Alberta’s election agency has fired the starter’s pistol on the race to collect enough names for a referendum on the province quitting Canada.
Elections Alberta announced Friday that Mitch Sylvestre and the Alberta Prosperity Project have from Saturday until May 2 to collect just under 178,000 signatures to qualify.
“Citizen initiative petition signature sheets have been issued,” Elections Alberta said in a statement Friday.
“The proponent may now proceed with collecting signatures.”
Elections Alberta had already announced before Christmas that it had approved the referendum question.
But it said the group could not collect signatures until it had finalized details, including hiring a chief financial officer.
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The question seeks a yes or no answer to: “Do you agree that the province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?”
Sylvestre, a constituency association president for Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party, could not be immediately reached for comment.
He has previously said a referendum is needed because of federal government restrictions on oil development alongside dim hopes for electoral change in Ottawa.
He added the group already has 2,000 people signed up internally to collect signatures and more than 240,000 people have previously pledged their willingness to sign.
The group’s approved question is similar to one it had previously submitted: “Do you agree that the province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada?”
That question was tied up in court for a review of its constitutionality.
The delay prompted Smith’s government to change the rules for citizen-initiated referendums in December.
The changes rendered the court review moot, as it allowed Sylvestre to reapply at no charge while also preventing Alberta’s chief electoral officer from rejecting referendum proposals should they be unconstitutional or not factually accurate.
Justice Colin Feasby, who issued his decision on the original question despite the government vetoing the result, deemed the proposal to be unconstitutional, but only under the previous rules.
Feasby, in his decision, wrote that Alberta separating from Canada would violate certain Charter and treaty rights, as there are no guarantees Albertans would keep their right to vote federally or maintain mobility rights if the province were to become its own nation.
He also noted that those rights would need to be accounted for in any negotiation undertaken to amend the Constitution, which would be required should Alberta look to leave Confederation.