A day after a court quashed his petition, separatist proponent Mitch Sylvestre is calling on Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to put his question on a referendum ballot this October, while warning of the ramifications should she fail to do so.
Sylvestre, CEO of the Alberta Prosperity Project and a United Conservative Party (UCP) constituency association president, pointed to support within the party for his call for Alberta to secede from Canada to be put to voters.
“There’s always consequences to actions, and I’m not in a position to tell people how to vote or tell people what to do, but I really believe that the largest part of the UCP membership is in favour of this vote,” he said.
“If that’s the case, then the premier’s going to have to make a decision. If the party is in favour of this, and the leader of the party doesn’t do it, I would suggest that would cause problems.”
On Wednesday, an Alberta judge threw out the chief electoral officer’s decision to grant a petition to Sylvestre’s Stay Free Alberta, who claim to have gathered over 300,000 signatures in support of Alberta seceding from Canada. Sylvestre said he wasn’t surprised by the ruling but said he didn’t view it as a setback, stating it “doesn’t change a thing for us.”
“If anything, it’s done the total opposite. It’s made people angry and more motivated to get moving on this,” he said. “We absolutely knew that this was not going to work out, and that we were going to have to fight it at another level.”
Stay Free Alberta’s lawyer, Jeffrey Rath, indicated the group would appeal Wednesday’s ruling. In her decision, Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard further ruled that the provincial government failed to meet its constitutional “duty to consult” First Nations, who argued Alberta separation would infringe on treaty rights.
In question period Thursday, Smith reiterated her comments from a day earlier that the government planned to appeal the ruling, citing what the government believed to be errors in law in Leonard’s ruling. “We want to act to be permissive of citizen-initiated petitions, and we don’t want to deny 300,000 people the opportunity to have their signatures and their efforts considered and validated,” she said.
Official Opposition Naheed Nenshi questioned why Smith’s government was planning to spend taxpayer money supporting a petition that has now twice been ruled against by judges, characterizing the government’s efforts as “a losing battle.” Smith replied by calling the ruling “anti-democratic” and saying it short-changed the views of those who signed Sylvestre’s petition. “They should be given the respect of having that petition validated. That’s why we’re appealing,” she said. Nenshi twice asked Smith if she would pre-emptively cancel any future separation referendum, which she declined to do.
Smith is expected to meet with Prime Minister Mark Carney in Calgary on Friday to sign a deal that would move Alberta’s goal of building a new pipeline to the west coast a step closer to reality.
