Rachel Notley says she agrees "100 per cent" with Jason Kenney that the UCP has to decide whether separatists belong in the party.

"Strangely, I agree 100 per cent on this," the former NDP premier said at an Edmonton Chamber of Commerce forum on Tuesday. She described her joint appearance with Kenney as "the sort of theatre, I guess, of Jason and I coming together" to amplify "a very, very serious issue."

Theatre is the right word.

The NDP has lost to the UCP in two straight elections. Its former leader is now endorsing a call for the UCP to show some of its own voters the door.

Kenney's own line, as reported, is that people whose main goal is separation should join a separatist party. He puts that hard core at five per cent or less. So, who exactly counts as a separatist?

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Leger's survey of 1,001 Albertans, taken August 21 to 23, found 65 per cent would keep Alberta a province and 23 per cent would start the separation process. Among people intending to vote UCP, 45 per cent chose Option 2, 42 per cent chose Option 1, and 12 per cent were undecided.

Option 2 is not a vote to leave. It is a vote to begin the legal process for a binding referendum. Quebec held referendums on its future in 1980 and 1995, and no federalist party there survived by expelling the voters who said Yes.

Those voters did not arrive from nowhere. Many of them blame equalization, the tanker ban and the emissions cap, all of them Ottawa's work. And some of that frustration stems from the NDP's collaboration with the federal Liberals on those issues. 

Kenney is entitled to oppose independence. So is Notley.

But nobody at that forum drew the line between a separatist and an Option 2 voter. If five per cent of Albertans is the hard core, most of the 45 per cent of UCP voters who picked Option 2 are the people Kenney calls frustrated federalists. A party that treats them as the enemy has a problem that Rachel Notley cannot solve for it.

Premier Danielle Smith has said she wants Alberta to stay in Canada, and her government put the question on the ballot anyway.

One side wants a loyalty test for voters who ask the question. The other side put the question on the ballot.