Listen to this article
Estimated 3 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Alberta separatists took their campaign to Edmonton on Tuesday, collecting signatures at a west end hotel for a petition that aims to trigger a referendum on the province leaving Canada.
Similar town hall events where people can sign the petition have been held across the province as organizers try to collect nearly 178,000 signatures over the next few months.
Brian Copping was one of the people who showed up at Tuesday’s signing event. He called moving to Edmonton from Ontario 40 years ago the best move he ever made. But he said he sees western provinces being treated unfairly, and that he believes demanding independence is the only way forward.
“Something has to change,” Copping said, adding that he sees Alberta getting no advantages by staying in Canada.
“I want to be free from the shackles of Ottawa. … We’re turning into a communist country. I want to be free of all that.”
Copping said he believes the province has been under Ottawa’s thumb for too long, and he doesn’t see a way forward in that relationship. He didn’t always feel this way, he said, but the last 10 years or so, things have taken a turn.
Edmonton resident Serge Chamberland has similar feelings. He said he’s tired of seeing what he says is eastern favouritism and western suffering.
Like Copping, he didn’t always feel this way about his adopted home province.
“[Ottawa is] blocking everything that we want to do, economy and everything, and think it’s alright,” Chamberland said.
When asked what an independent Alberta could do differently, Chamberland said he believes the province can’t do worse than it is right now.
Alanna Mazekulua said she is motivated by cost-of-living concerns.
“If the rest of Canada is mad at us, I think they should ask themselves why aren’t they mad at the government right now?” she said.
“Because it’s really the government’s fault that have backed us into a corner into leaving us no other choice besides leaving.”
Mazekulua said she wants her children to be able to own a home and to not have to choose between which bills to pay.
Is there enough support?
Lisa Young, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said there is a bedrock of support for separatism in Alberta.
“If we look at public opinion data, what it shows us is that somewhere between 20 per cent to —at the very highest — 30 per cent of people answering a survey in Alberta will respond that, yes, they think that Alberta would be better off if it was separate from the rest of Canada,” she said in an interview.
The federal government is taking note, Young said, as evidenced by Ottawa’s willingness to change policies around greenhouse gas emissions and with its memorandum of understanding regarding a potential pipeline to B.C.’s coast.
Jeffery Rath, lawyer for the Stay Free Alberta movement, said he is confident about the independence campaign.
“We’re well on our way to the million-signature goal that we set for this campaign,” he said.
“And that’s going to send a really, really strong message to the politicians in Alberta so that they understand that this is a real movement.”