This is a frenzied moment for Danielle Smith and her United Conservative cabinet and caucus as they attempt to pacify the party’s influential and unhappy separatist faction and distract from both the failure of the separation referendum that for months the premier did everything she could to enable and the metastasizing health care corruption scandal that appears to be back on the front burner again.

Accordingly, there have been so many performative announcements to distract voters, keep rebellious MLAs in line, and shore up the party base that at times it appears to be an exercise in throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks. From the look of it, at least some has.

At any rate, Ms. Smith and her allies in the party appear to have fended off an attempt by separatist cadres to take over the UCP’s elected administrative positions by requiring all candidates for the party board at next month’s annual general meeting to sign a loyalty oath to the leader before they can run.

OK, it’s not an oath. It’s just a declaration. But seriously, potayto-potahto.

Ms. Smith’s wrathful intramural archfoe, separatist leader and UCP member Jeffrey Rath, circulated a copy of the form on the social media site previously known as Twitter. The pledge states that the signer acknowledges they understand the party’s returning officer “will not certify me as a Candidate” without agreeing to abide by the decision of voters for Alberta to remain in Canada.

Last night, The Globe and Mail reported that UCP President Rob Smith sent an email to party members stating that “there will be NO UCP leadership review before our next general election.” He also said at least 65 of 87 UCP constituency associations have passed motions stating their loyalty to the premier.

That “at least” from the Globe’s report is doing a lot of work, seeing as a minimum of 22 CA votes are required to force a leadership review. So don’t bet against the possibility that a couple more pledges will have been signed by the close of business today.

So, no separatist takeover and no leadership review.

Meanwhile, a couple of separatism tinged UCP MLAs also appear to have been persuaded to walk the plank. Leastways, Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan, who had admitted he voted for Option 2 in the premier’s separatist referendum, the let’s-have-a-binding-vote option, announced a week ago he wouldn’t be seeking re-election.

And yesterday, Lac. Ste. Anne-Parkland MLA Shane Getson, a Convoy supporter and COVID skeptic, announced he was quitting immediately for personal and family reasons. He too hadn’t been planning to run again, but for some reason accelerated his departure schedule.

With a provincial election scheduled next year, a by-election in the riding won’t be required by law, but this does give the premier an opportunity to call one in a constituency northwest of Edmonton that is unlikely to elect a New Democrat.

On Monday, the premier and Energy Minister Brian Jean published a joint statement demanding that Ottawa repeal the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act. “Repealing the ban would open the door to crude-by-rail exports through Prince Rupert, giving Alberta another route to reach customers around the world,” the statement says, side-stepping the UCP’s real goal of getting a pipeline to the North Coast approved.

This was timed to coincide with the introduction in Parliament today of a Conservative MP’s Private Member’s bill calling for the same thing. But it clearly picks up on the election of a Conservative government likely to be more sympathetic to pipeline development in British Columbia on Saturday.

The federal Liberals will probably be more cautious, since they appear to actually want to get oil flowing through B.C. and not just pick a needless fight with some of the First Nations Ms. Smith snubbed on Monday by not attending the historic Ottawa meeting of first minister and First Nations leaders.

Meanwhile, yesterday, it was time for the UCP to announce it will declare culture war on what the political right likes to call Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies. This will be done to ensure white guys who already hold all the advantages get preferential treatment when it comes to being hired for public sector jobs. Or, as the government described that concept in its news release, “to ensure hiring and promotion decisions in public institutions are based on merit.”

The legislation proposes that the enforcement of these “fairness” rules – which we all understand are not intended to be fair in practice – will be enforced by the province’s Human Rights Commission, which in future will presumably therefore need to be printed in scare quotes and preceded by the words “so-called.”

If this reminds you of the Trump Administration’s use of U.S. civil rights legislation to target legal protections against discrimination and promote bogus claims of “reverse discrimination” against white bros, there’s probably a pretty good reason for that.

This policy is part of a broader attack by the political right on social justice research and programs that include social justice education in the academy.

We can expect more more of the same as soon, as the UCP will now need to scramble to distract from the latest reports in The Globe and Mail about corruption in health care procurement.

In stories yesterday, the Globe reported that the RCMP is investigating “fraud, breach of trust and money laundering” in the force’s probe into the procurement scandal, and that Premier Smith is determined to prevent a real judge-led public inquiry into the circumstances.

The information seems to have come to light in a letter filed by lawyers for former Alberta Health Services CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos, who was fired last year when she tried to investigate political interference and dodgy contracts in procurement work at AHS and is now suing for $1.7 million in damages for wrongful dismissal.

The premier argues that there has already been a judge-led public inquiry, the only problems with that being that the judge in question had retired and lacked any power to compel testimony, and most of his work wasn’t conducted in public.

Indeed, in his report, Raymond Wyant, late of the Manitoba Provincial Court, said he was unable to clear the government of any wrongdoing.

Sunday morning, Mount Royal University Professor Duane Bratt took to the social media site previously known as Twitter to observe, “There has been some snap election speculation in Alberta (as there always is).”

Dr. Bratt, who is probably Alberta’s best known and most frequently quoted political scientist, went on to add, rhetorically, I presume, “Hopefully the events in BC show the risks in that strategy.”

The events in B.C. referenced by Dr. Bratt, in case any of you slept through the weekend, involved that province’s NDP premier, David Eby, foolishly having called an early election and paying a steep price for it at the polls on Saturday. A Conservative named Lorne Doerkson is now the premier-elect of our westernmost neighbour, and since I have paid very little attention to British Columbia politics for the past several years, I am going to resist the temptation to bloviate at length about how that may have come about.

Still, tired as we all have grown of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s separation neverendum and its collection of cartoon-like supporters, someone in a field like political science shouldn’t be hopeful that there won’t be a new political drama in our neighborhood. For those who must publish in order not to perish, topics for new scholarly papers should always be welcome.

Surprisingly, some commenters took issue with Dr. Bratt, pointing out that Alberta has a fixed election date enshrined in law. Alas, as we have already seen with Ms. Smith’s government, that doesn’t mean very much. This is especially true, now that we Albertans are staying in Canada, in a Parliamentary system required by the nation’s fundamental law to have “a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom.” (It was written in the 19^th Century, so of course they capitalized every third word or so.)

That means, at Dr. Bratt patiently pointed out to one of his critics, “Alberta has a fixed election law which is meaningless to prevent a snap election.” What’s more, he continued with another argumentative tweeter, Alberta’s legislation is “a law which says that the election date is fixed but nothing precludes the LG from calling an election. Either because the govt lost a confidence vote or based on the advice of the Premier. We had a similar law when Prentice went early in 2015.”

Indeed we did, and that is something with which Premier Smith should be familiar, even if she happened to sleep through the events in British Columbia over the weekend. After all, as the floor-crossing leader of the Wildrose Opposition in 2014, she played a key role in the circumstances that led to premier Jim Prentice’s disastrous early election call in 2015.

That, in turn, resulted in the election of an NDP majority government led by Rachel Notley, something that came as a surprise of virtually everyone in Alberta, including the NDP.

British Columbia also had a fixed-election date law at the very moment Mr. Eby asked the Lieutenant-Governor of that province to call an unfixed election, thereby unmooring his NDP from government two years before he was required to do so.

Despite all this history, I can confirm that I too have heard the buzz Dr. Bratt referenced, although it might have been better described as a low hum.

It does seem apparent, as Dr. Bratt suggested, that an early election in Alberta would be an extremely bad idea for Ms. Smith’s government just as it was for Mr. Eby’s, notwithstanding their ideological differences.

It could also be argued, though, that Ms. Smith would have a slightly better reason, given the need to heal the rifts in her own ruling coalition caused by the recent referendum campaign and her sinking personal approval levels. An early election just might be the Hail Mary pass that could unite her fractious supporters and nail down another mandate now that she’s just blown to smithereens the one she was trying to get by using a referendum.

Premier-elect Doerkson has reportedly promised that one of the first telephone calls he makes after being sworn in will be to Premier Smith to tell her that he supports the Pacific Link Pipeline project.

Pipeline supporters in Alberta are entitled to take hope from this, but it pays to remember we live in an era when politics is no longer the art of the possible, but the art of the confrontational. It is not difficult, therefore, to imagine a scenario in which, given the makeup of his party and caucus, Mr. Doerkson might be tempted to pick a fight with First Nations over treaty negotiations about B.C.’s vast swathes of unceded territory.

As Vancouver-based economist Jim Stanford observed on social media Sunday, “The BC NDP govt supported the pipeline (since a big quid pro quo deal with Ottawa in July). First Nations are the most consequential opponent. The new Conservative govt’s attacks on DRIPA & other Indigenous issues make a deal with them less likely.”

It would be ironic indeed if the election in British Columbia of a government on the same ideological wavelength as Alberta’s UCP resulted in a situation that led to the demise of the Pacific Link plan.

If nothing else, this should be a reminder to those in UCP circles who have grown impatient with long-ago-established Treaty obligations, that there are advantages to the fact all of us here in Alberta live on Treaty land, where the pathway to agreements is settled, even where that presents a legal risk to a government’s policy.

For her part, Premier Smith was apparently too busy to attend the historic meeting of Canadian first ministers and First Nations leaders in Ottawa yesterday.

The Canadian Press reported Sunday that Alberta’s premier “said she will not be attending because the meeting overlaps with the resumption of question period in her province as well as the aftermath of a historic referendum on separation.”

That statement may be half true. After all, Ms. Smith does have work cut out for her to repair the crumbling UCP coalition in the face of her foolish referendum. However, she certainly hasn’t been unwilling in the past to head to another jurisdiction to evade difficult questions in QP. As we say here in Alberta, when the going gets tough, the tough get out of town.

I’ll leave the last Alberta word on B.C.’s election to former Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason, an experienced politician who is in retirement a permanent resident of the beautiful Okanagan Valley.

“I said at the outset that David Eby was running a big risk by calling an election half way through his term,” Mr. Mason wrote on Facebook not long before the polls closed.

“Eby has shown bad political judgement throughout his Premiership,” Mr. Mason continued, “including the hard drug policy, wanting to scale back DRIPA, support for Carney and Smith’s pipeline, and ultimately calling a snap election that nobody wanted.

“Many excellent NDP projects remain incomplete, affordable child care being the most obvious example. Now we face a Conservative government that will inevitably roll back many of the gains made by the NDP over the years.”

Mr. Mason summed up: “I’m pretty discouraged by the B.C. NDP to say the least. And don’t get me started on the NDP in Alberta and Nenshi’s liberal party. I still have high hopes for Avi Lewis and the federal party though. We will see. But from now on, my support for the NDP will no longer be automatic. They will need to win it each time. They can start by electing a new and progressive leader in B.C.”

I’m sure a lot of New Democrats in British Columbia feel the same way. Good luck to them with that.

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.