Alberta riding with highest independence support reveals deeper rural frustrations

CALGARY — With the dust having settled on the Alberta referendum, only two ridings in the province had over 50% support for Premier Danielle Smith’s government to begin the process of holding a binding vote on independence.One of them, Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre, had the most support across Alberta, with 50.9% of voters (12,687 votes) choosing Option 2, while 49.1% (12,220 votes) were against leaving Canada.The other — Central Peace-Notley — had 50.4% support (6,515 votes).However, despite the small margin, frustration with Ottawa and a feeling that rural communities are being overlooked helped to spur on support for pursuing independence in the riding, according to those who landed on opposite sides of the vote in Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre..TOP TEN: Alberta electoral districts with the highest support for independence .Rimbey Mayor Rick Pankiw, who voted to remain in Canada, said the narrow result did not surprise him.“I was not surprised because it's the feeling I had when talking with voters, whether it would be at coffee time or on the streets,” Pankiw told the Western Standard.“A lot of voters felt that they're not being heard at the federal level.”Pankiw said one of the biggest concerns that was frequently raised in conversations he had with local residents was immigration levels, which many felt were unsustainable.“That’s the biggest thing that I heard and I actually agree with it,” he said.“If you go back to last year when the federal government started limiting the amount of immigrants, our premier at that time said, ‘Alberta will take as many as you want to give us.’“[That’s] not a very good statement, and I think it's come back to bite our provincial government a little bit.”.He also believes that support for Option 2 on the independence question included people who wanted to leave Canada as well as those who were just hoping to send Ottawa a message, but did say the frustrations rural Albertans have extend beyond the federal government and its policies.Having served as mayor for more than 13 years, Pankiw said he has repeatedly heard promises that provincial leaders would listen to rural communities, only to see those expectations go unmet.“We believe that our governments are forgetting that we even exist. They're catering so much to urban Albertans than rural Albertans, who actually are the ones who elect our premier,” he said.“We feel like we've been forgotten. Every, every time we have an election year, we've been promised that this new leader, this new government, will listen to and act on rural Alberta. That has not happened in my thirteen years.”He added that provincial support has failed to keep pace with infrastructure needs, leaving municipalities struggling to fund repairs and residents facing higher taxes.However, despite those frustrations, Pankiw said his own choice was clear.“I voted to remain within Canada,” he said.“I’m a proud Canadian. All I have to do is look to our neighbours to the south, and I believe that if people in Canada feel we have no leadership, well, the US has zero leadership in Mr. Trump, in my opinion.”.PINDER: Alberta's independence fight is just beginning.For Rod Schaff, a retired businessman in the Rimbey area with a background in farming, drilling-rig manufacturing and oilfield equipment servicing, the same sense of Western alienation led him to vote a different way than Pankiw.Schaff said he has supported Alberta independence for roughly four or five years, but had considered it earlier becausehe believes Alberta never gets a “fair shake” and that people in the West are not listened to by the federal government.“They don't listen to us out West,” he told the Western Standard.“[Option 2] was the only hope we ever have of getting out of Liberal control.”He also said his experiences as a business owner influenced his views on Alberta’s place in Canada, adding there were other business owners and “big farmers” in the area who would have voted for Option 2 as well.“We're the people in the country that don't get handouts,” he stated.“Anybody that voted one is either scared they weren't gonna get their pensions.”Schaff also estimated that people he knew who supported beginning the process of holding a binding referendum were divided between committed independence supporters and those who were seeking to put pressure on Ottawa, believing that having the federal government sit up and take notice of Albertans’ anger could influence Alberta’s treatment in Confederation.“Treat us like Quebec. If we had all the rights Quebec had out here, we might be just doing fine,” he said..Another mayor in the riding, Shane Boniface of Rocky Mountain House, much like his Rimbey counterpart, was unsurprised by the result but did express concerns to the Western Standard over the divisions that were caused by the referendum.“It was very much like the COVID times. Everybody had an opinion, and it created division,” Boniface stated.“I don't like that for my community.”He also believes that the Option 2 supporters he spoke with genuinely favoured independence, adding that he doesn’t think the issues faced by Alberta are entirely unique and that other people in other provinces have the same issues and concerns as Albertans.“I don't know we're unique in that, it's just that we had finally come to the point where we needed to send a message, whatever that message was,” Boniface stated, adding that he had voted to stay but might have voted differently if he were a younger man.“I come from a proud military family, and the little bit that I've traveled, I always tell people I'm from Canada, then I say Rocky Mountain House, Alberta,” he stated.“I understood why everybody was upset. If that had, question had come to me 30 years ago when I was a younger man, I probably would have voted to separate. Now that I'm a much older, I go, ‘I see both sides of this coin.’”.Over in Sundre, Mayor Richard Warnock declined to weigh in on the referendum’s results when contacted by the Western Standard for comment but did say that the constituency-wide outcome should not be treated as a result specific to his town.“As Mayor my responsibility is to represent our residents on municipal matters. I respect the democratic process, but I believe commentary on the referendum itself or its results is best left to provincial representatives,” he wrote in an email statement.“I understand the interest in this issue, but I don't believe I should use my position as Mayor and/or spokesperson for our Council to comment on a province-wide political question on behalf of the community. Residents are entitled to their own views, and my responsibility is to represent them fairly, regardless of their individual opinions.”For Boniface, the almost 75% rejection of Option 2 by Alberta’s voters doesn’t remove the need for Ottawa to respond to Albertans’ concerns.When asked what message he would send to Prime Minister Mark Carney, he called for immediate action.“There's issues here that need to be addressed, and you need to pay attention to them, and you need to pay attention to them now,” Boniface stated.“Not five or ten years from now. Now.”

Alberta riding with highest independence support reveals deeper rural frustrations

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