Maple leaf love: Albertans vote strongly to stay in Canada

O Canada, Alberta is staying put.

In a historic referendum Monday, voters marked their ballots in overwhelming numbers to remain in the country that made Alberta a province 121 years ago.

In early returns, about 76 per cent of Albertans said yes to Confederation, while 24 per cent said they wanted the province to hold a second, binding referendum on leaving.

Both Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney lauded the result.

“Thank you, Alberta!” Smith wrote on social media.

“Albertans have voted for a stronger Alberta in a united Canada.”

Smith said she would give a TV address Tuesday night to detail where the province goes from here.

Carney said in a statement: “Albertans made a clear choice. They chose unity, to build together, and to take care of each other.”

“Canada is so much greater than the sum of its parts.”

At watch parties and rallies, pro-Canada supporters cheered, and those fighting for a new deal were glum but resolute.

“Don’t mess with Canada!” Thomas Lukaszuk, a prominent leader and organizer of the pro-Canada forces, said to cheers at the Polish Hall in Edmonton’s downtown.

About eight blocks away, a rally for separatists at a restaurant fell quiet as the numbers rolled in.

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Jeff Rath of the Alberta Prosperity Project.

“We’ve dominated the conversation in the last year. We’ve been educating Albertans on the benefits of independence, and we’re going to continue moving forward.”

Alberta joins Quebec in putting the question of sovereignty to its citizens. Quebec has had two votes dating to 1980. In 1995, Quebec voted to stay in Confederation by a razor-thin 50.58 per cent.

The separation question was one of 10 put to Albertans. The other nine focused on immigration and the Constitution. They were also being counted Monday, but the early results came in slower and with closer margins.

The overall turnout was impressive, with more than 1.3 million votes cast earlier in mail-in ballots and at advance polls.

Smith, who said she voted to stay in Canada, promised a simple 50 per cent plus one majority would carry the day and that there would be no followup referendum for the rest of her United Conservative Party government’s mandate.

Christina Fielder, a supporter at the Forever Canadian party, said Alberta is in the same place it was before the referendum and hopes the separatist debate is done.

“They were thumped,” she said. “I hope that they’ll accept that, because they are not the majority. We are.”

At a polling station in Edmonton, Shawn Campbell said he voted for a binding separation referendum — even though he doesn’t want the province to separate and doesn’t believe it ever will.

“It sends a message to Ottawa that Albertans are not happy.”

The voting completes a winding process that began in May, when Smith called the referendum.

Debate turned some neighbours against neighbours. It disrupted public events.

The Alberta flag morphed into a disputed de facto banner for those who want to separate.

There were rallies and speeches, sign wars, stacks of policy documents, analyses and warnings of economic apocalypse should Alberta try to go its own way.

Smith had to explain why her caucus and party is for Canada while allowing separatists to remain in the fold. She said the party stands for Confederation but also welcomes diverse points of view.

Smith and her UCP didn’t campaign on a separation vote in the 2023 provincial election, and it didn’t seek a renewed popular mandate before calling the referendum. Instead, Smith said, her hand had effectively been forced.

She said Albertans’ long-standing simmering resentment with Ottawa boiled over during the administration of former Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau.

She said policies undercutting resource development, along with unfair equalization policies and federal intrusion on provincial rights, compelled hundreds of thousands of Albertans to sign citizen-led petitions both for and against staying in Canada.

A referendum, she said, was a necessary pressure release valve and a way to settle the matter once and for all.

She walked a line on the issue. She professed love for a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.” However, over the last two years, her government has rewritten laws and lowered thresholds that helped power the petition calling for a vote on separation.

When that petition was ultimately bogged down in court this spring, Smith announced the referendum anyway.

The Opposition NDP, among other critics, has said this is the true reason for the referendum.

They say separatism has long been — and still is — a fringe sentiment in Alberta. They accuse Smith of squeezing the bellows on the embers of separation, fanning them into flames to save her job.

They say she has become captive to the influential separatist wing of her party and that the referendum is about keeping them in the fold and dissuading them from tossing her out in a party confidence vote, as was done to her predecessor Jason Kenney.

Kenney, a co-founder of the UCP, has said separatists have no place in the party and that after the referendum, the party faces a “reckoning.”

The next Alberta election is set for October 2027, and the overarching question is whether the whiff of separatism will cling to Smith and her UCP.

Smith has fences to mend.

Two UCP constituency associations have reportedly backed calls for an early leadership review ahead of the party’s annual general meeting in November.

There’s also resentment among some separatists over the wording of the referendum question. Critics have derided it as little more than a referendum on a referendum.

Others resent Smith for calling the vote on Alberta’s future in Canada while simultaneously declaring she will vote to keep the province in Confederation.

There are signs the government’s popularity has taken a hit. The UCP has bled support to the NDP in recent public opinion surveys. Last month, the UCP lost a byelection in its Calgary-Shaw stronghold.

On Monday, Rath said Smith, too, would face a reckoning.

“We are the UCP,” he said. “Jason Kenney, we’ve already kicked out. He’s no longer the leader because of what he did during COVID.

“Danielle,” he said, “is going to be running into the same thing.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 19, 2026.

— With files from Fakiha Baig and Aaron Sousa