This article was originally published in the National Post.
By Brian Lee Crowley, October 16, 2025
Alberta is seriously misreading its hand in the high-stakes game of constitutional poker.
Inspired by Quebec’s successes, Alberta is almost certainly going to hold a referendum on secession. This move is made possible by legislation that allows citizen-initiated referenda when enough voters sign a petition demanding one.
This means that while Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government is not technically calling the referendum, it made the referendum possible by changing the law to make it easier for citizen groups to trigger such votes.
Smith, herself a fervent advocate for Canada, likely did this to conciliate the secessionist minority in her own political base, thinking that a referendum defeat would take the wind out of their sails and leave Alberta’s negotiating position with Ottawa unaffected.
Yet if Quebec’s experience is anything to go by, this strategy will achieve the exact opposite of what the premier hopes. A defeat in such a referendum does not leave the parties’ negotiating power where it was before the vote. On the contrary, it fatally undermines the losing party’s position.
Think about Quebec’s bargaining strategy with Ottawa prior to the Parti Québécois’ first referendum in 1980.
The rise of the Quebec Liberals under Jean Lesage led to a golden age in Quebec’s influence in Ottawa. But it was around that time that overtly separatist parties like the RIN made their appearance on the scene, and Rene Levesque, a popular firebrand minister in the Lesage government, found it increasingly hard to hide his separatist leanings. The president of France came to Montreal and essentially put his prestige behind the independence movement.
The uncertainty this created was a godsend to Lesage and the other Quebec premiers who followed him. In poker terms, this allowed Quebec to transform a relatively weak hand into a winning one by bluffing.
Ottawa was constantly invited to contemplate what the consequences would be of refusing Quebec’s latest demand. The not-too-subtle implication was that the future of the country was in play and any failure of Quebec to get its way would play into the hands of those trying to break up the country.
But the essence of bluffing as a strategy is the unpredictability it creates in the mind of your opponent. In the case of Quebec, everything depended on Ottawa being unsure, if push came to shove, whether Quebecers would choose to remain in Canada if offered the choice.
Fast forward to the 1980 referendum on “sovereignty-association” called by Premier Levesque. While the question asked was muddy and hedged with qualifications, everyone was clear that the question really was whether Quebecers wanted to remain in Canada. A win would have given powerful momentum to the independence movement.
In the event, however, the Levesque government’s proposal was roundly defeated, with around 60 per cent of Quebecers voting “Non.”
Then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau immediately understood that Quebec had called its own bluff, and in so doing, destroyed its bargaining power. There was no longer uncertainty about Quebecers’ attachment to Canada, as they had voted to remove it.
It was Quebec’s self-inflicted wound that made possible what came next. Having campaigned on a vague promise to “renew federalism” if Quebec voted no, Trudeau felt empowered to override Quebec’s traditional objections to any increase in federal power and to a constitutional amending formula that did not give Quebec a veto.
The result was the constitutional reforms of 1982, including the Charter and an amending formula with no Quebec veto. None of this would have been possible had Levesque not fatally undermined his own bargaining position through an ill-advised referendum.
Had a pre-referendum Quebec premier presented the Meech Lake Accord as Quebec’s constitutional demands, odds are that the Rest of Canada would have accepted it. But following the referendum loss, the rest of the country felt emboldened to reject it.
Something similar could be said about the second Quebec referendum in 1995. While the margin of the federalist victory was narrow, the provincial government’s authority to speak for Quebecers was again weakened.
The result was Ottawa’s secession reference to the Supreme Court of Canada. The court’s ruling, while recognizing the legitimacy of a referendum on a province’s membership in Confederation, imposed serious restrictions, such as the clarity of the question, the margin of victory required to trigger negotiations over secession and the illegality of unilateral secession.
Seizing the moment, the government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien adopted the Clarity Act, which gave Ottawa far greater authority to resist unilateral referenda on independence and therefore again weakened Quebec’s long-term bargaining power based on the implicit or explicit threat of leaving Canada.
Without a referendum, both the reference to the court and the Clarity Act would likely have been seen as foolhardy provocations. Yet after two referendum defeats, the Rest of Canada was not in the mood to be bullied.
The Alberta autonomist movement has long been inspired by what its proponents see as Quebec’s success in getting what it wants out of Ottawa, but these Quebec admirers have misunderstood what worked, and what didn’t.
The most valuable lesson Albertans can take away from the struggles between Ottawa and Quebec is that Quebec was at its most powerful when it skilfully bluffed, using the separation card to frighten Ottawa.
Every time Quebec foolishly called its own bluff with unwise referendums on secession, it lost prestige and authority at the negotiating table and opened the door to unilateral federal action that was inimical to Quebec’s interests. And if polling today in Alberta is any guide, secession is very much a minority taste in Wild Rose Country, too.
This doesn’t mean that a referendum strategy can’t be harnessed to serve Alberta’s interests. Used properly, a referendum could rally Albertans to present a unified front on a series of issues in which the province has consistently been taken advantage of by Ottawa.
Suppose, for example, that the premier put forward a package of demands that would significantly improve Alberta’s position in Confederation and unlock prosperity for both Alberta and the rest of the country.
It would be up to the premier to define the content of such a package, but she has already put in place the machinery to do so, including the Alberta Next Panel, which is specifically tasked to come up with a set of proposals after wide consultations with Albertans. Those demands could include:
- reform major project approval processes to make the outcomes more certain, the timing quicker and the rules more fair;
- use federal powers to prevent provinces from standing in the way of national infrastructure;
- get Ottawa to co-finance (with Alberta) pipelines and other infrastructure needed to remove all impediments to the success of the oil and gas industry, until private-sector confidence is restored;
- have Ottawa compensate Alberta for any discount in the price of Alberta oil and gas relative to world prices due to captive production;
- remove the oilsands emissions cap and the West Coast tanker ban;
- enact an economic charter of rights to remove all internal barriers to trade;
- rebalance fiscal federalism to bring Alberta’s contribution more in line with the benefits it receives;
- overhaul equalization;
- have the Alberta government take over all aspects of immigration not related to national security and granting of citizenship;
- reform the Canada Pension Plan to recognize the disproportionate contribution of Alberta’s young population;
- remove conditions on all federal transfers; and
- adhere to strict representation by population in the House of Commons.
While these are merely suggestions, whatever the final package’s contents are, the point is that the Government of Alberta could significantly improve its claim to represent the interests of Albertans by putting such a package in front of them and, through a referendum, asking them to grant the premier a mandate to negotiate on their behalf.
Crucially, the referendum should also include a commitment to bring the final package back to Albertans in a subsequent referendum, with a recommendation by the premier to accept or reject what Ottawa has agreed to. The benefits of such a strategy are legion, but I will mention just two.
First, instead of a doomed referendum campaign over independence that would divide Albertans and weaken the province’s negotiating hand, this strategy offers all Albertans a chance to express their desire to redress some of the inequities that have plagued the province’s relations with Ottawa.
Second, a referendum mandate puts the onus on Ottawa. Federal representatives will be less able to play chicken in the negotiations, betting that minor technocratic concessions and a few billions in new transfers will buy peace.
They will not be negotiating with a premier whose stance may or may not be supported by the province’s voters, as those voters will have tethered themselves explicitly to the proposals being negotiated. Federal officials will know that they will have to go before the Alberta electorate to justify the results of the negotiations and that if the premier campaigns against them, there is a good chance they will be rejected.
A successful negotiation and referendum endorsement would be a moment of great strength for both Alberta and Canada; while a loss would be a moment of great strength for Alberta (Ottawa would have essentially rejected a good faith offer by sincere Canadians in Alberta) and a moment of great weakness for Ottawa.
If Alberta is determined to have a referendum on independence, or on changing allegiances and taking up U.S. President Donald Trump’s invitation to become the 51st state, this would be the moment to hold it.
My hope, however, is that the negotiations will succeed and no such vote would be necessary. Even just the implication that the Alberta government would not obstruct such a citizen-initiated referendum in the event of a failure in the negotiations raises the stakes for Ottawa and adds weight to Alberta’s demands.
Alberta has been treated shamefully by Ottawa at many points, and never more so than the last decade, so my sympathies are largely with Alberta in its struggles to be treated with respect and fairness by the federal government.
So it is as a westerner and friend of Albertans that I urge them to be very careful what they wish for, and to understand how Quebec’s recent history teaches us that referenda are a double-edged sword. Only when used thoughtfully and strategically can they advance Alberta’s interests.
Brian Lee Crowley is the founder and managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
