In 2016's referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union, popular sentiment suggested the country would stay in the multinational pact. However, when voters had their say, those supporting to leave the EU achieved a surprising victory.

The impressive campaign run by those looking to leave the EU laid the groundwork for a similar approach that Alberta could follow, suggested political strategist David Knight Legg during an in-depth conversation on the topic with Ezra Levant on an episode of The Ezra Levant Show this week.

Issues of “security, safety and common sense” were similar pillars connecting the Brexit movement to Alberta independence. Another factor is the shared feeling that U.K. and Albertan voters might have, “which is, we have a nation that used to stand for something,” David told Ezra.

“It used to represent something great, something that we all believed in, something that we hoped for, for our kids especially,” he continued. “What we've done is, we've let that not only slip away from us, but it's become cynical.”

Go Ad Free

Polls ahead of the Brexit vote “never picked up” on the large number of swing voters who “actually felt very strongly that it was impolite to say you supported Brexit,” but quietly harboured concerns over the status of the country and “what it had become under a Brussels bureaucracy” that refused to address serious concerns like terrorism and mass immigration.

While the lens of separation has focused on a binary stay or remain narrative, David said there's a large number of Albertans who, if asked about independence in a different manner, would reveal a “very strong hidden vote” that supports the province asserting its authority.

“I think the answer is for all provinces in Canada to have full federal structure, very similar to what Quebec's got,” he said, suggesting that approach was likely in the future for the country.

“Along the way, when you look at what happened in Brexit, I expect that the team that wants more autonomy is going to start using some of the same framing that was used in Brexit in order to achieve popular support for that.”