Alberta votes to stay in Canada, CBC News projects
- Albertans have voted to remain in Canada, CBC News projects, rejecting the proposal to begin the separation process.
- Early results in the province's referendum show more than three-quarters of votes in favour of staying part of the country.
- Supporters at the Forever Canadian watch party broke into cheers and waved Canadian flags when they saw the first results on a screen.
86 replies
the whole thing was incredibly dumb and a monumental waste of time and resources.
Most MAGA funded initiatives are pretty dumb.
Fantasy fantasia for the trashablanca
Not really. It settled a divisive issue for the foreseeable future. The next generation may decide differently, but you should accept defeat and move on. And try to spend time on issues that matter.
I don't know if you can call a 50 point margin a divisive issue - it's pretty one-sided, it appears
It's a deep trench and did capture a lot of attention.
There is more to politics than just yes/no.
@Gladaed @CobraChicken3000
Not when you are being asked yes no.
This elaborates: https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk
I cannot spend sufficient time to explain this to you[well].
Good video, this doesn't cover what just happened. The vote was overwhelming against leaving Canada. As an Albertan, its still a small minority looking to leave, an uneducated one at that. We would be so royally fucked if we left due to our economy crashing and probably getting annexed by the US.
It highlights that there is more to politics than yes/no
Good vid, thanks
It was only "divisive" in the minds of fringe imbeciles. This should never have come to a ballot.
MAGA accepting defeat at the polls? Do you live on this planet, or are you visiting from outer space?
Fucking Victor Orban did. Even the anti democratic weirdos listen when the people speak loud enough.
I don't think it does settle it, really. The results tell a frustrating story. 75% of two million people said stay in Canada, but about half of that voted at all on the remaining questions which seems to say "we want to stay in Canada, but only on our terms".
Investigate UCP and the separatists for treason with all the voter information leaks, the collaborations with the states. This was a waste of time and money. I worry they won't accept defeat and are going to ramp up the crazy.
If the American Right Wing is any indication, they will claim that the vote was rigged, despite being whooped by a WIDE margin, and scream it loudly forever. Really annoying.
So true.
election tampering is a valid concern, which is why its so important to have paper ballots and vetted scrutineers.
There should also be a social media blackout for a week before any election.
addictive software needs to be banned across the board. including infinite scroll
addictive = designed to keep the user engaged, rather than provide the users requested feedback.
Sadly the other 9 questions reveal a lot of social friction that is going to empower the UCP to more bullshit.
I'm so thoroughly disappointed in my fellow Albertans on this front. Essentially, "yeah we want to remain a part of Canada, but we don't want immigrants or federal influence."
...while they forget they're descendants of immigrants, and Canada was a thing before Alberta.
Can we downgrade them back to NWT?
Sure, they're going to press on with a bunch of initiatives that are plainly unconstitutional, get smacked down by the courts after a lengthy battle, use it to fuel anti-federal sentiment, and try again later.
The wheel turns.
That's a polite way of discussing the racist dogwhistles behind most of the 9 questions.
Sadly you arent wrong
Alberta also voted yes to the other nine, which means we voted to be as shitty and racist as possible while remaining.
This isnt the victory everyone wants to think it is. This went exactly as expected and means this province is going to keep blindly voting on issues that 1) dont exist or 2) they dont understand, which means we are staring down the barrel of more UCP in the future.
Alberta predictably voted to be racist and ignorant, as usual, my disappointment is expected but still bitter and Im drafting a plan to leave. This is going to get a lot worse here before it ever gets better and this vote is concrete proof that Alberta is fucking stupid and will vote against themselves if it means they dont have to see as many Indian people
Daylight saving time and abolishing a useless crony Senate is hardly racist.
Denying immigrants access to public services as some kind of secondary class of citizen is racist. Dont play coy.
We have fixed Daylight Saving Time in Manitoba, no referendum needed. Why does Smith need a mandate for that? Is she so incapable of doing the job she had to waste taxpayer time and money farming out that question? Or is she too cowardly to make a stand?
And while the Senate question is actually interesting, this is something Alberta on its own has no control over, and a constitutional convention will probably not pass anyway, so this is just more taxpayer money wasted on intellectual masturbation.
Thankfully, there were other questions on this referendum, so it wasn't as much of a waste of money as it could have been, and now Albertans can defend themselves by saying only two-thirds of the questions on their referendum were racist!
What were the other 7?
In before Daniel Smith claims this is a victory that only solidifies how good a leader she is, and that there’s a clear mandate for the Federal government to do whatever she wants.
Despite this being a national risk that should have her summarily tried for treason, as well as those in the UCP who leaked voter lists and conspired with the US government.
Also in before she uses this to invoke the not withstanding clause on healthcare.
Can we arrest Marlaina Smith yet?
I'd rather they introduce more protections for the immigrants that choose to come here. I have heard tales of shady lawyers overcharging for form filling, or employers using the fear of not meeting work requirements to extract free overtime, or can keep wages low. Immigrants already pay a heavy price to come here.
Yep, somebody I know got scammed by a lawyer (they claimed to be a lawyer). They collected high paperwork fees from the immigrants and said it would take months for the government stuff to come back, once they had all the cash they disappeared.
Some employers with ties to other countries were sort of selling work visas. They'd get the LMIA permit (or whatever its called) and then get someone that wanted to come to Canada but couldn't immigrate any other way to pay 10's of thousands to come work that job.
@NotSteve_
A third voted, Smith's treason got a quarter of that third.
Two thirds didn't care about the Goof's drama, 75% thought she was the goof.
So 1/3 times 1/4 means only 1/12th of voters were mislead by Smith.
#canada
what is this baking instructions?
@TropicalDingdong
Smith's recipe for a flat nothing.
Talk shit.
Bore people.
Act treasonously
Hold a referendum on treason while being invaded.
Leave most people bored at home.
Get overwhelming majority to bother to say NO!
Bake for months and months while ignoring actually cooking something people care about.
There you go, Smith's Flat Nothing
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/livestory/alberta-referendum-results-live-updates-separatism-october-19-2026-9.7387777
#canada
Looks a bit cooked
Not sure where you're getting "only a third voted" when 43% of eligible voters had voted in the ADVANCED polls.
@Windex007
Yes you are correct. It appears so.
Mocking turnout was not useful by end of count. I will continue to mock Smith dropping in the polls, and the better than three to one referendum defeat.
#mock #badLady
DS is a giant POS, she deserves every dunk.
A third of polls have been counted.
Big difference.
@panda_abyss
Question 11:
Do you support Smith taking a long world trip on a bus?
@panda_abyss
76 / 23
Low turnout may be due to predictable results, not because all the other people don't care. it is likely a representative result.
Good
Can we now put this to rest with a bullet in the head and not try to revive it next year?
Not until the US stops funding separatists and social media giants stop colluding with bad actors to encourage separatists.
They're already trying to spin this as an increase in support over previous years.
Good news from Manitoba here. Go Alberta! Go Canada! Many hands make light work and we are stronger together.
I guess the worrying issue remains with the other 9 questions and what the provincial government is going to do with that if the results are yes
Abuse the Not Withstanding Clause.
It's pretty funny that knowing those were separation questions, people still voted for them.
Most of the 9 other questions were thinly veiled racist dogwhistles.
Wished we could have such a vote in California.
The GOP thugs would never let California leave. CA might be their whipping boy but they know how much money it makes for the country.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. MAGA loves to shoot itself in the foot. It does it nearly every day.
Yet they still believe they have a foot left to stand on.
True, it may reach a point where most of the party leadership believes their own bs. I think a significant portion of them now are grifters though.
Californians and Texans are both Mexicans. One day you'll rejoin your people.
Might have more luck with an exchange of people, but I have a feeling that's not super appealing to those who might move. It also wouldn't fly, likely, since having people being angry and destabilizing in Canada benefits the US. Else, I'd expect to have already seen an offer by the US similar to the one given to white South Africans.
Treason should be punishable by death
The common financial wisdom is to invest in diversity (Canada) rather than a single asset (petrostate).
And people said this would be like Brexit.
American and your border neighbor here, this is news to me. Can somebody explain to me what's going on? Because this is the first I've heard about this.. is Alberta trying to secede from Canada?? What? Why? I'm not super familiar with your politics. Thanks, ahead of time.
Ya, theres an unhappy bunch that have been getting help from your current government to try and separate from Canada, amplified by Russian misinformation campaigns.
This was a vote to see if there should be a binding referendum.
If MAGA is their primary support, then you've got nothing to worry about. MAGA fucks up EVERYTHING they touch, and they fucked this up, too.
Our former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was very proactive when it came to climate change. Alberta's biggest industry is oil and gas, so this pissed them off because they weren't making as much money as they could have been. Their oil and gas sectors also make a lot of money for the country and they are upset that some of it gets sent to Ottawa and redistributed. And Alberta doesn't have much say in federal elections because their population pales in comparison to Ontario and Quebec, who have more voting power to reflect that.
So the separatists gathered enough signatures to have a referendum but the courts ruled that down because it violates the agreements the government has with First Nations. So the premier changed it by making it a referendum to have a referendum, which bypassed this legal restriction.
The separatists groups have been collaborating with the Trump administration, who are backing the separatist side of the campaign which has caused a lot of anger here in Canada.
The separatist side is very unpopular, even within Alberta, and this is widely considered to be a waste of time and resources. But Alberta has very permissive laws around direct democracy, so the threshold for triggering a referendum on any topic is quite low, you just need a relatively small number of signatures.
I'd put a bigger emphasis on how much of a role the American right-wing christofascist propaganda machine has played. Paid Nazi propagandists like Joe Rogan have been stoking these flames for nearly a decade now.
You left off how the premier lowered the threshold for them to have the vote.
Yeah that's important information too. She made changes to direct democracy laws so that fewer signatures are required to trigger a province-wide referendum on a given topic. Presumably this was to appeal to the separatists in her support base
Thanks, this offers a lot of context to Americans, who are are too swamped with the nonsense in our own country, to follow the nonsense going on in other countries.
I mean, Americans never really paid attention to us even when they didn't have shit going down. Back in the 90s/2000s a we had a whole TV series making fun of this
Our Conservative Party keeps losing because they pick untenable and unpopular leaders.
Alberta is a very conservative province.
The Premier of Alberta decided to hold a referendum to have a referendum to separate because risking our country while another tries to annex us is a good idea for scoring political points and trying to get leverage.
This was pitched as a protest vote like brexit, with a large large dose of foreign interference from the United States.
No, Alberta isn't trying to seceed. Our quisling premier tried rabble-rousing with a referendum on whether to have a referendum to try to seceed and the separatists got crushed at the polls.
The other 9 questions were the lede being buried by the seperation headlines and they all got a yes vote. This went as they intended. We are fucked.
The other 9 questions are just as stupid, they just didn't get as much press. Most of them were worded so poorly that they could be interpreted however you liked and most of those interpretations aren't constitutional, so it's a meaningless result.
And all of this was a non-binding referendum anyway. The government can do whatever it wants with the results, as it always could.
We're not "fucked", we're just sick of this waste of time and money.
I think we are fucked because to me this indicates this province is continuing to vote with 0 information on gut feeling and bigotry which means we are staring down the barrel of more of this kind of politics in the future
Alberta basically just showed canada they are fine with the UCP and likely to vote them in again... we are fucked
Welcome to democracy. The worst form of government aside from all the others.
Where do you expect to find a place where the people vote on a basis other than gut feeling?
Do you have a basis for this other than gut feeling? Current projections on 388 have the UCP ahead by a single seat, and of course that's based on polling that came out before the referendum. I think calling a UCP victory in the next election "likely" is not supported by the data.
Ive lived here for long enough to know that those polls showing an NDP lead mean nothing. Alberta is absolutely everything it gets accused of being and I have 20 years in this shithole of never being proven wrong minus the ONE time people tried voting differently and I STILL HEAR BITCHING about those 4 years like it was ever worse than 40 years of conservative mismanagement
"Democracy" just determined immigrants here should be a secondary class of citizen and be denied access to services. Alberta deserves what it will get.