Opinion
“Albertans showed up to vote last night. They sent a message to Danielle Smith,” the NDP leader said at a news conference Tuesday morning, according to Postmedia. “They rejected her and they rejected the separatist agenda that has brought us to this point.”
The night before, he called the referendum “the biggest political mistake of the year” and said Smith “will always be separatism.”
That’s a strange way to describe a premier who voted to stay in Canada herself and told her own base, a good share of whom wanted to hear something else, to vote for a stronger Alberta in a united Canada. It’s a stranger way to describe a night when about three out of four Albertans did exactly what she asked.
Nenshi wanted this vote cancelled. Smith let Albertans have their say. Hundreds of thousands of people had signed petitions on both sides of the separation question. Telling all of them to go home and keep quiet would not have made the question go away. It would have let it fester for another five years, growing every time Ottawa did something stupid.
Instead we have an answer. With 84 per cent of voting places reporting, 75.3 per cent of Albertans voted to remain in Canada, according to Elections Alberta. Both Smith and Nenshi said before the vote there would be no second referendum if Remain won. That is a settled question, and Smith is the one who settled it.
Then there are the other nine questions. As of Tuesday morning, Albertans were backing eight of them: more provincial control over immigration, limits on who qualifies for provincially funded programs, a residency rule for social supports, a fee for non-permanent residents’ use of health care and education, proof of citizenship to vote, provinces choosing their own superior court judges, abolishing the Senate and giving provincial laws priority in provincial areas of jurisdiction.
If Monday was a rejection of Danielle Smith, it’s an odd one. Albertans said no to leaving and yes to most of her agenda inside Canada. That is the Alberta Next case in a single ballot: stay, and fight for a better deal.
Nenshi’s other complaint is cost. He has put the referendum at close to $200 million and says Albertans care more about affordability, health care and education. Those are fair priorities. But the premier he says is ignoring them runs a province that added 23,000 jobs in September while Canada as a whole lost 68,000, according to Statistics Canada. The best answer to affordability is a paycheque, and no province added more of them in September than Alberta.
To his credit, Nenshi said Tuesday he wants to talk to everyone, including the quarter of voters who backed starting the separation process. “We want to be a government for all Albertans,” he said. Good. He could start by not telling those voters, and the 75 per cent who sided with the premier, that the woman who led the province through this vote is the problem.
The separatist movement lost Monday. So did the idea that Alberta can only be loyal to Canada by being quiet about how it’s treated. Smith bet that Albertans could hold both thoughts at once: that this country is worth staying in, and that the deal needs fixing. She was right.
Smith addresses the province at 6:45 tonight. Nenshi has had his turn. If he wants to be premier, he’ll need a better line than blaming her for a result he agrees with.
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