At last, the Alberta separatists seem to have figured out the best way to convince undecided Albertans to vote in favour of separation in the fall’s provincial referendum. Rather than being fringe actors throwing tantrums and demanding Premier Daniel Smith give them the referendum question they want, despite a court having struck it down, they are becoming full participants in the referendum campaign. They are accepting this year’s imperfect referendum question for what it is and trying – calmly and intelligently – to win over voters to the separatist position.
New campaign strategy launched
Last week in Calgary, the group launched a new campaign strategy dubbed Let Alberta Decide. Gone are the threats to divide the governing UCP and force Smith from office if she doesn’t overrule the courts (a power she doesn’t have) and place a straightforward “leave or stay” question on the ballot for the Oct. 19 referendum. In their place are promises of a provincewide campaign to lay out plain arguments for why Alberta should leave Confederation. The campaign includes advertising, billboards, plenty of forums in halls large and small around the province, and lots of online videos answering a host of questions, not just about money, but also about the mechanics of separation: How long will it take? How much will it cost?
Reasonable leaders take the helm
The old bluster is gone. The scowling faces and shaken fists, too, which were no way to win the hearts and minds of people not already firmly in the separatist camp. “You’re not going to persuade many converts by leaning out over your podium and spitting on people in the front row while you spew some anti-Canada vitriol,” observed Lorne Gunter in the Edmonton Journal. Instead, Let Alberta Decide (LAD) has a website that frankly explains how much money is siphoned off from Alberta and shipped to Ottawa every minute, every hour, every week, month and year. Gunter has written many times about the staggering sums: nearly $20 billion a year, $322 billion just since 2007.
Shift from threats to persuasion
For Let Alberta Decide, the time has passed to seek a better deal from Ottawa. For all of Alberta’s contribution to Confederation’s coffers, “Ottawa sends back the carbon tax, the emissions cap, and Bill C-69” (the No More Pipelines law). There is no more time to wait for a fairer shake or to see whether Prime Minister Mark Carney is less “green” than Justin Trudeau or just better at disguising his disdain for oil and gas, Let Alberta Decide argues.
Another welcome move forward is that Let Alberta Decide is being fronted by two far more reasonable leaders than Mitch Sylvestre and Jeffery Rath of the Alberta Prosperity Project — the mad boys of the separatist debate. The Let Alberta Decide co-chairs are Keith Wilson and Tanya Clemens. Wilson is a well-respected St. Albert lawyer who first came to prominence in the early 2010s fighting a provincial bill that would have trounced property rights to make way for transmission lines. His solo, non-partisan campaign almost cost the old Tories that election.
