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Opinion: Minority trumps majority for UCP on separation question

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Albertans won’t get a say on whether their government should hold a vote on leaving Canada unless they support having one. That’s how the question will be decided under the United Conservative Party government.

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Last week, Premier Danielle Smith announced a provincial referendum ballot on Oct. 19, to hear from Albertans on nine questions relating to provincial immigration and improving Alberta’s place in Canada. A 10th question about exiting the country may be added if separatist organizers of the current citizen petition rolling across Alberta collect enough signatures from supporters.

Typically, voters get a say about whether a separation question should be asked. British prime minister David Cameron committed to holding the Brexit vote in his party’s 2015 successful election campaign and delivered a vote the following year.

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In Quebec, premiers René Lévesque and Jacques Parizeau sought and won mandates for the referendums their governments held in 1980 and 1995, respectively. The Parti Québécois under leader Pierre Plamondon, widely expected to win the province’s next election (another provincial vote set for October) has promised a referendum on separating in his party’s first term. But under the UCP government, this won’t happen.

Instead, a motivated minority of separation-minded citizens will decide if the question gets added to the ballot. How is it that signatures can serve as a proxy for a majority of votes?

The answer is Alberta’s Citizen Initiative Act. Framed as direct democracy when it was introduced by premier Jason Kenney in 2021, the act allows eligible Alberta voters to use petitions to rally support for advancing specific policy, legislative or constitutional issues they do not see on the governing agenda of the party in power.

Relying on a citizen petition to decide whether to hold a provincial separation vote is flawed for two reasons. The first is obvious but critical: Petitions only count support. This matters if you believe every eligible Alberta voter should have a say about whether a separation vote should proceed. If Albertans disagree with holding a vote, a petition provides no way for them to register their opposition.

You might think the second flaw is sample size, that the number of signatures required to trigger a vote is too low relative to the gravity of deciding whether to pose such an enormous and consequential question. Many would likely agree. But representing the will of a majority of Albertans was never the point of the citizen initiative legislation.

Rather, the intent was the opposite: a grassroots measure to give minority opinions a voice, as the separation petition clearly demonstrates. There isn’t nearly enough support for separation in the province for a majority of Albertans to give the UCP government a mandate to hold a vote. So, to placate activist separatists in their party aggrieved at Ottawa, the UCP amended the citizen initiative legislation twice last year to give these members a very good shot at holding one.

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That second flaw? Reverse tyranny. If petition organizers get enough signatures, a minority will have been empowered to impose their will on a majority, inverting the intent of the citizen initiative legislation.

Under the amended act, organizers must collect at least 177,732 signatures for their separation petition to be successful. This is equal to 10 per cent of the number of voters who cast ballots in the last provincial election. Alberta last went to the polls in 2023, and three million Albertans were eligible to vote in that contest. This means that fewer than five per cent of eligible voters could determine whether a separation question appears on the referendum ballot in October.

Citizen petitions may be appropriate for ordinary policy matters. But holding a vote on Alberta separating from Canada would rank among the most consequential acts to have ever occurred in our democracy. As we have seen from the headlines generated last month, even talking about holding a vote on separating threatens Canada’s stability and roils politics at every level inside Alberta.

The UCP’s approach to deciding whether to add a question to the October referendum ballot demonstrates how it’s not them who are paying the price for the commitment the party made to separatist members. Rather, it’s costing Albertans a critical say in the future of their province.

Matt Gray is a Calgary-based senior communications strategist and the founder and principal of GrayPoint Communications Advisory Inc.

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