Albertans voted to remain in Canada by about 75 per cent on Monday night. On Tuesday’s Rebel Roundup, Sheila Gunn Reid and Lise Merle said that number is the least interesting thing on the ballot.

The same voters backed the premier’s position on nine of the other ten questions, Sheila said, including the constitutional and immigration ones Mark Carney had urged them to reject. The only one to fail asked whether Alberta should take over running certain federal programs while keeping the funding. “Why wouldn’t we better administer the programs for our own people closer to home?” she said. “Maybe people were confused by it.”

Carney posted that night that the result on “the defining question of separation” means Albertans and all Canadians “will move forward together with a renewed purpose and high ambition.” Sheila read the rest of the post line by line. “We’re building that future bigger and faster than ever before,” she quoted. “I’d like to see anything that you’ve built, good sir.” Securing new trade partners around the world, she said, “except the one that counts.” Fast-tracking nation-building projects in every part of the country, “except there’s no shovels in the ground,” Sheila added, other than in Liberal strongholds. And an energy superpower with Alberta at its core, with no pipeline approved.

My statement on Albertans choosing to build a stronger Canada, together: pic.twitter.com/pNXb427wXI

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) October 20, 2026

“He took a victory lap, but he should have admitted defeat,” Sheila said, “because all those other questions are a fight directly with the federal government.”

Premier Danielle Smith said she was pleased to see “widespread support for remaining in Canada” and that Albertans had “voted for a stronger Alberta in a united Canada.” She was set to address the province Tuesday evening, and Lise noted that for everyone who said Smith had botched the referendum, the premier’s position carried on nine of ten questions. “She’s coming with a strong mandate from the people of Alberta.”

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Sheila’s first takeaway from the morning after was the gloating. She said she expects it from the NDP and the Liberals, but it also came from establishment Conservatives and UCP insiders, a small group with outsized voices, who called the Option 2 crowd stupid. This was not, she said, a condemnation of the premier.

“These people, by all polling, including exit polls, are the UCP base,” she said. “If you are calling them stupid, you are calling your base stupid. That is Trudeauian. It’s Hillary Clinton basket-of-deplorables stuff.”

The same volunteers, she said, worked in the bitter cold to put Option 2 on the ballot and, in doing so, gave the premier the chance to advance the other nine questions. “Come next general election time, you need these people,” she said. You will ask them for their vote, their donations, their lawn signs, their pickup trucks in parades and their door-knocking. “Treat these people with some decency.”

Lise said the reaction laid bare a contempt that was there all along, with the Jason Kenney and Rachel Notley camp driving the conversation. People who voted to leave have real concerns about how the country treats the province, she said, and no party can afford to watch 25 per cent of the electorate peel away. “There has to be a meaningful way forward.”

Sheila called the 75 per cent the high-water mark for federalism. It was concentrated in the cities, she said, and the divide is much narrower in rural Alberta, which is where the UCP wins. The premier has been careful not to dismiss Option 2 voters. “Maybe her people around her should take the lead from her,” Sheila said.

The result, she said, means Albertans have given Smith one more shot. But the constitutional questions can’t be delivered without the other provinces, and if the rest of the ballot doesn’t get done, federalist support will bleed off. Ten years ago the NDP was a fringe party in Alberta; it formed government partly because the conservative movement fractured. “Ten years is not a long time in politics to build a movement,” she said. “This is just the beginning.”

Lise agreed. Even 25 per cent, she said, “is an indictment of the federal government in Alberta.” And she isn’t counting the premier out. “I think she’s got a couple more dances in her.”

Rebel Roundup airs Monday through Friday at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET.