CBC panellist Andrew Coyne wrote a column in the Globe and Mail calling the Alberta referendum a pointless and futile stunt. Time will tell if the referendum is futile, but if it is, it will mean it was anything but pointless. It will have highlighted the intractability of Canada’s establishment and system, thus causing more Albertans to reconsider remaining within it.

Putting important issues to the public in a democratic exercise is hardly pointless.

Provincial referendums of this kind have been useful when they clarify public will, raise the cost of ignoring a region, and extract ordinary political concessions short of amending the Constitution. Quebec has run that play for decades. Alberta is attempting a version of it.

Considering the near-weekly appearances of the prime minister and his senior ministers in Alberta to announce initiatives for everything from military investments to pipeline construction, it’s hard to deny the referendum itself has garnered some leverage. Independence supporters want much more than that, of course.

Coyne points to the 2021 referendum on equalization and notes that nothing happened due to it. But was there nothing?

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Demonstrating the futility of trying to change the system helped inspire Albertans to up the game by adding even more questions to be put to a referendum, along with one which would move the province closer to full independence. It can be argued whether or not this was a good development. But it can’t be said that nothing happened.

The first five referendum questions regard provincial policies related to immigration, particularly temporary visitors. They ask citizens to give the government a mandate to make changes to policies impacting temporary migrants, which have already garnered negative responses from groups invested in the status quo.

If Albertans embrace the policy changes in an open vote, it will make it much easier for the government to weather the protests when it implements the proposed policies.

The independence question isn’t going away. Having it dominate the public discourse nationally for months due to the referendum forces the country to deal with the reality that the system is failing some regions. If people are confident that the independence movement is just a tiny segment of aggrieved Albertans, they should be happy that the referendum will put the issue to bed. A true measure of the sentiment is pending.

Coyne personifies Laurentian elitism. His beef isn’t with Albertan policies; he is appalled that the unwashed in the distant Western colonies are daring to question the goodwill and leadership his region offers them.

He doesn’t oppose the questions in the referenda. He opposes giving citizens a choice in the first place.

Which, again, proves why the referendum is anything but pointless.