EDMONTON — O Canada, Alberta is staying put. In a historic referendum Monday, voters marked their ballots in overwhelming numbers to remain part of the country that formally created Alberta as a province 121 years ago. With about one million votes counted in early returns, about 76 per cent per cent of Albertans said yes to Confederation, while 24 per cent said they wanted the province to hold a second, binding referendum on leaving. The million votes represent one-third of eligible voters. The turnout was impressive, with more than 1.3 million votes cast earlier in mail-in ballots and at advance polls. Premier Danielle Smith, who said she voted to stay in Canada, promised a simple 50 per cent plus one majority would carry the day and that there would be no follow-up referendum for the rest of her United Conservative Party government’s mandate. The balloting completes a winding process that began in May, when Smith called the referendum. Debate turned some neighbours against neighours. It disrupted public events. The Alberta flag morphed into a disputed de facto banner for those who want to separate. There were rallies and speeches, sign wars, stacks of policy documents, analyses and warnings of economic apocalypse should Alberta try to go its own way. Smith had to explain why her caucus and party is for Canada while allowing separatists to remain in the fold. She said the party stands for Confederation but also welcomes diverse points of view. Smith and her UCP didn’t campaign on a separation vote in the 2023 provincial election, and it didn’t seek a renewed popular mandate before calling the referendum. Instead, Smith said, her hand had effectively been forced. She said Albertans’ longstanding simmering resentment with Ottawa boiled over during the administration of former Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau. She said polices undercutting resource development along with unfair equalization policies and federal intrusion on provincal rights compelled hundreds of thousands of Albertans to sign citizen-led petitions both for and against staying in Canada. A referendum, she said, was a necessary pressure release valve and a way to settle the matter once and for all. The separation question was one of 10 put to Albertans in a rainbow of coloured ballots for easy recognition and sorting. The first nine focus on immigration and the Constitution. They had yet to be counted as of Monday night. The immigration questions asked Albertans whether the province should have more say on who comes to the province to work and whether it’s time to put more limitations — and perhaps introduce fees — on some who arrive and seek access to health care and education. Smith has said immigration is a benefit but must be economically sustainable. Critics have called the questions anti-immigrant dog-whistling. The constitutional questions asked Albertans for a blessing to pursue talks with other provinces on wresting power from Ottawa and abolishing the Senate. Smith said those issues are pressing. Critics have called them posturing. Smith said she voted to stay in Canada but needs a yes to the nine questions to get a mandate to bargain with Prime Minister Mark Carney. Her government commissioned a $4-million advertising campaign urging Albertans vote yes to the nine. The nine became a passive-aggressive dance between Smith and Carney as the campaign wound down, with each publicly poking the other in the eye. Last week, Carney barnstormed the province to rally support for federalists and was mobbed by cheering, back-patting selfie-seekers. On Thursday, he leveraged the opportunity and popularity in Smith’s metaphorical backyard of Calgary to publicly urge Albertans to reject the nine questions. Smith scrambled to pivot the narrative. A day later, at a joint event in a Red Deer brewery, she pointedly handed Carney her government’s explanatory referendum booklet to get him get up to speed on the nine issues. Both Smith and Carney have said they expect the referendum to end the separation debate, though prominent separatists have promised to regroup after a loss and that the fight wouldn’t be over. The next scheduled Alberta election is set for next October, and the overarching question is whether the whiff of separatism will cling to Smith and her UCP. Smith has straddled the fence on separatism issues. She has professed love for a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.” However, over the last two years, her government has rewritten laws and lowered thresholds that helped power the petition calling for a vote on separation. When that petition was ultimately bogged down in court this spring, Smith announced the referendum anyway. The Opposition NDP, among other critics, has said this is the true reason for the referendum. They say separatism has long been — and still is — a fringe sentiment in Alberta. They accuse Smith of squeezing the bellows on the embers of separation, fanning them into flames to save her job. They say she has become captive to the influential separatist wing of her party and that the referendum is about keeping them in the fold and dissuading them from tossing her out in a party confidence vote, as was done to her predecessor Jason Kenney. Kenney — a co-founder of the UCP — has said separatists have no place in the party and that after the referendum the party faces a “reckoning.” Smith has fences to mend. Two UCP constituency associations have reportedly backed calls for an early leadership review ahead of the party’s annual general meeting next month. There’s also resentment among some separatists over the wording of the referendum question. Critics have derided it as little more than a referendum on a referendum. Others resent Smith for calling the vote on Alberta’s future in Canada while simultaneously declaring she will vote to keep the province in Confederation. There are signs the government’s popularity has taken a hit. The UCP has bled support to the NDP in recent public opinion surveys. Last month, the UCP lost a byelection in its Calgary-Shaw stronghold. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 19, 2026 With files from Dayne Patterson in Calgary and Timon Johnson in Edmonton Jack Farrell and Lisa Johnson, The Canadian Press
