The referendum is over, but echoes of the vote will reverberate for some time.<\/p>\n
Just as the referendum had a lengthy\u00a0lead-up, the aftershock of the vote will be felt for quite some time yet.<\/p>\n
Albertans resoundingly voted in favour<\/a> of remaining a province of Canada in Monday\u2019s referendum.<\/p>\n The exact results were not finalized by time of press, but unofficially<\/a> we can say that 75 per cent of voters voted for Option 1 (to remain) on Question 10.<\/p>\n In the St. Albert riding, 83 per cent voted remain.<\/a> That\u2019s the highest result in the province outside of Edmonton or Calgary (33rd overall after 18 Edmonton ridings and 14 Calgary ones; we thought that St. Albert might have been closer to the unofficial title of most Canadian part of Alberta).<\/p>\n At the Gazette, we are thrilled that such a clear majority was delivered. There can be no question now that moving forward, talk of separation should be treated for what it is: poppycock and tomfoolery.<\/p>\n The entire exercise in democracy came about in the most undemocratic ways \u2014 from changing petition thresholds<\/a> to designing questions that sidestepped a court ruling<\/a> which had halted the separatist petition process \u2014 and ultimately was not worth it.<\/p>\n It was not worth the skipped family dinners to avoid that one angry relative. It was not worth the racist gaslighting that targeted new Canadians (some of which happened right here in our own backyard<\/a> when anti-immigrant demonstrators showed up on St. Albert Trail). It was not worth the economic uncertainty. It was not worth the mockery from the rest of Canada or the embarrassment of openly courting U.S. expansionists.<\/p>\n It certainly was not worth the actual dollars and cents spent on the whole circus; one former Elections Alberta chief officer had estimated the cost of the referendum<\/a> could be in the neighbourhood of $130 million.<\/p>\n Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi was not wrong when he said<\/a> \u201cNone of this helped anybody \u2026 None of this made your life better.\u201d<\/p>\n So, now what? How do we help and make lives better? How do we move forward from this?<\/p>\n Among everything that came out of this referendum, one of the positives that can rise out of the divisiveness is the momentum we have gathered, the energy for problem-solving, and the willingness to join grassroots movements and become involved in politics and community in ways we haven\u2019t seen in many years.<\/p>\n The day following the referendum, Premier Danielle Smith made a televised promise<\/a> that \u201cfor as long as I am premier, I will honour this mandate from Albertans and will not be holding another referendum on this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n It remains to be seen how long Smith will be premier given separatist leaders have already publicly committed to challenge her leadership<\/a> at next month\u2019s UCP convention.<\/p>\n But in the meantime, Smith seems to have a willing partner in Prime Minster Mark Carney to discuss some of the grievances that have come to the fore. Though the question on separation had a clear winner, the other nine referendum questions \u2014 focused on immigration and constitutional issues \u2014 are much closer, almost an even split in most cases, but coming out on the \u201cyes\u201d side. (Except for Question 6, which would call for higher-court justices to be appointed by the province, and ironically, Question 8, favours \u201cno\u201d to opting out of federal programs without losing funding.)<\/p>\n The constitutional reform would require the other provinces to play ball, but Carney has largely shown a willingness to listen and work with Alberta, killing or reforming many of the \u201cnine bad laws<\/a>\u201d and moving forward with the Pacific Link pipeline<\/a>.<\/p>\n With a changing relationship with Ottawa and a more engaged citizenry, we\u2019re hopeful that the days of the apathetic Alberta voter are over and we can move forward to tackle the real issues facing Albertans, in a collaborative, co-operative, creative, and kind manner. A Canadian manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The referendum is over, but echoes of the vote will reverberate for some time. Just as the referendum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-945950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}