4 ways Danielle Smith's UCP could react to the Forever Canadian citizen initiative
Has Thomas Lukaszuk's pro-Canada petition boxed in Danielle Smith on Alberta separatism?
Thank you to everyone who voted in the 9th annual Daveberta Best of Alberta Politics Survey. The results will be announced on December 4 and I will be joining Ryan Jespersen to talk about the survey winners on Real Talk that morning.
If there is one big takeaway from last weekend’s United Conservative Party annual general meeting it’s that the separatist movement in Alberta is deeply intrenched in the governing party.
From jeers and cheers to at least half the board candidates endorsed by the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project getting elected, the weekend gathering was a showcase of how influential Alberta’s most prominent separatists are in Premier Danielle Smith‘s UCP.
Smith’s unwillingness to challenge the burgeoning separatist-wing she helped inflame and instead accept them as key players in her party leaves the Premier in a precarious position after yesterday’s news that Chief Elections Officer Gordon McClure has validated and approved a pro-Canada citizen initiative petition asking the question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?”
The Forever Canadian campaign was spearheaded by former Progressive Conservative MLA Thomas Lukaszuk, who represented Edmonton-Castle Downs in the Legislature from 2001 to 2015 and launched the citizen initiative in response to the separatist movement showing momentum earlier this year.
Despite some skepticism that Lukaszuk’s campaign would be able to collect the 293,976 signatures required to have the question approved under the Citizen Initiative Act, thousands of Albertans stepped up and defied expectations by collecting 456,388 signatures.
The next steps in the citizen initiative process are:
Speaker of the Legislative Assembly Ric McIver will present the proposal to the Legislative Assembly if it is sitting, or if it is not then sitting, within 15 days after the commencement of the next sitting (the Legislature is scheduled to sit until December 11).
Within 10 sitting days, the government will bring forward a motion to have the proposal referred to a legislative committee (the composition of the committee is not written in the Act).
Within 90 days if the Legislature is sitting, or within 15 days after the commencement of the next sitting, the committee can either table a report with respect to the policy proposal at the earliest opportunity or table a report recommending the policy proposal be referred to the cabinet for a referendum in accordance with the Referendum Act.
If a report is tabled recommending a referendum, a referendum will be held on or before the fixed date of the next provincial general election (October 18, 2027).
What now?
How Smith’s UCP reacts to Lukaszuk’s pro-Canada citizen initiative could shape provincial politics for the next decade and beyond. A separatist movement that is strongly influenced by the radical politics and conspiracy theories pushed by President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement is now intrenched inside the UCP and there are strong separatist sentiments in the UCP caucus that Smith will have a hard time ignoring.
Smith claims her UCP isn’t a separatist party, but party president Rob Smith (no relation to the Premier) has publicly estimated that the UCP base is two-thirds to 75 per cent separatist. Polling shows the UCP’s voters are even split on separation from Canada.
A survey conducted for CBC by respected pollster Janet Brown in May 2025 found that 54 per cent of UCP supporters would vote in favour of Alberta’s separation from Canada, with only 39 per cent saying they would vote against it.
In stark contrast, the same poll found that 98 per cent of Alberta NDP supporters would vote to stay in Canada, meaning that it’s a much different political problem for Smith than it is for Naheed Nenshi.
Option 1: MLAs vote on a policy proposal to remain in Canada
The MLA committee could decide to table a policy proposal report in the Legislature that MLAs would have to vote for or against. Despite the strength of separatist voices in their party, it’s hard to imagine there aren’t at least a dozen UCP MLAs who would vote for Alberta staying in Canada along with the 38 NDP MLAs and two former UCP MLAs who now sit as Alberta Party-affiliated Independents.
The wording of the committee’s policy proposal will be important. There is a strong possibility that instead of tabling a straight forward “Alberta remains in Canada” proposal, UCP MLAs on the committee could present a version that more closely resembles the language the government already uses when talking about the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act.
Edmonton-Whitemud NDP MLA Rakhi Pancholi already tried to force a debate about Alberta separatism in the Legislature through a motion to recognize that “Alberta separatism creates investment uncertainty and negatively impacts the economy” and “actions taken by the government that encourage or amplify separatist sentiment, including the work of the Alberta Next Panel, contribute to that investment uncertainty.”
“This motion is an opportunity for the UCP to clear the air and set the record straight. It is believed that there are members of the government caucus who have separatist views and support those who do. Let them put their name on the record to that effect,” Pancholi told the Legislature on November 3, 2025.
“The motion, Mr. Speaker, is incredibly clear. It recognizes that separatism is bad for Alberta’s economy, as is encouraging separatism. It urges the government to do what Albertans want: get a better deal for our province with the federal government but without using the highly damaging and unpatriotic threat of separatism,” Pancholi said.
UCP MLAs avoided having to go on the record after Livingstone-Macleod UCP MLA Chelsae Petrovic moved that Pancholi’s motion be rescheduled to the bottom of the order paper, meaning it is unlikely to reach the top of the agenda again during the fall session.
Option 2: A province-wide referendum on Alberta remaining in Canada
I have no doubt that a province-wide referendum asking “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?” would be approved with strong support from Albertans. But it would be very divisive and would expose some deep political rifts in the province.
A referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada is an extremely emotional issue that would fracture families, neighbourhoods and communities and change politics in Alberta like nothing before it. It would create economic and investment chaos, confusion, and uncertainty that even an oil-heavy economy like Alberta’s would have trouble weathering.
While a straight forward question about staying in Canada would easily pass, there is a danger that the ballot question could be spun into something different — and more grievance based — like what happened in the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. This is why some influential separatists like Jeffrey Rath are gleeful at the idea of Lukaszuk’s pro-Canada petition triggering a referendum.
It’s unclear whether MLAs would be allowed to campaign for their preferred side of a referendum or whether they would be directed by their party’s leadership to stay on the sidelines.
The NDP Caucus voted against taking a position on the Forever Canadian petition but it’s hard to imagine opposition MLAs sitting on the sidelines during a referendum. The UCP Caucus and the party’s activist base of supporters would be much more divided on their positions during a referendum.
Smith is a shrewd politician who has, so far, been able to appeal to both separatists and Albertans who just want a better deal from Ottawa, but a referendum could come dangerously close to shattering the UCP’s voter coalition.
Option 3: Change the law, just like they will with the Recall Act
With so much to lose by holding a vote in the Legislature or a province-wide referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada, there is a possibility the UCP could block the Forever Canadian petition by rewriting or repealing the Citizen Initiative Act.
The success of Lukaszuk’s petition has inspired Calgary teacher Alicia Taylor to launch a petition to end public funding of private schools and country musician and rancher Corb Lund to start a petition to stop coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains — two other issues that the UCP doesn’t want to see on a referendum ballot anytime soon.
If the UCP does amend the Citizen Initiative Act, it would be the second time that the law has been reopened this year. Smith’s government lowered the number of signatures required for a successful citizen initiative petition shortly after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals were re-elected, though the Forever Canadian petition was filed with Elections Alberta before the lower threshold came into effect.
Smith said the UCP government plans to introduce amendments to the Recall Act on Thursday in response to recall petitions that have been started against 14 UCP MLAs, including cabinet ministers Myles McDougall, Dale Nally, Demetrios Nicolaides, Nathan Neudorf, Rajan Sawhney, RJ Sigurdson, Searle Turton and Muhammad Yaseen.
Despite the recall process working how it was intended to when the UCP wrote the law in 2021, Smith is already building the case to rewrite the direct democracy law by claiming groups like the Alberta Federation of Labour are behind the recall efforts. AFL President Gil McGowan denies Smith’s claims.
In the case of the Recall Act, the UCP unwisely chose not to include any restrictions on why a recall campaign could be launched when they wrote the law, likely believing at the time that the tool would used against their NDP opponents rather than UCP MLAs.
The threshold to actually trigger a recall vote is so high that most or all of the recall campaigns are likely to fall short of reaching the required number of signatures. But the very existence of these campaigns has spooked some UCP MLAs, including Morinville-St. Albert MLA Dale Nally, who publicly lashed out at the constituent organizing the petition against him.
Option 4: Call an early election
Another way for Smith’s UCP to avoid holding a referendum or a painfully awkward legislative debate about Alberta remaining in Canada is by calling an early general election.
The next provincial election is scheduled for October 18, 2027, as a result of the UCP changing the fixed election date last year, but that doesn’t stop the Premier for asking Lieutenant Governor Salma Lakhani to call an early vote next year.
Most recent polls show the UCP maintaining a lead over the NDP and financial returns show the party’s coffers should be close to full, despite an increasing number of Albertans saying the government is on the wrong track.
Calling an election in the early months of 2026 and making it about what Smith calls “a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” — and pointing to her recent pipeline deal with Prime Minister Carney as a success — might be the way to avoid answering the simple question that 456,388 Albertans endorsed in the Forever Canadian petition.
An early election could also distract from the massive restructuring and privatization of the public health care system, expensive failed privatization schemes, further investigations into allegations of corruption and political interference in private surgical contracts, the freewheeling use of the notwithstanding clause to suspend constitutional rights, big budget surpluses that have turned into deficits, a rising cost of living, and an obsession with American culture war politics.
An early election could also head off any organizing effort by a revived Progressive Conservative Party that would undercut the “united” in United Conservative Party.
Right and wrong are so clear: Do what’s right for the province, says Lukaszuk
“Seldom are premiers faced with such really binary problems where the right and wrong are so clear: Do what’s right for the province. Don’t divide Albertans any further. Don’t cause us economic harm, and just deal with this in the Legislature. Or do what a small group of angry UCP party members demands of her and what’s expedient for her politically,” Thomas Lukaszuk told political columnist David Climenhaga yesterday.
“I chose the pathway that’s legislative, that gives her the opportunity to not call a referendum,” Lukaszuk said. “Separatists chose the pathway that forces her to have a referendum. I’m giving her an opportunity to do the right thing.”
“I certainly hope there is no referendum,” he told Climenhaga. “There doesn’t need to be one. Nearly half a million Albertans spoke loud and clear. But if there is one, I’m ready for it. I’m pivoting my campaign from petition-signature gathering campaign to a referendum campaign, and we’ll be prepared for it, just in case.” The campaign bus is in the shop right now getting a new transmission, he noted.
Separatist-endorsed candidates win 5 of 9 races in UCP board elections
In the months before the UCP AGM, the party’s board narrowly voted against allowing a debate over adopting a separation policy at the annual gathering — earning the wrath of influential separatists like the Alberta Prosperity Project’s Jeffrey Rath.
Rath received loud cheers from the crowd of around 4,000 UCP AGM delegates when he challenged Smith about the pipeline deal, but his candidate of choice in the party’s presidential election, Darrell Komick, came short of defeating incumbent President Rob Smith. Smith earned 1,988 votes to Komick’s 1,425 votes in the AGM board elections.
