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Comment by cf100clunk | Hacker News Reader

Some numbers to consider:

~465,000 legally verified signatories to the federalist petition to declare Alberta permanently part of Canada

~360,000 status First Nations persons within Alberta

~330,000 legally unverified signatories to the separatist petition to hold a referendum to separate from Canada

First Nations have successfully argued in court that as consultations with them are required by the Canadian Constitution, no such consultations had even been suggested by separatists.

Apart from the fact that the Alberta population is ~4 million, it is difficult to see how separatists can figure they'd win a referendum to separate.

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It's clear it's a pandering to the provincial government base, and has zero legitimacy. This all stems from a boneheaded move to unify the right in Alberta to prevent another NDP leadership term - that term being something that actually did our province some good.

We've unfortunately been putting up with these leaders doing this sort of thing too long and let the rural part of this province dictate far too much.

FWIW, I even bought myself a membership to try and do at least a small part to prevent this a decade ago, but that was impossible. People have truely lost their minds here and it's bizarre to talk to people that were once rational.

It’s the British Tories’ Brexit playbook to a T. Remember that David Cameron was cold on Europe, but opposed to leaving the EU yet insisted on having a referendum to stop the far right from stealing his voters.

It was the ok I’ll ask you to stop the discussion once and for all.

It’s a plan that Cameron completely bungled, ruining his personal reputation, his party’s, and his country’s. I dread the consequences for the average Albertan if this goes south.

Well, if Alberta separates, the federal opposition evaporates. The opposition leader can run for Alberta pm. And Canada might never have a Conservative government again. Alberta has no coast, so exporting or importing goes by air or via Canada or the us. And when oil prices return to normal, they suffer big income losses.

Apart from the fact that the Alberta population is ~4 million, it is difficult to see how separatists can figure they'd win a referendum to separate.

Isn't the important number not the total population, but the number of people who show up to vote?

I see from other comments that there's some concern over the validity of the signatures. But comparing the number of signatures on competiting petitions doesn't tell us much. I assume signature gathering in Alberta shares some common ideas with places I've lived... If you want something on the ballot you have a minimum number of signatures to gather, maybe another tier that enables a faster process, and you want to collect some number beyond that because some signatures will be found invalid, but after that there's no reason to continue collecting.

> First Nations have successfully argued in court that as consultations with them are required by the Canadian Constitution, no such consultations had even been suggested by separatists.

IMHO as an outside observer, if the current question is 'should we commence the legal process to have a binding referrendum', having consultations now is inappropriate. They would be part of the process to have a binding referrendum and so they must either be done or not after the results of this referrendum.

Courts have determined that in these processes consultation must occur even at early times as this.

Because now I'm interested... It seems that the last year, the full bench ruled that a referrendum on seccession without consultation is unacceptable.

This month, one judge ruled that you also can't have a referrendum to start the process to have a referrendum on seccession. It seems there is time for appeals before the election in October.

Assuming the full bench affirms this ruling, I guess the next step for the petitioner would be to have a referrendum to start the process to have a referrendum to start the process to have a final referrendum?

If the government is unwilling to start the process itself; it seems that there's no way for citizen referrendum to force the issue? Seperately, I agree it seems unlikely for the referrendum to pass if the government is unwilling to start the process by itself, but politics isn't always clear.

What is a consultation? That sounds like a vague ill-defined veto over ever making changes.

I'm very open to tribal sovereignty in deciding what whether to remain in in Canada, but that should apply to tribal territory, not holding the majority of the population of the territory hostage.

I think you'll need to look at the constitution of Canada (section 35) and the legally-binding treaties that have been signed with indigenous Canadians. There's no "tribal" territory. It's all treaty territory.

"Separation" seems like clear bad faith to me as well. Alberta as an independent country? Yeah right, they'd pull a Texas for sure.

Why do you think any of that is relevant? Of course they will lose. There are enough of them to be a significant minority because of how terrible our federal government is and how big a joke our legal system is. This is entirely about trying to control which voting cycle they lose on. The left wants it on the next provincial election ballot because its poison for the incumbent conservatives. The conservatives want it anywhere other than on the next provincial election ballot so it can die before it poisons their election chances. thats all that this is. It helps that smith is right and the judge quashing the referendum is a yet another travesty.

They are already separate first nations not joined to Canada or Alberta. I don't understand why Alberta not wanting to participate in Federalism anymore is an issue.

> They are already separate first nations not joined to Canada or Alberta

They are part of Canada.

Treaties 6, 7, and 8 clearly ceded indigenous lands to the Crown, and the Indian Act spells out the relationship between First Nations and Canada. Further, the Constitution Act, 1982, contains Section 25 of the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms articulating ''Aboriginal And Treaty Rights''

I’m not sure what’s more silly-fun: the idea of angry separatists sloooowly learning how their actual country is put together, or a bunch of angry separatists trying to pitch to First Nations representatives that, no really bro, this time they should totally trust their deals.

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