Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid wrote a piece headlined, “Unlike Quebec's PQ, the UCP has no democratic right to hold a vote on separation.” Alberta’s UCP is indeed unlike Quebec’s PQ, and it is under no obligation to follow the precedent that the Eastern party set with referenda.

Alberta is not Quebec. It has a different legal tool: the Citizen Initiative Act. That law was designed so citizens, not just a governing party that campaigned on the issue, can force a public vote. Once a province creates that mechanism, it is odd to say a vote is illegitimate simply because it did not follow Montreal’s script from 1976 and 1994.

The point of allowing citizen initiatives is so that referenda can be held even if the intent of the vote differs from the mandate of the government. The intent is to empower citizens.

If “it wasn’t in the 2023 platform” were the test, a huge amount of ordinary government action would be illegitimate. The 2023 UCP campaign talked about sovereignty within Canada. That language was ambiguous, and critics are right to say so. Ambiguity is not the same thing as a ban on later asking the public a clearer question when hundreds of thousands of people demand one.

Governments aren’t and can’t be bound by only enacting legislation or actions based on their campaign platforms from the last election. The political climate is fluid.

The Citizens Initiative Act predated the Smith government, though they did amend it to reduce the bar for invoking referenda. Citizens were already empowered to invoke referenda before the 2023 campaign, and they took advantage of it. Over 700,000 people signed petitions demanding a referendum be held on the unity question, albeit that is the combined total from the pro- and anti-independence sides. Clearly a significant number of citizens want the issue put to the question.

The vote is non-binding, but it doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. The coming referendum may have the ability to legitimize the independence movement or put it to bed for a time if the results skew strongly to one side. Quebec’s referendums were binding in political terms more than in a simple statutory sense; the real constraint was always politics plus the Constitution and, later, the Clarity Act.

The UCP has the right and ability to hold a referendum on independence. They aren’t bound to follow the path of the PQ in Quebec.