Alberta heads to polls to vote on separation referendum

Alberta holds its referendum today. Ten questions on ten different ballots. One of them asks voters if they want to remain a province or hold another referendum on separating. Polls will open at 9 a.m. in Alberta. That is 11 a.m. or, let me do the math, three and a half hours from now, Eastern. The results are not legally binding, so how exactly will they be used? Janice McGregor looking at what this referendum's about. Janice, over to you. Yeah, I want to return to something that we've been talking about ever since these questions were first brought forward. And that's the fact that the swing voters today could also be people who are most likely to be animated by some of the first nine questions on the ballots that they're going to get. People who want to be heard on issues around immigration and Alberta's constitutional powers. It's also noteworthy, extraordinary, perhaps, that the budgetary pressures, for example, that Premier Daniel Smith cited as a rationale for having a question on whether, for example, immigrants should pay for their own health care, that reality has changed significantly thanks to higher oil prices. Those concerns perhaps could have abated since the time that question was drafted. It's also really extraordinary to reflect on, you know, questions around Alberta's power to call its own shots. Those happening at a time when Albertans arguably do control the halls of power here in Ottawa. The prime minister, the leader of the opposition both consider themselves Alberta. Look, in the end, questions around alienation, in this case, Western alienation, often come down to identity politics. People's feelings about being represented, about who they really are. Standing beside Daniel Smith on Friday, the Prime Minister in Red Deer at a campaign stop asked Albertans to focus today on the big picture. Canada is not a transaction between provinces. It's not about gross and net gives and gets. Yes, you know, there's some of those elements we work on in specific projects, but it's about so much more. It's about standing up for ourselves, and it's about taking care of each other. So you said there it shouldn't be transactional, but it's notable that up until last week, the federal government's approach to concerns around Alberta separation, that was very much transactional. Daniel Smith was standing right beside him when he made that comment on Friday. She then proceeded to rattle off a long list of wins she feels she's been able to rack up in recent months. Not only her negotiation around the West Coast pipeline, but also the fact that the latest judicial appointments were ones that met the government of Alberta's approval. Those may be intended as proof of concept that Albertans don't have to separate to get what they want from the federal government. But I think it's an open question whether those gains would have been realized if we didn't have this kind of knife at the throat brinkmanship that arises during a referendum campaign. The closing arguments there from the Remain camp, what about from the other side? Indeed, because yes, polls may not suggest that a majority favours separation, but points of view that used to lurk at the edges of Alberta politics are now in the spotlight at centre stage. And that was cause for one of the leaders of the movement, lawyer Keith Wilson, to claim victory at their closing rally over the weekend. Regardless of what happens on Monday, we've already won. We've already won because even those who do not support Alberta moving towards independence acknowledge we have a legal pathway to it. Even those that want to stay in Canada acknowledge that there's fundamental grievances that are legitimate and they must be addressed. Something I'll be watching tonight is whether this turns out to be not necessarily just a story about Canadian unity, but a story about Alberta unity with stark differences of opinion, perhaps emerging between rural voters and urban voters. Danielle Smith's rural base in her party helped make her premier. It is possible that if party members emerge from this unsatisfied, their next target may not be Ottawa, it might be her. Indeed. Janice McGregor, thank you.