Alberta premier, chief electoral officer at odds over separation referendum question approval
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On social media, Smith and Justice Minister Mickey Amery said earlier Tuesday that Albertans should be able to embark on gathering signatures 'without needless bureaucratic red tape or court applications slowing the process.'
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Their remarks came after chief electoral officer Gordon McClure announced he had referred the proposed referendum question on separation to the courts so a judge could decide if it contravenes Canada's Constitution.
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McClure, in a statement Tuesday, responded by saying he's merely following procedure and that the gravity of such a potential referendum invites judicial oversight and close inspection.
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'In seeking the opinion of the Court, the Chief Electoral Officer is fulfilling his duty under the Citizen Initiative Act in an independent, neutral and non-partisan manner,' he said.
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The proposed question — which needs McClure's approval before the group behind it can start gathering the signatures necessary to get it on a ballot — seeks a yes or no answer to: 'Do you agree that the Province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada?'
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Amery says in his post that since the province would ultimately be responsible for implementing any referendum result, the electoral officer's request for judicial scrutiny is premature.
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'We encourage Elections Alberta to withdraw its court reference and permit Albertans their democratic right to participate in the citizen initiative process,' he wrote.
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Smith's post said she agrees with Amery, but adds she believes in 'Alberta sovereignty within a united Canada.'
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McClure, in his statement, said the question is 'serious and significant,' and that it has 'the potential to have profound impact on all Albertans.'
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He also clarified that he's specifically looking for a judge to rule if the proposed question contravenes specific sections of the Constitution, including the rights set out in the Charter, the enforcement of those rights, and treaty rights.
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Calls to make bail tougher to get are bad policy but easy politics, he argued, because politicians can always point to someone who committed a crime while on bail. 'If you're going to be detaining another hundred people or a few hundred people in order to reduce the likelihood that one person is going to commit another offence, I think we should be a little bit cautious,' he said. What are the concerns about tougher bail rules? Shakir Rahim, director of the criminal justice program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said that approximately 70 per cent of those in provincial remand centres are waiting for trial — up from about 20 per cent in 1982. The consequence of tougher bail rules is that they erode 'what is a core safeguard of liberty for the innocent,' he said. 'In an environment where we have record levels of bail being denied, and we have further erosions, whether through reverse onus provisions or otherwise, we really dilute the strength of that protection.' 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That is 'the canary in the coal mine to suggest your system is really seriously flawed … It's not enough to think that the answer is to put more people in there by using more reverse onus provisions.' Latimer said 'we haven't even analyzed whether the last set of reverse onus provisions have done anything.' In 2023, when the federal government introduced the previous bail reform legislation, then-justice minister Arif Virani called on provinces and territories to collect better data on bail and share that with the federal government. Rahim said we don't have any data about the number of people who reoffend while out on bail, or whether they're ultimately found guilty. 'So how can we know about … the state of the bail system, about whether reverse onuses or other policy changes work, without this information?' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 30, 2025.
