Understanding Alberta's Separation Referendum

Jared Wesley on anti-immigrant messaging, US influence and what happens after Monday's vote.
By Jared Wesley.
Jared Wesley, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, is on the award-winning 'Conversation Weekly' podcast discussing the Alberta independence referendum being held Monday and his work in community town halls throughout the province leading up to the vote. The following is a shorter version of that compelling conversation. It's been edited for length and clarity.
The Conversation: What's the mood in Alberta right now just a few days before the referendum?
Jared Wesley: There's a lot of uneasiness in most Alberta communities. This is the largest exercise in direct democracy in Canadian history. Never before in one event have we seen so many questions put to the public for a vote. So I think there's a lot of confusion.
There are 10 referendum questions in total, five related to immigration. Tell us a bit about them.
They aren't particularly concisely worded and a lot of folks are struggling to understand them. A lot of my work at community town halls is trying to provide a non-partisan perspective on why the government has introduced these questions and how people can make sense of them. Public opinion polls show quite consistently over the last two years that about 70 to 75 per cent of Albertans want to remain in Canada. And so folks in Alberta are either animated and ready to come out to the polls and vote to remain, or they're quite confused as to why an issue that's only supported by about 25 per cent of the population has made its way onto a referendum ballot and captured the world's attention. So there's a lot of confusion around the process and why we're holding this vote in the first place.
Let's rewind a bit to the 1970s when there were first calls for Alberta's independence. What was that movement about?
The sense of what we call western alienation has really been part of Alberta's political DNA since it joined Canadian Confederation, all the way back in 1905. These sentiments were captured by a political cartoon that featured a giant cow, and this cow was positioned across the entire country of Canada. It's eating in Western Canada. It's being fed hay by some burly farmers. It's being milked in Central Canada, particularly in Ottawa but also the financial capitals of Toronto and Montreal. So the notion has always been that the West has been feeding more into Central Canada in terms of natural resources; originally agriculture, but now it's oil and gas. So western alienation is imbued with this sense that Albertans put more into Canada than they get out, and we've seen versions and manifestations of that over time.
There's a successful separatist party in Quebec. Why never in Alberta?
Similar parties have been tried in Western Canada, but they failed to win seats. Looking at other far-right populist movements in the United States and in the United Kingdom, folks started saying: "We don't need to start our own political party to make this work. We simply need to infiltrate mainstream parties and, in particular, governing parties." That change in strategy by groups called Take Back Alberta and others was the start of a new approach to Alberta separatism and one of the main reasons why we're now seeing separatism on the public agenda.
Where are separatist groups getting money? Is there funding and support from both inside and outside Canada?
Alberta and Canada have some fairly strict campaign finance laws. And so since the campaign started, disclosures have been made available publicly so we can see who's donating. Most separatist organizations are drawing fairly large amounts of money — the maximum contributions of about $5,000 per person. But what's less clear is where the initial funding for these organizations came from. How did one of the largest separatist organizations, the Alberta Prosperity Project, start off with a $1-million endowment? Where did that money come from? We do hav...