Anti-separatist petition needs 294,000 signatures before Oct 28

Two Jasperites have taken up the torch with the Forever Canadian campaign.

Val Young and Janet Frechette have been soliciting Albertans for signatures on a petition to keep Alberta in Canada. On Wednesday they set up a table outside of the Jasper Farmer’s Market, complete with a Canadian flag.

“I love Canada. Alberta is better off as part of Canada,” Young said. 

The Forever Canadian petition was started by former Progressive Conservative deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk in response to a growing separatist movement in Alberta. That movement, known as the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), is asking supporters to plege its support for Alberta to become a sovereign country and to cease being a province in Canada.

Young, a born and raised Albertan, said APP proponents haven’t thought things through.

“I think it’s kind of crazy that there’s this small group of zealots that think we’d be better off by themselves,” she said.

Frechette, for her part, said she’s worried that the talking points from the Alberta government embolden separitist sentiments.

“I think a lot of people are being misled,” she said.

When she heard of Lukaszuk’s project, Young noticed there weren’t any volunteers signed up in Jasper. So she set out to change that.

“I saw it as a way to contribute,” she said.

Young says she’s optimistic the Forever Canada campaign will be able to collect 294,000 signatures by October 28. Government legilsation requires that many names to spur a referendum question which would ask if Alberta should make remaining in Canada its official policy. 

Ironically, not long after Lukaszuk submitted his application to Elections Canada, the United Conservative Party loosened the threshold for citizen-led referendum initiatives. The upshot is that the APP only needs 177,000 signatures to put its question to a referendum. 

Still, Lukaszuk has said Forever Canadian has recruited about 3,000 volunteer signature collectors.

“So if they each get 100 signatures, we’ll get there easily,” Young said.

Indigenous leaders in Alberta have spoken out against an Alberta sovereignty question on the ballot; in the spring, Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation Chief Sheldon Sunshine and Mikisew Cree First Nation Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro accused Premier Danielle Smith of “attempting to manufacture a national unity crisis by enabling a referendum on separatism.”

The idea of Alberta separating has also been widely panned by academics. 

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com