmach, both Conservatives, and Ms. Notley, a New Democrat, will be published in the moribund Calgary Herald sometime this week.

All but Mr. Kenney have been surprisingly quiet on this topic for too long. And Mr. Kenney has a particular axe to grind in that he was run out of his job by the same crowd of separatists and MAGA lunatics (his word, not mine) who replaced him with Premier Smith. Nevertheless, while all have detractors in Alberta, each can help by speaking to loyalists in their political communities.

But let’s not forget that the heavy lifting is being done by Albertans like my neighbours, who have taken back our Maple Leaf Flag from the Convoy crowd, canvassed tirelessly for the Forever Canadian petition, and yesterday, waited stoically in long lineups on the first day of advanced polling.

As for the federal Conservatives, who occupy 34 of Alberta’s 37 seats in Parliament, they are all missing in action. Has anyone heard a peep out of any of them in support of Canada but for the occasional bleat from their leader, the MP pro tempore for Battle River-Crowfoot, appropriately located in the heart of dinosaur country?

The MLAs of the nominally federalist UCP, notwithstanding its internal domination by secessionists, have been even quieter in defence of their country, if that’s possible. This too should be remembered. 

Their former leader Mr. Kenney is right that, when the dust settles, the UCP is going to need to decide whether it’s a separatist party or a Canadian party and if it chooses the latter course, someone is going to have to purge the separatists from its ranks.

On a personal note, advance-voting lineups in St. Albert yesterday were long – about an hour and a half through the morning and early afternoon, when I voted – but good natured and resolute despite a chill wind and no place to sit down if you forgot to bring a lawn chair. Elections Alberta staff were capable and professional, keeping the lines moving and ensuring the plethora of ballots went in the right boxes.

Advance voting in Premier Danielle Smith’s needless and divisive separation referendum begins at 9 o’clock this morning.

If Elections Alberta’s prediction that 80 to 85 per cent of the provincial electorate is likely to turn out to vote this year, there will be lineups at in-person advance polls and on Election Day on Oct. 19. They may be long and slow.

After all, it will take a while for many voters who haven’t been engaged by this ridiculous process until recently to read the nine complicated and intentionally confusing additional questions drafted by the big brains of the United Conservative Party, which in several cases are the same as the big brains behind the separatist Free Alberta Strategy.

The simplest and most effective way to do your best for Alberta and Canada, as well as the people in line behind you, is to vote Option 1 on Ballot 10 (“Alberta should remain a province of Canada”) and NO to the other nine.

In-person advance voting in the referendum will take place today, tomorrow, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Elections Alberta says you can vote at any advance voting place within your electoral division.

On Election Day – Monday, Oct. 19 – you must vote at the voting place identified for your physical address. If you haven’t received anything in the mail, there’s a tool on Elections Alberta’s website that can show you where to vote.

The weather forecast from Environment Canada indicates sunshine through much of the province today and most of the rest of the week, but it’ll be chilly, especially in the morning, so bring a coat and wear warm shoes. If you simply must wear sandals, for heaven’s sake wear socks as well, no matter what the self-appointed fashion police may have told you. 

If it gets late, stay in line. Elections Alberta promises you will be allowed to vote. 

You will need to bring identification and Alberta government-issued driver’s licenses and ID cards are the simplest. A complete list of ID that elections officials will accept, however, is found here.

If you’re not registered to vote, you can ask to sign a declaration that you are eligible to cast a ballot. 

Recent social media activity by secessionist groups and their leaders suggests they are already trying to build a “stop the steal” narrative, à la The Donald, in anticipation of losing the vote. Obviously, the best way to eliminate months of fallout from the repurposed Convoy crowd is to deliver them a thumping defeat at the ballot box.

This is especially so since we can have no confidence that Premier Danielle Smith will deliver on her recent promise that if the “Remain” side wins, there will be no more separation referenda on her watch. Even if she keeps her promise, there is no guarantee that the separatists who now dominate her party and call her tune will not replace her with someone more willing to keep on pushing their schemes. So vote!

Leaders of pro-separation groups were complaining on social media yesterday about a decision communicated to them by Elections Alberta just after 5:30 p.m. advising them that third-party advertisers will not be allowed to have scrutineers in polling places or ballot-counting locations on during the Oct. 19 referendum. 

Former People’s Party of Canada candidate and pro-separation video commentator Jason Lavigne published a copy of the letter he received from Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure stating that effective immediately “scrutineer access during the referendum will be limited to representatives of political parties holding official party status.”

Presumably all 28 registered third-party referendum advertisers, of which more than half appear to favour separation, got the letter.

“In determining the appropriate application of section 6.2(4) of the Referendum (General) Regulation, I have considered the physical and operational constraints of voting places and counting places, including the limited space available to accommodate election officials, voters, authorized representatives observers and other personnel,” Mr. McClure wrote.

Section 6.2(4) says in part that referendum advisers “may submit, in writing, a list of names to the Chief Electoral Officer from which the Chief Electoral Officer or a returning officer may appoint scrutineers under subsection (3).”

On its website, Elections Alberta continues to explain that policy as follows: “Registered referendum third party advertisers representing the Yes or No side of referendums question(s) may also appoint scrutineers by submitting a list of scrutineer names to the Chief Electoral Officer. … Elections Alberta will determine a process for receiving scrutineer requests from third parties and determine placement. These placements will be determined based on the factors above and others, including size of voting location and balance of each side of the referendum positions.”

This obviously assumes that all referendum questions would be phrased like a proper referendum question, that is, with a yes or no answer. Question 10, the intentionally unclear separation question and therefore the one that counts the most, is phrased as a choice between Option 1 (remain in Canada) or Option 2 (keep trying to separate), which may be ridiculous, but, hey, This Is Alberta (TIA!).

Adding in scrutineers from all or some of the 28 registered third-party advertisers, Mr. McClure’s letter continued, considerably understating the matter, “would create significant logistical concerns.” 

He explained: “Permitting additional scrutineers would increase the number of individuals requiring access to already constrained spaces and could interfere with the orderly movement of voters, the performance of election officials, the maintenance of ballot security, and the efficient conduct of the count.” 

“Having considered these operational requirements, I have determined that limiting scrutineer authorization to representatives of parties holding official party status is necessary to ensure that voting and counting places can operate effectively within their physical and logistical constraints, the chief electoral officer said. 

In light of the division created in Alberta society by the insistence of Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party on pushing forward with this separation referendum, which has been the cause of much mischief by Canada’s adversaries abroad and extremists at home, not to mention the tight time frame for a hand count of ballots demanded by the government, the possibility of disruption and conflict are in fact quite real. 

But surely what most Albertans would agree is an eminently reasonable decision should have been announced earlier than at the close of business on the Friday before a long weekend after which advance polls open on Tuesday morning?

Well, perhaps Mr. McClure worried about the impact of a flurry of litigants seeking injunctions if he gave them too much time. 

Alberta separatists have already telegraphed their intention to promote conspiracy theories if the vote does not go their way, so we can count on it that they will view the timing as evidence of malign intent by the government. This is especially true now that Premier Smith appears to have abandoned their cause after months of enabling it, and announced that if a majority of Albertans vote to remain in Alberta there will be no second referendum “as long as I’m premier.”

Separatists who now dominate her party, unsurprisingly, have vowed that if she keeps that promise, her remaining tenure as party leader and premier may be shorter than she had planned.

CORRECTION: The statement in Mr. McClure’s letter reads: “… scrutineer access during the referendum will be limited to representatives of political parties holding official party status.” An incorrectly transcribed word in this passage, reflected in the headline, occurred in an earlier version of this story. DJC