Alberta: More federalist than you thought

Avert your eyes if you don’t like hard-core. This is a hard-core column about the hard-core Alberta separatists who hijacked a party, corrupted a process and failed in their fevered fervour to break up Canada.

First, be of good cheer. Canada won Monday night’s referendum in Alberta. Decisively. Three-quarters of the votes cast were for Option 1: “Alberta should remain a province of Canada.” Only one in four Alberta voters opted for a referendum on separation.

Alberta won, too. That strong vote against separation means the province can look ahead, confident the independence fever dream is boxed. A true win-win and a sad rarity in politics these days.

Be warned, though. Those hard-core separatists are hard dogs to keep on the porch, as the expression goes. They are already agitating to be taken more seriously than the votes warrant. They intend to flex whatever muscle memory remains to depose Premier Danielle Smith from her leadership of the United Conservative Party. Dis-united Conservative Party, anyone?

Smith intends to see them off. The day after the vote, she vowed not to hold another independence referendum while she remained premier. The day after that, she advised separatist malcontents to “join a different party.” Having twisted and turned every which way to facilitate this unnecessary referendum in the first place, the lady says she is now not for turning. Margaret Thatcher would arch her eyebrows in reproof.

Still, even Smith can’t help but read the room. Albertans not only voted to remain in Canada and stay Canadian, they also voted against every single constitutional change option Smith proffered them, according to unofficial results from Elections Alberta. The big question of “remain” was officially No. 10 on the referendum ballot. Four of the others, questions 6 through 9, asked for permission to lobby for constitutional-level change — to the Senate (i.e., to abolish it); to give provincial laws paramountcy over federal laws (grant it); to enable appointment of federal judges from provincial lists (allow it); and to enable opting-out of federal programs without losing the attached money (allow it).

None passed. Permission denied. It turns out Albertans are far more federalist in their outlook than their erstwhile leaders. And they are savvy and discriminating enough in their choices to vote massively on the one hand for “remain” and clearly, if not as massively, against constitutional adventurism. No “on the one hand” happening here. They put two and two together and said, “we want to stay in Canada and have it work better.”

The results are a rebuke to political leaders who seek to avert voters’ eyes from the real stuff that matters, such as creating jobs, fixing health care, and building things. Or demanding accountability and challenging corruption in government.

Premier Smith, meanwhile, said she intends to press her autonomist provincial demands upon the federal government: “And when Ottawa interferes with those rights, we will be unrelenting in our response.”

OK, then. Business as usual.

A stronger premier would never have called the referendum in the first place. She put party ahead of country, political survival ahead of all else. The actual results reveal she had a strong anti-independence hand that she played weakly.

The hard-core vote for independence was not 25 per cent of votes cast but less than 10 per cent. Asked why they were voting for Option 2 and holding another explicit separation referendum, one poll showed that only about 20 per cent of that 25 per cent of Albertans said they truly wanted independence. Some wanted to send a message to Ottawa or gain leverage in some kind of negotiation with the federal government. That means only one in 10 Albertans are truly hard-core independence supporters.

These are the truly disgruntled. The more “gruntled” clearly want something less than independence — in some cases, a lot less. Smith sought to vent the heat from everyone’s concerns in a contrived referendum. That heat is now turned on her.

Canada was built on compromise and persuasion. They go together. Constitutional change is hard, necessarily so. You have to work first at convincing others to take seriously something that is a priority for you but not them. Then you have to convince them that your solution is good for them. Smith did neither of these. She embarked upon a constitutional change vanity exercise, hoping that Albertans could do the heavy lifting for her, without her. They didn’t.

If you want a complete distraction from what Canada faces today, then invite your prime minister and premier to call a constitutional change meeting. Canada has lived through that. While it doesn’t mean we cannot or should not do so again, the most elitist thing any politician could do now at a time of trade warfare with America, affordability concerns and any number of daily financial or health pressures on people and families, is to hold up the Constitution of Canada and say, “Let’s change it.”

Premier Smith deserves everything coming her way. Canadians do not. The referendum shows the limits to her brand of grievance politics. Collaborative, not confrontational, federalism is back in vogue.

In that vein, there’s a message to Ottawa too. Prime Minister Mark Carney has successfully taken down the temperature in federal-provincial politics. Keep it there.

To any political leader who wants to toy with Canada’s future, Albertans just said “permission denied.”

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.