Alberta Votes to Stay in Canada: What the Referendum Results Mean for Alberta, Canada and Quebec

Alberta held its referendum on Monday, October 19, on whether the province should remain part of Canada. The speaker reports that the early count showed the province voting overwhelmingly to stay, with about three quarters supporting remaining part of Canada and only about 25% backing an independence referendum. He notes the official results would not be released until October 29, so some tallies could still change.

The speaker says the result was largely in line with polls leading up to the vote, though he adds that people still held their breath because of Brexit. He also explains why the question was not a clear path to secession: the Clarity Act prevents any province from unilaterally seceding, and because treaty lands cover all of Alberta, any secession effort would require negotiations with various indigenous groups.

The speaker quotes his own reading of the outcome: "Alberta has voted overwhelmingly in support of unity with the rest of Canada."

The vote followed months of independence rallies across the province and a series of controversies over US involvement. The speaker says members of Trump's administration spoke in favor of Alberta separating and even suggested it join the US. He also reports recent news that some separatists had offered oil royalties and water to American officials in exchange for support for independence, which he says made many people anxious.

The speaker frames these controversies as the backdrop to the vote, and says the event was still a widely watched bellwether for sentiment in Alberta.

The referendum included nine other questions, and according to the speaker's current tally, around half of them had garnered majority support. He calls them pretty hot-button issues. The first four questions involved restricting immigration and government programs for new and temporary immigrants. One proposal would charge non-permanent residents a fee to use publicly funded health care and schooling systems.

The fifth question, which the speaker says saw slightly more support, asked about requiring proof of citizenship to vote rather than just a standard driver's license. The remaining questions involved restricting federal influence over the province and abolishing the Senate. Both of those narrowly missed majority support.

The speaker also notes that the separatist debate is not going away: just before the referendum, the separatist party Keepqua won a minority government in Quebec, its first victory since 2014, and its leader promised a Quebec independence referendum at some point in the future.

The speaker explains that because the referendum was explicitly not binding, it did not result in any new law. He says its main purpose was to help Premier Daniel Smith gauge public sentiment on these issues and inform her mandate.

He adds that whether anything will change is questionable. The province does not have authority over a number of these matters, and many of them would require new laws and negotiations with the federal government.

The speaker points to equalization payments as a commonly cited grievance for those looking to leave the country, since Albertan tax dollars have consistently funded the program for the benefit of other provinces. In 2021, the province voted in favor of amending the constitution to end equalization payments, but the speaker explains that because no individual province can amend the Canadian Constitution, the measure went nowhere.

Given the slim majority many of these issues have, he questions whether Premier Daniel Smith will pursue any of these changes.

The speaker notes that while Alberta is one of the top destinations for international immigrants coming to Canada, the country has already changed some immigration policies, causing Alberta's immigration to fall meaningfully from where it was a few years ago. He says most of the attention has nonetheless been on the independence question, which itself was not a binding referendum. Even with overwhelming support, he explains, there would still be a long legal process and negotiations involved in actually seceding, though a successful vote would have signaled the province's intent to move forward.

The speaker argues that although many might assume nothing has changed for Alberta after Monday's vote, the no vote could still prove consequential. He explains that businesses and investors dislike the uncertainty that comes with separatist movements, and he points to Quebec in the 1970s, when the separatist party took power and hundreds of businesses moved their head offices out of the province. He acknowledges that part of that move was tied to new language laws that burdened companies operating in French, but says the Alberta separatist movement has also had negative impacts on business operations.

The speaker quotes his own view of investors: "Businesses and investors do not like the uncertainty that comes with these sorts of separatist movements."

The speaker cites a recent survey by the Alberta Chambers of Commerce, which found that 44% of businesses reported the independence discourse was affecting their business, the vast majority in a negative way. Among that group, 79% said the issue affected their planning and forecasting, and 61% reported increased concern about a recession. Half of that group, 50%, were considering relocating or expanding outside Alberta, and 44% had delayed, scaled back or cancelled major investments or projects because of the separation movement.

The speaker describes a report by the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy that projected how Alberta would be affected by independence under different conditions: a smooth transition, and a more difficult one where negotiations do not go well. Even under a smooth transition, GDP, employment, income per person and the government budget would all take a hit in the short term within the first five years, and the tax burden per person would also increase.

Under the difficult scenario, the speaker says GDP could contract by a tenth and taxes per person could increase by over $5,000. In the long term, a smooth transition could leave Alberta with higher GDP, employment and wage income per person, as well as lower taxes. However, the speaker says the downside outweighs the upside across the range of outcomes: the difficult transition could potentially result in a long-term GDP impairment of 16.2%, compared with a favorable upside of 3.4% to 4%.

The speaker adds that people will contest whether separation is good or bad, but most research on the topic before the referendum suggested that, economically speaking, Canada really dodged a bullet.

The same report highlighted that Albertan secession would contribute to a weaker Canadian dollar, higher interest rates, loss of investment, weaker productivity, higher taxes and higher pension funding requirements for the rest of Canada. The speaker presents these as the wider impacts beyond Alberta itself.

The speaker says the country has seemingly avoided a meaningful economic headwind and now has the opportunity to rebuild investor and business confidence in Canada and specifically Alberta. He cites TD, which highlighted that because the issue was brought under the citizen initiative framework, another similar referendum question cannot be posed in Alberta under the same structure for at least another five years. As a result, companies that were avoiding investment because of the separatism movement now have a more stable environment for forecasting and planning operations.

The speaker explains that the country is in a trade war with the United States, and Prime Minister Mark Carney has been courting investors and pushing for major infrastructure projects across the country to diversify trade away from the United States. Alberta is set to play a big part in that. The speaker says the province represents about 15.5% of the country's GDP despite making up about 12% of the population, and that it is an energy powerhouse, producing over 80% of Canada's energy and hosting more proven oil reserves than the entirety of the United States.

At the same time, the speaker notes that Alberta is the province most dependent on the United States for trade. The vast majority of Albertan oil exports flow south of the border because that is what most of its infrastructure is built for.

To better diversify energy trade, and partly to answer Alberta voters frustrated by the federal government's earlier shunning of the oil and gas industry, the speaker says the Liberal Party has done a bit of a 180 on its energy policy. Prime Minister Carney is pushing for more rapid approval of oil and gas projects, including the recently announced Pacific Link project. The proposed pipeline would carry 1 million barrels of oil per day, just under a quarter of the country's current exports, to the West Coast for international shipment.

The speaker adds that Canada is also trying to improve its productivity, which has not really improved over the past decade and requires investor dollars to fix. He says all of this made it a pretty bad time for Alberta to explore becoming independent.

The speaker says many believe the US was actively trying to interfere to weaken Canada's trade position. Prime Minister Mark Carney himself alluded to this at a rally leading up to the vote, saying there are some outside our borders who are working to break Canada apart so they can own it.

The speaker says that with Alberta voting to remain, Carney is likely breathing a sigh of relief. For Premier Daniel Smith, he expects things to be challenging. Those who wanted to remain are frustrated the vote happened at all, with many viewing the premier as having catered to fringe parts of the movement by changing rules to make the vote easier to hold. Those who wanted to separate are probably angry, since Smith campaigned in favor of unity with the rest of Canada before the referendum. He says more political turmoil is likely to come from Alberta, though for now the larger issue has been put to bed.

The speaker turns to Quebec, where anxieties are heightened after the separatist party's election victory. According to recent polls, support for independence there is higher than in Alberta but still only around a third, less than in the past. Some suggest the party lost its majority government because of its push for a new referendum. The incoming premier, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has stated that he will not push for a referendum until Trump leaves the White House.

Because of the minority government, the party would have to work with Québec solidaire, the only other separatist party in the National Assembly. The speaker notes that most minority governments in Quebec last less than two years, so Quebec may not hold a referendum before Trump's presidency ends.

The speaker notes that Quebec faces the same Clarity Act as Alberta, which prevents unilateral provincial secession, and that the law was introduced because of previous Quebec separatist attempts. However, he argues Quebec's separatist movement has much deeper roots, as it is predominantly a culture-based movement. Because the province represents a fifth of the population and GDP, independence there would naturally be quite impactful, and the speaker says it will be an issue to watch closely.