Alberta Separatist Group Delivers 300,000 Signatures for Independence Referendum

A separatist group in Alberta submitted over 300,000 signatures in support of a referendum to leave Canada on Monday. The total is nearly double the amount required by law to trigger a referendum vote in the province. Recent reporting shows that at least one quarter of Alberta's population would vote to leave Canada.

While Alberta has never formally begun the long road to secession until now, the Francophone province of Quebec has twice held referendums on whether to leave Canada. The second Quebec referendum occurred in 1995. 58 percent of the vote.

The Supreme Court of Canada issued an advisory opinion on the terms under which Quebec could secede following the 1995 referendum. " Reason reported that the Quebec opinion provides the legal basis on which Alberta could also separate. Some indigenous groups have argued in court that Alberta separation would infringe on collective indigenous rights granted through treaties and enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The language in the Supreme Court opinion requiring a seceding province to respect the rights of others is now being leveraged in those arguments. Alberta contains approximately 167 billion barrels of oil reserves, nearly four times the volume in the United States.

Alberta is one of only two landlocked provinces in Canada, meaning it cannot get this oil to the international market absent the cooperation of other provinces.

Canadian provinces maintain extensive interprovincial trade barriers against each other. A 2019 report from the International Monetary Fund observed that international free trade agreements allow foreign companies better access to Canada than Canadian companies have to each other. Reason reported that this internal absence of free trade creates bad incentives for provinces that rely on cheap oil.