If Alberta wanted to play by Canada’s rules there would be no Independence movement

Albertans recently collected 300,000 signatures on a petition demanding a referendum on independence from Canada.  By law they needed at least 177,000 signatures so that rather low hurdle was crossed easily.  Then the predictable happened.  A special interest group financed by the federal government challenged the petition in front of a federally appointed judge.  A nice incestuous little circle jerk.

The outcome of the case was a forgone conclusion.  A judge that owed her fealty to her liberal benefactors in Ottawa decided that the petition and the question that it posed was verboten.  You cannot ask a question in Canada before you ask permission of the native bands to ask the question.  Independence groups did try to consult native groups.  All the chiefs objecting to the petition were invited to multiple open houses but none of them chose to attend.  That did not matter.  Justice Shaina Leonard was not about to set the dangerous precedent of allowing truth or common sense into a Canadian courtroom.

The independence petition followed the law as it was written.  Justice Leonard decided to change the rules and not allow Albertans to be asked the very simple question of whether they still wanted to be part of Canada.  This left Alberta Premier Dannielle Smith in a very awkward position.  Smith was the one who set the bar at 177,000 votes.  She essentially promised that she would hold a referendum if that threshold was reached but the courts decided she couldn’t ask the question as written.  Her solution was a different referendum question.

 “Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

There is no way to answer this question.  The two halves of the question contradict each other.  Smith has since clarified that the question will be split in two but that doesn’t make any more sense since the answer to the first part makes the second part moot.  It also is not what the petitioners asked for.  300,00 Albertans asked for an independence referendum.  They did not ask for a referendum, asking if we wanted another referendum.  Voting on whether we should have another vote might be peak government, but it has nothing to do with democracy.  Smith is basically asking if Albertans want democracy or whether they are comfortable with her continuing to ignore democracy.

Dannielle Smith has not made anyone happy with her asinine decision.  It is obviously not what the petitioners asked for.  It is also not what the Maple Maoists wanted either.  They prefer a country without a hint of democracy.

On the surface this looks like a politician trying and failing to strike a compromise, but it is not.  Smiths muddled question is far more sinister than that.  By holding a referendum about holding a referendum Smith is buying time.  Time is the enemy of the independence movement.  The federal government is flooding the country with third world benefit shoppers who will never vote themselves off of the federal gravy train.  It is a simple matter for Carney to offer even more incentives for his imported liberal voters to move to Alberta.  Fill Alberta with non-Albertans and the problem goes away.

Smith’s intentionally contradictory question also gives politically appointed judges the opportunity to deny the right of self determination to 5 million Albertans.  When Quebec held their referendums, they were intentionally vague.  They asked questions wide open for interpretation, so people were not sure what they were voting for.  Did yes mean leave or yes mean stay?  After that the supreme court weighed in and decided both the question and the majority must be clear.  This led to the clarity act.

Both the Supreme Court’s ruling and the act state that a province could negotiate terms of separation if voters were presented with a “clear question” on separation and a “clear majority” votes in favour of leaving Canada

But both the court and the act say a province can’t just leave on its own. Rather, the provincial and federal governments would have to negotiate with the province that’s trying to leave.

Neither the courts nor parliament defined what clear means, but I can guarantee you won’t find anyone who thinks Smith’s question is clear.  Smith opened the door for the independence movement to lose another court challenge.  This seems to be the game plan.  Tie the movement up in court until they can import enough voters.  New voters who can’t even find Alberta on a map.

This is very typically Canadian.  Send contentious issues to the court so that one of their pet judges can do the dirty work for them.  That has always worked in the past, but the Maple Maoists don’t understand the core issue behind the independence movement.  Albertan are tired of living in a tyrannical state where unelected judges and bureaucrats wield authority they never should have been given.  The parasite class in Canada want to use every legal trick in the book to sideline democracy, again.  They have yet to realize Albertans are no longer willing to play by the rules of a book they had no input in writing.  This is not about following Ottawa’s rules.  It is about getting out from under them.