Western Standard - August 31, 2026


Alberta independence referendum： What happens if Option 2 loses？


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

148.37

Word count

1,148

Sentence count

88


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 There's something deeply ironic about Alberta having to explain free trade to the rest of Canada.
00:00:06.180 For years, we begged for pipelines.
00:00:08.220 We begged for market access.
00:00:09.780 We begged for export capacity.
00:00:11.440 We begged Ottawa to understand that selling energy into one market was a strategic vulnerability.
00:00:18.660 Build west.
00:00:19.480 Build east.
00:00:20.160 Get to Tidewater.
00:00:21.100 Sell LNG.
00:00:22.020 Sell oil.
00:00:22.820 Find Asian customers.
00:00:23.960 Find European customers.
00:00:25.420 Diversify.
00:00:25.940 And for years, Central Canada has treated that argument as if it was some periocular Alberta complaint.
00:00:33.560 Now suddenly, everyone has discovered the danger of depending on the United States.
00:00:38.520 Great! Welcome to reality.
00:00:41.160 If Alberta has one dominant customer, America has the leverage.
00:00:45.280 If Alberta has five serious customers competing for its energy, Alberta has leverage.
00:00:49.520 Canada has leverage. It's that simple.
00:00:52.060 And yet Canadian governments have spent decades making that harder.
00:00:55.940 Even today, Trump is publicly talking about Keystone XL.
00:00:59.620 Well, another project, the Smith's West Coast Pipeline, is being explored as a way to move more Alberta crude.
00:01:09.140 And this brings us to the question that I think is becoming much more important than anybody in Alberta wants to admit.
00:01:17.840 What happens on October the 20th?
00:01:20.180 Because on October the 19th, Alberta is voting on whether we should remain a province of Canada
00:01:26.220 or whether the provincial government should begin the legal process required to hold a future binding referendum on independence.
00:01:33.140 Now, Smith has been unclear about when this will happen.
00:01:35.800 Says maybe in the spring.
00:01:37.500 And she says probably not in the spring because there's laws that, well, you wrote.
00:01:42.600 So, yeah, I don't know if we'll get into that.
00:01:45.520 But if option two wins, Danielle Smith has said she intends to move fairly quickly towards that binding vote.
00:01:52.780 Fine. We know what happens if option two wins.
00:01:56.460 If Canada enters one of the most consequential constitutional debates in its history, Alberta has to respond.
00:02:03.300 Alberta has to define what independence actually means.
00:02:06.920 There are negotiations, there are questions about debt, pension, pensions, borders, citizenships, treaties, currency, trade, assets, resources, federal lands, military facilities, everything.
00:02:18.660 It's an enormous undertaking.
00:02:21.640 But I want to ask the opposite question.
00:02:24.860 What happens if option two loses?
00:02:28.220 What happens on October the 20th?
00:02:30.220 Because I don't think anybody has really thought through that possibility.
00:02:34.080 do all of the people who support Alberta independence just disappear?
00:02:39.300 Do they wake up the next morning and say,
00:02:41.360 well, we tried, Canada forever, problem solved?
00:02:44.820 Of course not. Of course not.
00:02:47.720 The referendum can settle a ballot question,
00:02:50.140 but it cannot automatically settle the political conditions
00:02:53.260 that produce the question.
00:02:55.300 Those conditions did not appear six months ago
00:02:57.920 because somebody created a Facebook page.
00:03:00.000 They've been building for decades.
00:03:01.900 Equalization, fiscal transfers, energy policy, pipelines, federal environmental regulations,
00:03:07.000 Senate representation, federal intrusion into provincial jurisdiction, western alienation.
00:03:14.040 A sense, justified or not, that Alberta has expected to provide enormous economic benefit to the federation
00:03:20.520 while accepting political decisions made elsewhere.
00:03:23.620 Those issues still exist on October the 20th.
00:03:26.880 Now add something else.
00:03:28.120 Look at the language that's entered into this debate.
00:03:31.460 treason think about that word it's not misguided they don't use wrong they don't call it economically
00:03:40.500 reckless or constitutionally difficult they're calling it treason the assembly of treaty
00:03:46.900 chiefs went so far as to ask the rcmp to investigate whether smith and members of
00:03:51.620 her government had potentially committed treason in connection to the referendum
00:03:56.420 Smith called the accusation disgraceful
00:03:58.520 and said that that kind of language had no place in democratic debate.
00:04:03.940 Whatever you think about the underlying treaty dispute,
00:04:06.960 she was right about that,
00:04:08.020 because treason is one of the most serious words available in political language.
00:04:11.940 It means betrayal of your country.
00:04:13.920 Historically, it means betrayal so profound that it becomes a crime against the state.
00:04:18.860 And now we're throwing that language around about people who want to vote,
00:04:22.340 people who want to put a constitutional question to the electorate.
00:04:25.620 That's dangerous.
00:04:27.240 Not because Alberta independence must win.
00:04:30.260 It may lose.
00:04:31.600 It may lose badly.
00:04:32.780 That's just democracy.
00:04:34.320 But if you spend an entire campaign telling one side that their political beliefs amount to treason,
00:04:40.060 what exactly do you expect those people to find, feel, when the campaign is finished?
00:04:45.960 Will they feel welcomed back into Confederation?
00:04:48.940 Do they feel heard?
00:04:50.240 Do they feel reassured?
00:04:51.660 or do they conclude that the federation they were questioning
00:04:55.360 never had much interest in understanding them in the first place?
00:05:00.040 Referendums have consequences even when they fail,
00:05:03.480 sometimes especially when they fail.
00:05:06.020 If option two receives 20% of the vote, that's one political reality.
00:05:11.060 If it receives 35%, that's another.
00:05:13.740 If it receives 45% and narrowly loses, that's something else entirely.
00:05:18.260 If it wins, it wins.
00:05:19.280 I think most of our viewers want that to happen.
00:05:24.080 But imagine that.
00:05:25.660 Suppose 45% of Albertans vote to begin the process towards independence.
00:05:30.720 Then what?
00:05:31.800 Are they all traitors?
00:05:33.960 Are we going to spend October 20th celebrating the fact that Canada defeated them?
00:05:38.640 Is Ottawa going to declare the matter closed?
00:05:42.220 Is the national media going to announce that separatism has been crushed?
00:05:46.740 because that would be an extraordinary mistake.
00:05:50.920 45% doesn't disappear because 55% won.
00:05:55.380 Those people still live here.
00:05:56.720 They still vote.
00:05:57.660 They still pay taxes.
00:05:58.860 They still work in the oil patch.
00:06:00.220 They still own businesses.
00:06:01.320 They still raise family.
00:06:02.640 They are still Albertans.
00:06:04.200 And if you want Alberta to remain in Canada over the long term,
00:06:08.120 these are precisely the people you need to persuade
00:06:10.520 that Canada works for them.
00:06:12.520 Not humiliate, not criminalize, not demonize.
00:06:15.820 persuade that's how a federation is supposed to function and this is where danielle smith's
00:06:22.140 comments about oil become much bigger than the argument about export taxes because listen to
00:06:27.800 what is happening the rest of the country is openly discussing using alberta's greatest
00:06:33.340 economic asset as a weapon in a national trade dispute tax the oil restrict the oil use the oil
00:06:39.620 as leverage make Alberta energy part of Canada's retaliation against Donald Trump. And then some of
00:06:46.680 those same voices turn around and wonder why Albertans wonder whether they have sufficient
00:06:52.080 control over their own economic future. You can't have it both ways. You can't say that Alberta's
00:06:57.400 resources are a national weapon when Ottawa needs leverage and then say that Alberta has no
00:07:02.480 legitimate when Albertans ask who should control those resources. That contradiction is going to
00:07:08.440 matter enormously over the next two months. Section 92A of the Constitution did not appear by
00:07:15.300 accident. Provincial jurisdiction over natural resources is not some technical footnote. It is
00:07:20.140 a fundamental bargain of Canadian federalism, a bargain that appears to be coming apart at the
00:07:25.760 seams. Alberta controls Alberta's natural resources. And right now, Smith is saying
00:07:31.020 something very simple. We're not going to destroy our own industry so Ottawa can look tough in a
00:07:37.240 trade war