Lasting impact seen from historic Alberta referendum, regardless of result

Albertans will cast their ballots Monday in a historic referendum that could have lasting impacts on the political landscape, regardless of the vote’s results.

Voters are being asked to decide on 10 questions relating to Alberta’s place in Canada, policies related to immigration, and potential changes to the Constitution.

Elections Alberta has recorded strong turnout for mail-in ballots and advance polls. Those who have yet to cast their ballot are being told to vote as early as they can Monday and to anticipate lineups.

Polls are open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., but complete results for all referendum questions aren’t likely to come before Wednesday evening. Elections Alberta is required to have all ballots hand-counted within 48 hours of polls closing, but with 10 questions on separate ballots — making this the largest referendum in Canada’s history — the task will be monumental.

Question 10 — the separation question — will be counted first, followed by questions one through nine in order.

While legislation requires vote officials to complete the count within the 48-hour timeframe, there aren’t any legislated penalties or consequences if the deadline isn’t met, Elections Alberta spokesperson Maia Hanrahan said.

“We’re expecting to meet that requirement, and that’s why we’ve put out the call for so many ballot counters,” she said. “Regardless, though, we’ll be completing that count regardless of how long it takes.”

As of Friday, 47,000 workers have been hired, but Elections Alberta originally set a target of 60,000 additional workers.

The counting of mail-in and advance vote ballots will begin at 5 p.m. Monday, but no results will be published until all voting stations have closed, said Hanrahan.

Voting stations are scheduled to close at 8 p.m., but may stay open longer to accommodate anyone queued at that hour, she said.

“That result site will wait to be published until all locations are confirmed as closed.”

Over the course of the five-day advance vote period, 837,791 ballots were cast, Elections Alberta said, while the agency added it has received and processed 519,082 mail-in or special ballots. The 1,356,873 total represents a turnout of 43.1 per cent.

The 2023 general election saw a 60.5 per cent turnout rate in total, with 1,764,915 valid ballots cast. Just over half were cast on election day, while 757,453 ballots were cast during advance voting and 51,351 were by special ballot.

Elections Alberta has yet to release a cost for the referendum.

Mount Royal University political science professor Lori Williams said that while the turnout has been promising so far, it’s difficult to predict how it will translate to Monday’s vote.

“It’s hard to game out what people looking at those numbers might decide about whether it’s worth the trouble to stand in the line to vote or not,” she said. “Some are saying it suggests 85 per cent turnout, but I think it’s a bit early to tell.”

Some advance voters have reported their wait to only be minutes long, while others have been in line for hours.

“So much is unprecedented here that we just don’t know,” she said. “I see really good signs of commitment, people who think it’s important enough to stand in line. I just don’t know if the final numbers will be sufficient to actually reflect the will of the full range of Albertans or not.”

MRU public policy professor Duane Bratt said there have been elections in the past with high turnout at the advance poll, but no overall impact on total turnout.

“It just shows that people want to vote when they want to vote,” he said. “But when you calculate the degree of the advance polls combined with the mail-in votes with what Elections Alberta is projecting, this could have one of the largest voter turnouts in an Alberta election in decades.”

There are 10 questions on the referendum, nine of which, the province said, came from the recommendations from the Alberta Next panel hosted last year, which aimed to hear from Albertans about how the province’s sovereignty could be enhanced within a united Canada.

The panel consisted of 10 public town hall meetings across the province and one online meeting, attended by a total of more than 5,000 Albertans, who were then surveyed.

Three additional online surveys were conducted, each polling 1,000 Albertans. The resulting report made seven recommendations, which included holding a referendum on the province increasing control of immigration and looking into several constitutional amendments.

The report also recommended a referendum on establishing an Alberta Pension Plan to replace the Canada Pension Plan for Albertans, but that question is not on Monday’s ballot.

The 10th question on separation was prompted by a citizen-led petition asking the province to hold a referendum on separation and another asking for the government to reject separatism, which together garnered around 700,000 signatures.

However, despite the petitions meeting the signature threshold, a court decision ruled that a binding referendum on separation couldn’t be held without first undergoing a consultation process with First Nations.

Instead, the province added question 10 as it reads on the ballot, which asks voters whether Alberta should remain in Canada, or whether the province should begin the legal process of holding a binding referendum to leave Confederation.

Recent polls have found that support for the latter option ranges anywhere from 22 to 33 per cent, but the outcome will likely come down to turnout.

“If option two wins, we go into further chaos,” Bratt said. “In fact, it would make it worse, because now we’d be having a second referendum, and who knows when that would be, because we have a provincial election next year, and under the current legislation, you’re not allowed to have a referendum in the same year as a provincial election.”

If option one wins, he said, the margin will make a big difference in how the separatist movement responds.

“I don’t think the separatist movement is going anywhere. There’s always been a separatist movement in Alberta, but now they’ve been legitimized by having this vote,” he said.

Williams echoed the sentiment, saying many factors will affect what comes next.

“The question is how powerful, how influential will the organized separatists be that have exerted so much influence up until this point?” she said.

“Will they continue to do that? Will they be diminished? Will they form another party? Will they successfully challenge (Premier) Danielle Smith’s leadership? Will the next premier be a separatist or a moderate? All of those are very difficult to predict at this stage.”

A decisive vote, she said, “could have significant implications for Alberta’s future.”

“If it’s less decisive, I think we have a lot more uncertainty for some time,” she said.

“It’s really important that people not just look at the polls and think that their vote isn’t needed. It is. It’s extremely important.”

But neither Bratt nor Williams can predict what will become of the UCP after the referendum — or what the implications will be for Smith.

“Her party’s divided, and I don’t know how she’s going to get out of this,” Bratt said. “That’s going to be a fascinating discussion to watch between Monday night and the UCP AGM in November.”

The association with separatism and the referendum alone could make the next election more difficult for Smith and the UCP, Williams said.

“The other possibility is that the party splits, the separatists get kicked out, they form their own party,” she said. “Do we then have Wildrose and Progressive Conservative again, and all of the implications of that?”

Speaking at an event in Calgary Friday, former premier and UCP co-founder Jason Kenney suggested the party should purge itself of separatists, while Smith herself did not address this point.

As far as the other nine questions go, there’s some speculation as to how the results will be leveraged.

“You could have a situation where (Smith) continues to go forward on some of these things, even if they are defeated,” Bratt said.

Question five, for example, asks about a requirement for proof of citizenship to vote, but the province is already adding citizenship to drivers’ licences.

“Are they going to reverse course?” Bratt said. “They’re going to interpret the results how they want.”

Such an outcome wouldn’t be unprecedented. When the province held a referendum on switching to permanent daylight time in 2021, 50.2 per cent voted no. However, more recently, the Alberta government implemented permanent daylight time anyway.

Williams added that the province already has the power to act on the first five questions without a referendum vote, and the four constitutional questions would require buy-in from other provinces regardless of the vote’s outcome.

“This is one of the reasons why people are wondering why the questions are on the referendum, because the province has power to do these things or doesn’t have power to do these things, and this vote isn’t going to make any difference,” she said.

“This is not grassroots democracy,” Bratt added. “All of the questions were chosen by the government. Why are we talking about immigration and not pensions or data centres? The government made that choice. The government wrote the questions.”

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