Voters in Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta rejected a proposal to begin a process toward independence, results showed early Tuesday, handing a victory to Prime Minister Mark Carney and supporters of Canadian unity amid President Trump’s trade war and annexation threats.
The vote was not a direct referendum on independence, but it would have put oil-rich Alberta on the path to a future vote on separation from Canada.
With more than a million votes counted, approximately 76% were in favor of remaining in Canada, compared to 23% who were in favor of initiating a process that could lead to separation.
“We are a strong, united country from coast to coast,” Thomas Lukaszuk, a former deputy premier of Alberta who led the Forever Canadian campaign against separation, told supporters.
Results were delayed after late openings forced more than 100 polling stations to extend voting hours on Monday. More than 1.35 million Albertans, or 43% of eligible voters, voted in advance or by special ballot. Albertans had to decide whether they wanted to stay in Canada or begin legal proceedings that could have led to a second vote on separation.
Alberta, home to the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves, is cowboy country and a conservative stronghold whose political culture has long had more in common with that of the American West than that of much of Canada. Resentment toward Ottawa runs deep, but has not traditionally translated into widespread support for independence.
Dustin Degenhardt, a Wainwright constituent, said Albertans have long been mistreated by Ottawa.
“Alberta was basically treated like, you know, a colony,” he said after Monday’s vote. “They want to take us again and again and give us nothing back.”
Taylor MacIsaac, another Wainwright voter, supported separation.
“I think it would be good for Alberta to separate personally, as a very conservative individual who grew up in rural Alberta,” she said.
Dave Malka, 59, of Edmonton, criticized spending money on a “referendum on a referendum” rather than on health care.
Despite the proposal’s apparent failure, separatist leaders say they have transformed a fringe cause into a movement that won’t go away.
Carney had earlier urged Albertans to vote decisively for unity. “Vote like the future of Canada depends on it because it does,” he said Friday at a rally in Edmonton, where he grew up.
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