Smith defends use of unvalidated signatures to pose separatist referendum question

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says a referendum is needed before the province can move on from the separation debate.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she’s willing to take the word of Alberta’s separatist movement to pose a question on the Oct. 19 referendum.

Saturday on her provincial radio show, Smith defended her decision to allow a question about whether Alberta should pursue a separatist referendum even though none of the more than 300,000 signatures collected by Stay Free Alberta have been validated.

“The 400,000 signatures from the Forever Canadian petition have been validated,” she said. “The court stopped Elections Alberta from validating the 300,000 signatures achieved by Stay Free Alberta.”

“Elections Alberta have the boxes (of signatures),” she added. “They have been told there’s no way to validate them – so I just have to, in good faith, look at that and say, they needed to get 177,000, they submitted 300,000, the other petition got validated at 400 (thousand) -- (so) that’s why I think in order to follow the spirit of the citizen petition law, that’s why I put forward the question we did."

Forever Canadian founder Tomas Lukaszuk, whose group collected more than 400,000 verified signatures, has said multiple times that he didn’t want to have a question about staying in Canada on the referendum on Oct. 19.

‘Legitimacy is another question’

Mount Royal University political scientist Lori Williams said that while the legality of posting a citizen initiative petition question based on unvalidated signatures isn’t illegal, its legitimacy is debatable.

“Questions surrounding the number of valid signatures on the Stay Free Alberta petition are understandable for two reasons; the incorrect claims made by leaders like (Mitch) Silvestre and (Jeffrey) Rath on other matters, and the leaked electors list,” she said.

“‘Faith’ in the claims of people with their (Stay Free Alberta leaders’) track record could magnify questions about the justification for the referendum,“ she said.

”The elector’s list leak raises concerns about whether names from the list could have been added to the petitions,“ she added. ”This isn’t simply hypothetical - in the 2017 UCP leadership race several people’s emails were fraudulently added to the list of those eligible to vote for the leader. There is also a concern about unfair access to prospective supporters.

“The legality of the referendum question may yet be challenged in court, but it was designed to get around legal issues raised so far,” she added.

“Legitimacy is another question,” she said. “Especially given the viscerally negative reaction from leaders supporting federalism, separatism, business and economic interests and First Nations.

“And public opinion polls show these concerns are reverberating widely.”

Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi also issued a statement about the use of unverified signatures.

“Not one of the separatist signatures were verified, and, given the data breach, there was ample ability to forge signatures. But Danielle Smith didn’t care.

“This was always her plan,” he said. “She promised separatists the referendum in return for their support, and now we all are living with the consequences. She can’t blame this referendum on anyone but herself.”

With files from The Canadian Press