Alberta’s separation movement has been making waves in recent weeks. The Trump administration is considering financial support for an independent Alberta, and Danielle Smith has still not spoken out in favour of unity with Canada, despite calls from the BC premier to do so.
Amidst the turmoil, Albertans who want the province to remain in Canada have been quietly working to stop the separation movement in its tracks. Hundreds have reached out to businesses, halls, and venue spaces across the province to ask that they cancel signing events for the separatist citizen initiative launched January 2.
At least 25 events had been cancelled as of last Sunday, separatist leader Mitch Sylvestre recently told The Albertan. Dozens more have been stopped in the days since.
While Sylvestre believes that an organized, Canada-wide effort to resist separation is behind the event cancellations, Albertans themselves tell a different story.
Anger that the UCP has allowed the separation petition to move forward is the main driving factor behind their actions, they say. By getting events cancelled, they say they are standing up for democracy and are making their voices heard.
Petition origins
The separatist petition question, which asks Alberta residents whether they want Alberta to become an independent state, was deemed unconstitutional by an Alberta judge in early December. If his decision had been held, the separatist movement would not have been able to begin collecting signatures for their question.
However shortly after this decision the government passed Bill 14, which changed the rules around citizen initiatives.
Previously Alberta’s chief justice officer, a judge appointed by the state, had the power to approve citizen initiatives. Under Bill 14, that power was transferred to the province’s justice minister, a member of Alberta’s Legislative Assembly.
Most democracies are trees with three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative branch represents voters, the executive writes laws, and the judicial branch interprets and enforces laws. Dividing the power between each of these three branches keeps government from becoming a dictatorship. Critics of the UCP’s Bill 14 say that the bill dissolves the power of the judicial branch of Alberta’s democracy.
Many Albertans feel both frustrated by the amount of attention the separation movement is getting and betrayed by the government for its choice to allow the separation petition to move forward.
Albertans “fed up” with separation talks
Last week, Kevin Roll posted in a Facebook group saying that he had contacted the Heritage Inn in Taber asking them to cancel a separation petition signing event. He shared the message he sent in his post.
“It blew up from there,” he told TheRockies.Life.
His post received hundreds of shares. Dozens of people commented saying they also had asked businesses and nonprofits in their own corner of the province to cancel petition events. Many others contacted the Heritage Inn, and the venue has since cancelled the event.
The spontaneous action to shut down these events shows that Albertans are “fed up” with talk of separation, Roll said.
“It seems like at every turn [the system] is being rigged in the favor of the separatists.”
He believes those who responded to his social media post are driven by the desire to find hope in the face of the mainstream media hype around separation.
Separation a partisan issue
Separatist organizers have scheduled signing events at nonprofits and places of worship as well as at businesses. However for nonprofits to maintain their charitable status, they are not allowed to engage in partisan activities.
Darla Gunson recently noticed the Elks of Canada Hall in Grande Prairie had scheduled a signing event. The Elks are a Canadian nonprofit that focuses on serving communities. Gunson quickly reached out to Elks of Canada headquarters to ask that they cancel the event.
That the Elks were hosting a separatist event is “hypocrisy at its best,” she told TheRockies.Life. “They’re flying the flag of Canada and hosting an event where people want to leave the country.”
Since the public outcry, separatist organizers no longer have the Elks Hall listed as a petition signing location on their website.
What Albertans want for the province
Polling in Alberta consistently shows that the majority of the province wants to remain within Canada, with only 15 per cent of the population committed to separating.
Those who want to stay are clear on what they want.
“I’m not saying that our relationship is perfect, but I think we need to deal with it in an adult manner,” said Gunson.
She noted that the separation promise hinges on oil money and would put the province in a bad position. She’s unconvinced that oil revenues would be enough to allow the province to thrive as an independent state. “We would make ourselves very vulnerable to takeover by the US,” she added.
Roll said that without Canada, there is no Alberta.
“Alberta didn’t exist before the rest of Canada as an entity. It exists only because of confederation and negotiation. If we’re unhappy with the way things are, there are plenty of ways to deal with that within confederation,” he said.
