🎶Can you tell me how to get. How to get to Forever Canadian Street.🎶
City Councillor Michael Janz wants street in front of Alberta Legislature renamed Forever Canadian Avenue
🎶Can you tell me how to get. How to get to Forever Canadian Street.🎶
That might be a tune that children visiting Alberta’s provincial legislature for the first time will sing in years to come if an Edmonton City Councillor gets his wish.
City Councillor Michael Janz joined former Edmonton MLA Thomas Lukaszuk and supporters near the Alberta Legislature today to announce a proposal to rename a two-block stretch of 99th Avenue between 107 Street to 109 Street to Forever Canadian Avenue.
“This street belongs to all Albertans. This is the Alberta Legislature and the Forever Canadian movement collected signatures from all across Alberta,” Janz said of the pro-Canada citizen initiative campaign that collected more than 456,000 signatures in 2025 to support the ballot question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain part of Canada?”
“I think when we have a movement of grassroots volunteers like this in our community at a time when many organization are struggling to get volunteers and to just see the numbers the group put up, it’s incredible,” Janz said.
“This is such a special place for all of us. This is where we come for Canada Day. I can’t think of a better location for us to honour our commitment to a united Canada together,” Janz said.
Janz pointed to a stretch of 97th Street in north Edmonton that was renamed Canadian Forces Trail in 2018 as his inspiration for the idea. That name change was proposed to Edmonton’s volunteer Naming Committee by then-councillor Jon Dziadyk. Janz’s proposal will also need to be submitted and approved to the city’s Naming Committee for consideration.
If approved by the naming committee, the cost of the street signage changes will be the responsibility of the person who proposed the name change.
“99th Avenue is very symbolic because 121 years ago, in 1905, just about 500 metres behind us, is where Alberta became Alberta, that is where Prime Minister Laurier and our first premier, Rutherford, adopted the Alberta Act in 1905,” Lukaszuk said.
“And you go another 100 metres down south and that’s where Fort Edmonton was and that’s where the whole story of this land began other than our First Nations who, obviously, are a very key part of our Forever Canadian movement,” Lukaszuk continued.
Lukaszuk was the Progressive Conservative MLA for Edmonton-Castle Downs from 2001 and 2015 and served as a cabinet minister in the governments of Premier Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford. He jumped back into the spotlight last year to lead the Forever Canadian campaign.
The successful Forever Canadian citizen initiative petition, the first in the province’s history, was submitted to Speaker Ric McIver last year and has been sent to an MLA committee to study.
Sending the question to a UCP-dominated committee avoids having to put the question to a province-wide ballot or to a vote by MLAs in the Legislature. Lukaszuk has said he would prefer to have MLAs vote on the question rather than going through the effort of a province-wide vote.
Avoiding a Legislature vote provides cover for MLAs in Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP Caucus who support Alberta’s separation from Canada or are vulnerable to nomination challenges by separatist-endorsed UCP candidates ahead of the next provincial election.
Elected officials should be coming out and voicing our commitment to Canada and to Confederation, says Janz
Janz’s Forever Canadian Avenue announcement comes just days after a judge quashed Elections Alberta’s approval of a citizen initiative petition organized by separatist leaders with deep ties to the governing United Conservative Party.
Premier Danielle Smith called the judge’s ruling antidemocratic and declared her government would appeal the decision as separatist leaders publicly threatened her leadership of the party if she didn’t intervene. While a large majority of Albertans support remaining in Canada, a majority of UCP voters tell pollsters they would vote for Alberta to separate from Canada if a referendum is held.
“I think we all need to be very clear eyed about what we’re facing with this whole question around separatism in Alberta. It’s not a joke,” Janz said. “It’s something we should be full throated in responding to and all of us, especially elected officials, should be coming out and voicing our commitment to Canada and to Confederation.”
When asked by reporters about his pitch to Alberta separatists, Lukaszuk replied that “It’s not a pitch, because I’m not selling anything — Canada sells itself,”
“But the message to separatists is, yes, Canada is not a perfect country, and yes there are some issues that separatist are raising that are worth analyzing and focusing on repairing,” Lukaszuk said.
“At a time when we are starting to see collaborative federalism at work and our Premier actually is doing an exceptionally good job negotiating with Prime Minister Carney and delivering long-term benefits from Alberta, why would we want to sabotage ourselves and stop this process,” Lukaszuk said. “We’re actually seeing that Canada truly works.”
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How refreshing- smiles and good vibes about their home province and country! Unlike the miserable collection that parade along with the princes of misery - Modry, Silvestre, Parker and Rath....
How apropos. All the buildings on both sides of that stretch of 99 Ave house Alberta Government offices.