Braid: Alberta will vote on separation in 2026. If it passes, where will Smith stand?

Alberta politics became ever more divisive and emotional this year, with a string of controversies over trans rights, the teachers’ strike, use of the notwithstanding clause, and much more.

But 2025 might look tame by the end of 2026.

A genuine, province-wide vote on separation is upon us. It’s virtually certain that by fall of 2026, a referendum ballot will include the question: “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?”

To force this referendum, the separatists only need 178,000 signatures. Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian movement, by contrast, required 293,000.

He got far more than the target, of course, but the shape-changing rules are typical of government favoritism that coddles the separatist cause, for fear of splitting the UCP.

Premier Danielle Smith continues to say she wants Canada to work for Alberta. She pins her hopes on the memorandum of agreement with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government.

Smith was booed at the UCP’s November convention, remember, for saying she believes in a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.” Separatist leader Jeffrey Rath won cheers when he cried for an independent Alberta.

Smith recently raised the fee for signature drives from $500 to $25,000. The separatists probably could have raised that much by passing around the hat at the convention.

The sovereignty-within-Canada pitch is exactly what won the UCP leadership for Smith in 2022 and helped her take the provincial election the following year.

Now, it’s not nearly enough for many people in her party and beyond.

In short, it’s possible that the separatists could win. Even Lukaszuk, whose movement showed deep support for Canadian unity, warns that once there’s a full campaign, it could run out of control.

To be clear, I do not believe Smith and her people want an independence vote to carry. They hope it fails and that the question is pushed off the table for years.

Under that scenario, the threat will have done its work by goading Ottawa and holding the UCP together.

But if the separatist question does win this vote, what does the sovereignty premier do then?

Does the UCP take up the independence cause? Does separation become formal government policy?

One thing’s for sure — the UCP could not formally endorse separatism without going to the people in a general election. Independence was no part of the UCP mandate in 2023.

This could be a very difficult campaign for a party so torn over independence.

The UCP would face Naheed Nenshi’s NDP, which is ardently anti-separatist and gearing up to campaign on the issue.

“They have backed themselves into a corner on a separatist referendum, and if they cannot figure a legal way out of that, then we will have a separation referendum,” Nenshi said in an interview.

“We know from every experience that having a referendum like that is incredibly hard to control. It’s incredibly destabilizing, and whether it’s yes or no, it freezes investment and ruins the economy.

“But they talked their way into having to have a referendum. They even legislated their way into it.”

In the legislature, the NDP pressed the government to put Lukaszuk’s pro-Canada question to a binding vote.

Nenshi says: “They were supposed to strike a legislative committee to decide what to do with the Forever Canadian petition, and they pulled it off the order paper at the last second.

“So, they’re going to wait till the spring to strike that committee, because they don’t know what they’re doing.

“The fact that she (Smith) got booed by her own base shows her party is now completely controlled by separatists (and) she has lost control of the mob.”

“The question for her is, can she regain control or does she have to pander even more to the extremists?”

The answers will come next year, wrapped in tumult.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

X and Bluesky: @DonBraid