Provincial governments in Alberta have directly asked the populace eight questions in the last 111 years. On Monday, today’s ruling United Conservative Party will ask voters to answer 10 more. The road to Alberta’s first plebiscite in 1915 began soon after the province was formed 10 years earlier. Groups such as the United Farmers of Alberta pushed the government to establish direct legislation, in which the population decides on initiatives with their elected representatives as proxies. At the time, the UFA was a non-partisan lobby group. It would go on to win a majority government in 1921. The Direct Legislation Act, which lasted from 1913 to 1958, allowed 20 per cent of voters to petition the government to pass a proposed law, forcing legislators to either pass it or hold a binding referendum. 1915: Liquor Act The prohibition of alcohol consumption in Canada has its roots in the 19th Century, when people drank relatively heavily. It begat the temperance movement, which was carried by groups such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and was supported by several Protestant church denominations. They pressured governments to warn citizens about the dangers of alcohol and to outright ban it. The provinces, under the 1867 British North America Act, had the power to restrict the sale of alcoholic beverages. Two years after Alberta’s Direct Legislation Act came into effect, the province’s Liberal government held its first referendum after the temperance movement and agricultural groups gathered enough signatures to force a vote on the proposed Liquor Act. The “Drys” got their way over the “Wets” on July 21 that year: 61 per cent of voters said “yes” to the question, “Do you approve of the proposed act, the ‘Liquor Act’?”, which would ban alcohol sales and close all bars and saloons. An estimated 70 per cent of eligible voters turned out: 95,804 people, all men. White and non-Indigenous women in Alberta gained the right to vote less than a year later. The province put the Liquor Act into effect on July 1, 1916. 1920: Prohibition strengthened Plebiscites held across the country at the start of the 1920s sprang from federal legislation. The federal government had enacted temporary national prohibition in 1918 under the War Measures Act and repealed it a year later. In 1920, it encouraged provinces to hold plebiscites on strengthening existing prohibition measures, specifically whether liquor could be imported into their jurisdictions. Seven of the nine provinces took up the suggestion, with a majority of voters in each, including Alberta, casting “yes” votes. Ontario, which had banned alcohol sales in 1916, held its vote in 1921, also resulting in a majority “yes.” Alberta’s question: “Shall the importation and the bringing of intoxicating liquids into the province be forbidden?” As they had five years earlier, 61 per cent of voters, or 68,012 of the 112,333 who turned out, voted in favour. Prince Edward Island and Quebec were outliers on opposite ends of the prohibition question in Confederation. P.E.I. had put strict prohibition laws in place in 1901, where they remained until 1948. Quebec banned hard liquor in 1919 but voters, meanwhile, approved a proposal allowing the sale of beer, cider and wine with less than a 2.5-per-cent alcohol level in a 1919 referendum. Quebec abolished prohibition in 1921 and established its provincial liquor control board, allowing the sale of sealed spirits. The Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) was North America’s first all-inclusive government-controlled alcohol system, a model other provinces soon followed. 1923: Prohibition repealed A petition with about 50,000 signatures, submitted in January 1923 by Alberta “hotelmen,” spurred the legislature to hold a plebiscite that November. Voters were asked to rank four choices on the future of prohibition in Alberta: A) keep prohibition; B) license beer sales in hotels and other places; C) allow beer sales through government vendors for consumption at home, with spirits sold by prescription; or D) sell all alcohol through government vendors for licensed establishments or private consumption. Almost 58 per cent of voters preferred Option D, while 38 per cent ranked Option A, keeping prohibition, as their top choice. The result led to the creation of the Alberta Liquor Control Board, the predecessor of today’s Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis. 1948: Nationalize the electricity system Alberta presented voters with two options in a plebiscite held alongside the 1948 general election on the future of electricity distribution in the province. Voters were asked whether the government should create a publicly owned utility to administer electricity province-wide or leave the system with the existing mix of municipally run and private operations. The plebiscite became a fiercely debated campaign issue ahead of the August vote, particularly because rural areas were largely unserved by utilities. Premier Ernest Manning, whose ruling Social Credit party easily retained its large majority by winning 51 of 57 seats, warned that creating a public utility would cost several million dollars and leave taxpayers at risk of covering losses. He said, however, that his government would heed voters’ wishes. Cities such as Edmonton, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat wanted the system to remain as-is, arguing the loss of their municipal utilities would increase property taxes. The Opposition Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner of today’s NDP, strongly supported nationalizing the industry. The privately run system narrowly won out, taking 50.03 per cent of the vote. 1967: Daylight saving time The push to establish daylight saving time (DST) province-wide took root after the Second World War. Calgary and Edmonton began using it in 1947 after holding plebiscites during the previous year’s municipal elections. The general argument for adopting DST was to make greater use of summer daylight for business and recreation. The next year, the province mandated Mountain Standard Time across Alberta, preventing municipalities from setting their own time rules. Urban municipalities, however, kept pressing the Social Credit government to hold a plebiscite on the issue. Efforts by Edmonton and Calgary councils gained steam in the early 1960s, as did a 1964 motion from Opposition Liberal MLA William Dickie, but none initially succeeded. Manning said in the fall of 1965 that questions on DST and water fluoridation would be put to voters in a plebiscite. Neither appeared in the February 1966 Speech from the Throne, prompting Opposition Liberals to call for legislation on the issues. Soon afterward, the legislature approved another motion from Dickie calling for a DST plebiscite, and the province announced it would be held during the 1967 election. The result in May 1967 was a narrow decision to keep Mountain Standard Time: 51.25 per cent voted “Against” the question, “Do you favour province-wide daylight saving time?” 1971: DST approved New Premier Harry Strom, who replaced Manning a year after the previous election, announced in 1969 that the DST question would again go before voters in the next election. At the time, Alberta and Saskatchewan were the only provinces that had not adopted the measure. The result: 61.5 per cent of voters said they favoured province-wide DST. The newly elected Progressive Conservative government announced the switch the following spring. 2021: Equalization payments Jason Kenney began ramping up the rhetoric around federal equalization payments during the fall 2017 campaign for the leadership of the new United Conservative Party, a race he won. Equalization has long rankled “Have” provinces, and Alberta has consistently been among them since the early 1960s. Introduced in 1957 and added to the Constitution in 1982, equalization is funded mostly through federal taxes and is intended to ensure federally funded services are provided evenly across the country. Ottawa adjusts the formula every five years. Kenney floated the idea of holding a referendum on removing fossil-fuel revenues from Ottawa’s equalization formula that fall. It remained part of his party’s campaign over the next year and a half, often intertwined with promises to eliminate Alberta’s carbon tax and efforts to build support for new energy pipelines, leading up to the May 2019 election won by the UCP. A few months later, the Kenney government commissioned the Fair Deal Panel to consult residents and stakeholders through town halls, interviews and a survey and recommend ways Alberta could improve its position within Confederation. The first step identified in the Preston Manning-led panel’s May 2020 report was pursuing equalization reform with the other provinces and Ottawa. The second was holding a referendum asking voters whether they supported removing equalization from the Constitution. A year later, the province announced it would put an equalization question to voters during that fall’s municipal elections, along with one on the future of daylight saving time. The question: “Should Section 36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 — Parliament and the Government of Canada’s commitment to the principle of making equalization payments — be removed from the Constitution?” Of the slightly more than one million votes cast, 61.7 per cent were in favour. It didn’t lead to negotiations between the two levels of government, however. 2021: DST again More than 50 years after Alberta’s previous province-wide DST vote, the question of whether Albertans should continue changing their clocks went back to voters as some jurisdictions had abandoned the practice or were moving in that direction. It was “as close as it gets to a tie,” Kenney said after the results came in: 50.2 per cent answered “No” to the question of “Do you want Alberta to adopt year-round Daylight Saving Time, which is summer hours, eliminating the need to change our clocks twice a year?” Earlier this year, Premier Danielle Smith, who replaced Kenney as UCP leader in 2022, announced the province would end the practice of changing clocks, starting this November. Municipal plebiscites Cities can use plebiscites to make decisions, too. Edmonton and Calgary have both turned directly to voters for answers on major civic questions. They did so with particular frequency after the Leduc oil boom. Through the 1950s and into the 1960s, when voters elected councillors and mayors annually until 1964, residents would sometimes be asked several questions at once, mostly about spending on infrastructure such as roads, traffic lights, library branches, health clinics, hospital expansions and parks. Both cities asked voters in 1998 whether they should petition the province to get rid of video lottery terminals. Voters in both cities rejected the idea. Edmonton put the future of the municipal airport and Keillor Road to voters in 1995, with a majority supporting both the consolidation of passenger service at the international airport and the closing of the popular southside traffic shortcut. Plebiscites in the 1960s also established ward systems for city councillors in both cities. In Edmonton, voters in 1966 approved borrowing $5.7 million for the city’s share of construction of what became the Capilano freeway bridge, now Wayne Gretzky Drive. They also approved water fluoridation, which voters had rejected five years earlier, and allowing events to be held on Sundays. In 1963, voters rejected acquiring land between Jasper Avenue and 102 Avenue, from 97 Street to 99 Street, for a convention and arena complex. Five years later, they approved construction and city operation of such a facility, although it was never built. In Calgary, recent plebiscites included a November 2018 vote on whether the city should bid to host the 2026 Winter Olympics. Fifty-six per cent voted “No.” In 2021, 62 per cent voted “Yes” to reintroducing fluoride to city tap water.
