For anyone looking, it was right there in bold text: white on blue, a message affixed to the front of the lectern Alberta Premier Danielle Smith used to speak two days after her province overwhelmingly rejected the pursuit of separatism.
“Stronger Alberta within a United Canada,” the text read. It was a new formulation of a familiar refrain for Ms. Smith, who has spent years agitating about Alberta’s place in Canada. Her government passed an “Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act.” The ranks of her United Conservative Party swelled with separatists. She lowered the signature threshold for citizens to petition lawmakers to consider a proposed referendum question, clearing the way for a campaign that ushered those separatists into a bright international spotlight.
But when Ms. Smith spoke this week, the word “sovereignty” was gone from the lectern, and with it – perhaps, if she can navigate the stormy political waters she herself had a hand in creating – the turmoil of a lengthy chapter in which some in Alberta loudly threatened the breakup of Confederation, until Albertans themselves made clear they had no interest.
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Premier Danielle Smith warns her party against ‘internal division and endless debates about separation’ in the coming year.Todd Korol/Reuters
“That was quite notable. She was sending a clear signal,” said Monte Solberg, the former Conservative cabinet minister who now leads New West Public Affairs, an influential government relations firm in Calgary. A restive Alberta moment, one in which Ms. Smith had sought to appease both separatists and federalists in her own party, “was over,” he said. “Albertans want to move on. They want some optimism. They want to work with the federal government.”
Out with the strident language, in with co-operative federalism. Out with demands to rip apart and remake the constitution, in with the slow business of talking out change and building new things, Edmonton and Ottawa together with other provinces. Out with “sovereign,” in with “stronger.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who visited Alberta in the days leading up to the referendum, later called its outcome a ‘great result’ for Canada.
John Ulan/The Canadian Press
That, at least, is one hope.
But none of this presages peace and quiet. Ms. Smith has found, like generations of Western leaders before her, that stoking anger at Ottawa is a potent political tool. Prime Minister Mark Carney, meanwhile, must find a way to calm the political headwinds while showing he is willing to work with Ms. Smith and wrest productive gains from a province where loud voices continue to advocate rupture – all while this country’s largest trading partner continues to inflict economic damage.
Even so, with millions marking ballots this week – in Alberta’s referendum and, on Saturday, in a British Columbia provincial election – the landscape of Western politics could be remade.
Mr. Carney has shown himself eager to spur economic growth, abandoning his predecessor’s desire to cap Alberta’s petroleum production; some Albertans, meanwhile, have taken to calling themselves “Carney conservatives.” British Columbians are choosing a new government, making choices that could alter tensions over the export of energy resources through the province. And three-quarters of Albertans said they wish to remain in Canada, raising a new possibility of snuffing the destructive flame of separatism in the province.
None of this, however, is a foregone conclusion.
Inside Ms. Smith’s United Conservative Party, separatist sentiment remains strong. In late November, the party will hold an annual general meeting in which members will elect nearly half the provincial board – and leading independence advocates are gunning for control of the seats.
Ms. Smith said this week that she expects, from this moment on, that party representatives must be committed to Canada. But separatists, beaten in the referendum, are girding to continue their fight for independence by exerting more control over the party, from the provincial executive to its most grassroots level, the constituency associations. If they act in sufficient numbers, they can force a review of Ms. Smith’s leadership.
“It will be a pitched battle,” Mr. Solberg said.
Alberta may have chosen Canada. But it’s no longer clear Ms. Smith’s United Conservative Party will continue to choose her. The premier has emerged from the referendum into a fractious fight to hold onto her position.
It is fight for federalism, and for Ms. Smith’s political life. It is a fight for the future of the united conservative movement. And it is a fight to wrestle into submission the fervid forces of separatism as they change course, pursuing a political path to splitting apart the country.
“There’s lots of things that could go wrong,” Mr. Solberg said.
After months of organizing from Edmonton to small-town Alberta, separatists held their referendum night watch party at the Alt Hotel in Calgary. They did not get the result they hoped for.
Leah Hennel/The Globe and Mail
Two generations ago, Jacques Parizeau brought the country to within a breath of cracking apart. Mr. Parizeau was a scion of family wealth, an economist who interned at the Bank of Canada, then worked to foment Quebec’s Quiet Revolution from behind the scenes.
As a younger man, though, he “didn’t like politics. He found it difficult, he found it tough,” recalled Jean Royer, who served as Mr. Parizeau’s influential chief of staff.
But the secessionist leader who would rise to become premier came early to a realization that he could not succeed outside the halls of the legislature. To achieve sovereignty, he had to accept “the rules of the game. And the rules of the game are to participate in parliamentary debate,” Mr. Royer said in an interview this week.
It was under Mr. Parizeau that Quebec nearly said yes to secession during its 1995 referendum.
Three decades later, his example has taken on new relevance in Canada’s west.
“In my opinion,” Mr. Royer said, “the best way to demonstrate legitimacy is running in an election with a platform.”
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Jacques Parizeau, celebrating a provincial election win in 1994, would serve only two more years as Quebec premier: After the Yes side’s defeat in the 1995 referendum, he quit and was replaced by Lucien Bouchard.Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail
Alberta’s separatists, led by a competing collection of lawyers, podcasters, a farmer and a guns-and-sports shop owner, lost in this week’s referendum, garnering roughly 25 per cent of valid votes. Now some want to capture their province’s governing party, to force it to advance their cause.
To have a shot at getting independence-minded candidates on the ballot under the UCP banner, let alone elected, the separatists have to control the party’s internal machinery. Succeed in that, and they can once again make secession an Alberta priority.
Podcasters Jason Lavigne and Chris Scott hopscotched the province ahead of Monday’s referendum, urging Albertans to vote in favour of instigating the legal process necessary to hold a binding vote on secession.
Now, both intend to compete for seats on the UCP’s provincial board, in races party members will vote on next month at the party’s annual general meeting.
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Chris Scott, founder of the group Let’s Talk Alberta, says he plans to seek a seat on the United Conservatives’ provincial board.Abed Zaq/AFP via Getty Images
Attendance at the annual convention has swelled in recent years after conservative activists on the party’s right flank recognized they could exert greater control over government if they elected board members who shared their worldview. Ms. Smith last week said roughly 6,900 UCP members already purchased early-bird tickets.
For the Premier, the imperative is to outflank the separatists. She began this week by withdrawing the welcome mat.
“A strong Alberta within a united Canada is the position of our party and our government,” Ms. Smith said in a video released Wednesday, striking the word “sovereign” from her catchphrase to align with the message furnishing her lectern that same day.
UCP candidates, MLAs, provincial board members and constituency association representatives must uphold this position, she said. “If they want to be in a position of representing our party in an official role,” Ms. Smith told reporters, “there has to be a commitment that they also accept the result of the mandate that Albertans gave us.”
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Albertans who voted in person this week had to get 10 ballots in their respective colour-coded boxes, all of which would be counted by hand.Cory Wright/The Globe and Mail; Ahmed Zakot/Reuters
Ms. Smith wants to align her party’s values with the outcome of the province-wide referendum, shielding the UCP from being associated with separatism, particularly as it looks toward a provincial election in 2027. The premier refused to say whether she or the party would disqualify those who do not comply. For now, she said she is asking people to use “self-reflection” to determine their future in the party.
Her call for loyalty, if followed, would force out prominent independence advocates with sizable influence in the party. Mitch Sylvestre, who spearheaded a petition to get a separation question on the referendum ballot, is the president of a UCP constituency association in northeast Alberta and one of the party’s most valuable fundraisers. Tanya Clemens co-chaired Let Alberta Decide, a prominent separatist organization, and is one of the party’s local directors in the Highwood constituency, which in September voted in favour of reviewing Ms. Smith’s leadership.
The Premier’s instructions will almost certainly inflame the battle for control of the UCP’s provincial board.
Wrestling separatism into submission, in other words, is unlikely to prove easy.
Mr. Sylvestre, in an online meeting Thursday evening, showed no sign of retreat. He painted Ms. Smith’s loyalty test as a “direct attack” on him and blamed her for the widening the fissures in the already fractured organization.
“She’s telling us to pick between her and Alberta independence,” Mr. Sylvestre said, noting Ms. Smith said there would not be another secession referendum as long as she is Premier. “I am not splitting this party up. Who split this party up? Danielle Smith split this party up. Period. End of conversation.”
He urged followers to flock to the UCP’s annual meeting, support the slate of board candidates he intends to endorse, and agitate to force a review to oust Ms. Smith.
“You have to be in the room with power to address power, and if you want to get your way, there’s no other path here, unless we get into government,” he said.
As Alberta lurches from referendum to an internal party clash, Ms. Smith’s task in enforcing her new federalist decree will also be complicated by something she may not have anticipated.
In this new contest for Alberta, language suddenly matters. Sorting conservative activists into tidy piles will be difficult. Separatists, said Mr. Lavigne, the podcaster, believe secession is the only way to resolve Alberta’s beef with Ottawa, while sovereigntists believe independence is one of many potential solutions. “I really don’t know how you would be able to determine where the line would be between sovereigntist and separatist,” he said.
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While some pro-Option-2 merchandise used the word ‘independence’ openly, others did not.Chris MacArthur/The Globe and Mail
Sorting friend from foe by preferred labels stands to amplify the UCP’s raging identity crisis, an internal fight with implications for the party, province and rest of the country.
Both Mr. Lavigne and Mr. Scott use the word “sovereignty” the way Ms. Smith once did, to describe a province determining its own future, free from Ottawa’s overreach. “I’m not a separatist. I’m not a federalist,” Mr. Scott said in an interview this week. “I believe in a sovereign Alberta.”
Mr. Scott, who rose to prominence when he refused to shutter his rural café during the COVID-19 pandemic and founded Let’s Talk Alberta, said his preference is for the province to stay in Canada, consistent with Ms. Smith’s vision. However, Mr. Scott thinks independence is the only clear path for Alberta to achieve sovereignty.
He thinks the Premier is making a mistake by trying to dissuade separatists from vying for power inside the party. If she wants party unity, he said, she could get there by returning to her sovereigntist roots, by revving up the effort to extract Alberta from the Canada Pension Plan and taking control over immigration into the province, for example.
“If they block somebody like me because of my views on sovereignty, that would make them disingenuous,” he said. “Because you can’t, out of one side of your mouth, say you believe in Alberta sovereignty, and from the other side say: ‘Hey, you believe in Alberta sovereignty, so you need to get out of our party.’”
Rural communities such as Mossleigh, Airdrie and Okotoks were more likely to see votes for Option 2 than the bigger cities, but over all, the remain side won handily across the province.
Todd Korol/Reuters
What, exactly, does 75 per cent mean? Was the Alberta referendum an expression of unalloyed patriotism? A message to Edmonton and Ottawa that Albertans are content?
Or was it something else?
Albertans said yes to Canada. They may not answer the same about Ottawa, warns Gary Mar, a former Alberta Cabinet minister who is now president of the Canada West Foundation, a think tank. “There’s a whole host of issues where Albertans would say, ‘I don’t like the status quo, but I don’t think that separation is the solution, either.’”
In other words: “I don’t think the Prime Minister can rest easy.”
Mr. Carney has the power to bring change without opening messy constitutional debate, like giving provinces greater say in naming judges or rethinking the French language requirement for western civil servants, Mr. Mar said.
In Alberta, meanwhile, this moment represents opportunity for those who have long sought greater autonomy for Alberta. The industrial backbone of Central and Eastern Canada is under acute pressure from the U.S., whose tariffs have hurt the auto sector, steelmakers and others. Alberta’s economy and resources offer a counterweight, and Ottawa has already begun to respond with proposals like a new Pacific pipeline.
“What a great time for us to say, ‘absolutely. We’re here to make a stronger Canada, too. And part of that is to make sure we’re making a stronger Alberta,’” said Michael Binnion, an Alberta energy executive who has sketched proposals for how the province could wrest greater power for itself. Asserting provincial control over pensions and immigration are two areas he advocates. “For Albertans upset by the result, a constructive thing they can do is get involved in building the institutions to responsibly govern ourselves.”
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Alberta’s oil-sands industry has been processing the news of the referendum as the Carney government pledges to build a new conduit for its fuel to the West Coast.Todd Korol/Reuters
Because, warned Reform Party founder Preston Manning, more trouble for Confederation lies ahead. On Wednesday, Quebec swore in Paul St-Pierre Plamondon as leader of a new government that has pledged another referendum on Quebec independence.
“The West is going to be watching,” Mr. Manning said, adding: “Will there be a double standard on how the federal government treats these two provinces?”
Both Quebec and Alberta, he said, share a desire for a more decentralized federation, Quebec for cultural, social and linguistic reasons, Alberta on economic grounds. If Ottawa were to act on Western priorities, he said, it might mollify at least some of those so frustrated they have agitated to leave.
“The overall high level of support to remain begs a question: remain and do what?”
Still, for a country that has had no shortage of dim self-reflection in recent years, Alberta’s referendum vote was “a refreshing moment,” said Calgary oil and gas pioneer Jim Gray, who spent the past year raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Forever Canadian, the advocacy group that rallied for federalism. Now 93 years old, he collected signatures for a remain in Canada petition and personally delivered dozens of Forever Canadian lawn signs to people across Calgary.
“I’m glad that we had that referendum. Because it was really a moment to celebrate and to think rather deeply about how lucky we are,” he said this week.
“Canada isn’t perfect. Nobody is perfect,” he added.
But “Canada is not broken.”
At the very least, said former Alberta Lieutenant-Governor Lois Mitchell, the referendum should prompt a change in tone.
“We’re always kind of whining about things. And we shouldn’t be doing that,” she said.
“Ask yourself: Could you actually do something and make it better?”
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Amanda Erickson/The Canadian Press
Alberta’s decision: More from The Globe and Mail
The Decibel podcast
In answering one question – whether to stay in Canada – Albertans have opened a can of others. Opinion editor Tyler Dawson spoke with The Decibel about what to expect from the separatists, the Premier and Ottawa. Subscribe for more episodes.
Commentary
Andrew Coyne: Alberta’s separatists lost badly. Danielle Smith might have lost even worse
Gary Mason: Alberta’s separatist movement is built on false and unearned authority
Editorial: Albertans have spoken, Canada should listen