Alberta Starts Voting on Whether to Vote on Leaving. The Line to Watch Is 24 Per Cent

Advance voting opened across Alberta on Tuesday and runs to Saturday 17 October, ahead of referendum day on Monday 19 October, Elections Alberta said. Voters receive ten colour-coded ballots. Nine ask yes or no on immigration and constitutional matters. The tenth, handed to voters first, asks whether Alberta should remain a province of Canada or whether its government should "commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum" on separation.

The result on that tenth ballot is about as settled as any vote gets before it is counted. Léger's survey of 1,001 Albertans from 2 to 4 October put remain at 70 per cent, the legal-process option at 22 per cent and undecided at 7 per cent, with remain up five points since August. Janet Brown Opinion Research's random survey of 1,200 Albertans for CBC News, taken from 8 to 21 September, found 72 to 23. Across six published polls the leave-process option sits between 20 and 33 per cent, and five of the six put it between 20 and 24.

Elections Alberta has received about 650,000 special ballot requests, against 59,000 at the 2023 general election, and has hired more than 44,000 election workers.

From the analysis

So the figure that matters on the night is the size of the minority, and who is in it. The Brown poll found 53 per cent of United Conservative Party voters would choose the legal-process option against 40 per cent for remain, while 98 per cent of NDP voters would stay. Premier Danielle Smith, who called the vote, says she will vote to remain and that her government and caucus hold the same position. One of her MLAs, Jason Stephan of Red Deer-South, has said he voted the other way by mail, and a southern Alberta riding association has formally asked for a review of her leadership. A separatist camp that polls at a quarter of the province but a majority of the governing party's base is a problem for the governing party before it is a problem for the country.

Smith's framing of the first nine questions is leverage. She has said she hopes Albertans vote yes to them to strengthen her hand with Ottawa. They cover provincial control over immigration, a twelve-month residency wait and fees for non-permanent residents using health care and schools, proof of citizenship to vote, provincial selection of superior court judges, abolition of the Senate, opting out of federal programmes without losing the money, and provincial laws prevailing in shared jurisdiction. Several of those need constitutional amendments and willing partners that do not yet exist. Asked on Friday whether she would hold another separation vote if remain wins, she said "Not as long as I'm premier." Asked what happens if the nine are rejected, she said she would "have to pursue other things".

We think the grievance route has already produced more for Alberta than the exit route ever could, and that the premier knows it. At the start of October Ottawa listed the Pacific Link pipeline, from Edmonton to a deep-water terminal on the British Columbia coast and owned equally by the two governments, as a project of national interest. In September it extended immediate expensing to oil and gas pipelines and mining property through the Productivity Mega Deduction, which Sox covered on 17 September. Smith herself said this week that with Mark Carney "Canada is working better than it ever has". That sentence, from the politician who called the referendum, is the one investors in the province should file. Carney used a Thanksgiving video message from Alberta to call separation "a long, uncertain process" and his office says he will be in the province in the coming days.

The costs are real even when the answer is known. Elections Alberta has received about 650,000 special ballot requests, against 59,000 at the 2023 general election, and has hired more than 44,000 election workers. An Ipsos poll for Global News in September found 81 per cent of Albertans intend to vote, against a turnout of 60 per cent in 2023. Mail ballots must reach Elections Alberta by 5pm on Friday 16 October. Counting of special and advance ballots begins at 5pm on Monday 19 October. The question for the week is whether the leave-process share lands below the 24 per cent the polls average, or whether a motivated minority turns out while a comfortable majority assumes the result is safe.

The Semaform

The news

Advance voting opened on 13 October in Alberta's ten-question referendum, whose final ballot asks whether the province should remain in Canada or begin the legal process towards a binding referendum on separation, ahead of voting day on 19 October.

Sox’s view

With remain polling around 70 per cent, the number that matters is the size of the separatist minority and its concentration inside the governing UCP. The grievance route through Ottawa has already delivered a pipeline and a tax change that an exit vote could not.

Room for disagreement

Alberta Prosperity Project leader Mitch Sylvestre says the fight continues whatever the result and expects the separation option to do far better than polls suggest, while NDP leader Naheed Nenshi says the question should never have been on the ballot.

Sources

A human editor is accountable for this analysis. Read our editorial standards, how we use AI, what the content labels mean, and how to ask for a correction.

Alberta Starts Voting on Whether to Vote on Leaving. The Line to Watch Is 24 Per Cent

The Semaform

Sources

More from the Global

Ottawa Has Given Stelco's Owner 15 Days and Ontario's Steelmakers $5 Billion. The Company Says It Wants Neither

Alberta Said No to Leaving by Three to One. The Other Nine Answers Are the Ones Ottawa Has to Live With

76 Per Cent: Alberta's Early Count Rejects a Vote on Leaving Canada