Unsurprisingly, Albertans voted overwhelmingly to stay in Canada. As counting continues through Wednesday, the numbers are holding fairly steady around 75-25 in favour.
It’s probably fair to say that, for many Albertans, they can leave this ridiculousness behind them and get back to their lives. It’s equally fair to say that while a clear majority may be feeling relief today, the separatist problem is not going away— not for Albertans, not for Danielle Smith, and most certainly not for the United Conservative Party.
Separatist sentiment has existed for decades, it has been encouraged with political rhetoric that benefits elected officials in Alberta so long as they can blame a Liberal government in Ottawa— separatists just didn’t have a mainstream political party in their back pocket before now.
Danielle Smith has declared there will not be another separation referendum while she is premier. If only we’d known that’s what we were supposed to ask the first time. She also said that her government had to follow the law when separatists got the signatures after she lowered the number they were required to reach.
She said her government would not allow opposing questions to be asked. Then she changed the law to accommodate both a stay in Canada option and another referendum on separation option.
Danielle Smith says lots of things.
On the other nine questions, the result is not as definitive. While a 50+1 per cent margin is all that was needed to adopt or reject the Premier’s (non-binding) offerings, the current margins are not resoundingly in favour of or against like Question 10; instead, they’re mostly coin tosses.
Thus far, the expected results from someone else’s model I’m using suggest that Albertans are not resoundingly in favour of any of them, with a low 50 per cent approval or rejection. However, the second strongest victory after Question 10 was awarded to proving citizenship in order to vote— which has already been in the works for more than a year.
Un-fun fact: if you search for “UCP passes law requiring proof of citizenship to vote” in order to reference the Bill that signed it into law, the “Save America Act” pops up, too. Colour me eye-rollingly shocked.
Question five asked whether proof of citizenship should be required in order to vote. It was the one question that referenced a law the UCP already passed in 2025 under Bill 10 Red Tape Reduction Statutes Amendment Act, 2025 (No. 2), and implemented three months ago on July 2, 2026; citizenship markers on government-issued ID.
As of publishing, it is looking like her offer to spend more time and attention away from the issues genuinely affecting Albertans in favour of continuing to whinge about the constitutional questions may also be rejected.
As if I needed something punchier, the Premier stated that she will now take up the constitutional question from Alberta’s last referendum, in support of equalization reform.
Just remember, when we don’t turn our clocks back in a couple of weeks, that we also voted “no” to remaining on DST.
Non-binding, yadda yadda.
Referendumb hangover
I was one of the early “no to the nine” proponents because I read the questions and thought they should have been an election platform. I also read the questions and realized they were a push-poll, which manipulates the question to obtain a particular answer. In their case, it was more like shoving as many questions into one in order to elicit agreement with at least one, and give the government a better probability of getting support.
No one knows what the government’s plan is because they didn’t have to tell us.
She said she wanted Alberta’s population to reach 10 million. She said obviously that would include skilled people from other countries. She championed the “Alberta is Calling” campaign. Good thing there was a Trudeau in office then, too, right?
I don’t know how she’s going to restrict people from moving to Alberta. I don’t know what an “Alberta Approved Immigration Program” is. And I don’t know how she plans to force companies to hire Albertans first instead of the best person for the job. Sounds like an Alberta DEI program, to me.
Danielle Smith claimed she was bringing back meritocracy.
Standard caveat applies: she says things.
The results come with more than a price tag
While many Albertans probably felt some relief that the latest hundred plus million dollar boondoggle was over, long-time independence supporters like Cory Morgan are looking at this result as a baseline. He thinks it might be wise to just ride Danielle Smith’s coattails to an election win before they make another move, too.
Not only did they end up with a lower percentage than they were hoping for, it looks to be a lower percentage than they might have had before Danielle Smith added a separation question to her referendum at all.
There were also conflicting accounts of what the Premier was doing for her part. UCP President Rob Smith (no relation) claimed the Premier (and leader of the party) told him that she would only campaign against the nine questions. The Premier told the public that was not true and that she would campaign against the separation question.
I saw the Premier’s speech three separate times. The first was in September, after the loss in Calgary-Shaw at a Constituency Association Event, then again at the True North Nation event, and a third time at the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference (on CPAC). For her campaign, the Premier mostly limited herself to Conservative events, including one small gathering in Red Deer with Prime Minister Mark Carney and Monte Solberg, a former Cabinet Minister who launched the Conservative initiative “Vote to Stay.”
Support for separation is almost entirely concentrated in Conservative circles, with a slight majority found amongst UCP supporters. Almost as if the people specifically targeted by anti-Ottawa and anti-Liberal Conservative political rhetoric are more likely to believe it. They’re not all wallowing in their “legitimate grievances,” to be sure, but far too many are.
She knows much of her party supports separation and we’ve had the polling in glaring neon lights for the past 18 months to back it up, too. Rumours suggest she even picked up the WEXIT party’s membership list and campaigned for their support to make her UCP leader in 2022. This tidbit would be right up there with the number of times I haven’t been shocked today.
I’ll tell you something that did raise an eyebrow though— hearing that Danielle Smith suddenly decided she didn’t need them anymore. Well, that was what she said for the non-members, anyway.
To the membership, she said she totally gets why they would vote for separation but now is the time to focus on winning the next election and she hopes they’ll stay in the party because the big bad NDP-Liberal-bogeyman might come after their children!
As snarky as that sounds, she actually said that.
However, she doesn’t really have to worry about losing the separatists; they’ve promised they aren’t going anywhere.
There’s legitimately no benefit to giving up their leverage in the UCP when they’ve already seen what Albertans think of the goal. Besides, they weren’t just welcomed into the UCP— some say they were invited.
Now the only thing left for her to do is convince Albertans that they aren’t risking their own future by voting for her party again.
After all, she said things.
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Bye bye Danni...
I pray investigations against her result in charges and prison. People in this province have died because of this morally corrupt, sadistic excuse for a human being.