Danielle Smith is playing a dangerous game with her referendum question on secession

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Robert Schertzer is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

Danielle Smith has put in motion an October referendum on whether Alberta should proceed toward a subsequent binding referendum on independence. This is a plan to hold a vote, to see whether Albertans want to hold another vote to leave Canada.

While this might seem a bit silly, Canadians should not be reassured by the fact that this is an intermediate rather than final referendum.

Ms. Smith is employing a familiar and dangerous political strategy: using a conditional referendum question to mobilize separatist sentiment to strengthen a provincial government’s leverage in negotiations with Ottawa and the rest of Canada. Ms. Smith is gambling that a good number of separatists and autonomy-minded Albertans will vote to take the next step, but a majority will ultimately vote against secession. A strong showing would strengthen her hand with Ottawa.

Polling supports this reading: 60 per cent of Albertans say they would vote “no” on Ms. Smith’s question and 35 per cent would vote to begin the legal process toward a binding referendum. But on the direct question of separation, 67 per cent would vote to stay and only 30 per cent to leave. This shift matters: it shows that the ambiguity of Ms. Smith’s question may pull people to support her play. It shows people’s willingness to “bluff” to get a better deal to address their grievances.

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Canada has seen versions of this strategy before. In 1980, Quebeckers held a referendum, but they were not asked directly whether they wanted independence. They were asked to give the provincial government a mandate to negotiate sovereignty-association, with a final change in status deferred to another vote. In the remarkably close 1995 referendum, the “yes” side again paired sovereignty with the prospect of a new relationship with Canada: voters were asked to support a sovereign Quebec only after it had formally offered Canada a new economic and political partnership.

In both Quebec referendums, the question structure allowed voters to endorse a sovereignty process without immediately choosing independence. Ms. Smith’s framing also pulls from a long-standing move by Quebec separatists, selling the referendum as a democratic exercise and a “decision for Albertans,” necessary to address their “legitimate grievances.”

This framing allows her to accommodate separatist pressure within her party without openly advocating for separation. There are clear parallels here with the Brexit referendum. British prime minister David Cameron lost his bet; Ms. Smith might too.

An intermediate referendum like Ms. Smith’s offers no safe outcome: even a status-quo victory legitimizes separatist forces, deepens grievance and polarizes those defending the existing constitutional order; a loss can initiate consequences the government is unable to manage.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney has already identified the risk. Having served as governor of the Bank of England during Brexit, he warned against the idea that voters can safely support a preliminary or softened exit option in order to strengthen their negotiating hand. As he said, this is a “dangerous bluff.” Referendum campaigns go well beyond letting off steam. They organize grievances, legitimize them and give them an institutional vehicle.

This referendum will give Alberta separatists momentum and a stronger foothold in politics. But the even deeper danger here is that disagreements over energy policy, fiscal arrangements and federal programs – disagreements inherent in a federation like Canada – may increasingly be recast as binary and irreconcilable struggles between Alberta and Canada. That is how political disagreement becomes dangerously polarized – how fellow citizens are turned into opposing camps and how compromise begins to look like betrayal.

That is why responding to this cannot be left to Mr. Carney alone. Ms. Smith has set in motion a national unity crisis. This demands a “Team Canada” response: from federal leaders and provincial premiers, from Indigenous leaders whose rights and treaties cannot be treated as collateral to an Alberta separatist project, and from political and civic voices within Alberta and across the country.

This is no easy task.

But the pro-Canada response must not dismiss Alberta’s grievances or demonize those attracted to Smith’s gambit. That would merely reinforce the story separatists want to tell: that Alberta is trapped in an unresponsive federation and treated with contempt by the rest of Canada. Ms. Smith herself has urged this kind of restraint. The contradiction here is that she is launching the very process most likely to turn grievances into a deeper polarization.

The task is thus to show that Alberta’s future does not require choosing between rupture and stagnation. The federation can hear its grievances, change where change is needed and remain a country in which Albertans can see themselves fully represented.