Premier Danielle Smith has reiterated she is not behind the push for a referendum on Alberta’s future in Canada.At a recent press conference in Ottawa, she responded to a reporter’s question by shining the spotlight on former Alberta deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk, as the driving force behind a province-wide petition known as the “Alberta Forever Canada” petition that was launched in June..The petition asks Albertans whether the province should remain a part of Canada.According to the CBC, as of Friday, the petition had collected roughly 230,000 signatures — about 80% of the nearly 294,000 required from eligible voters before the Oct. 28 deadline.Smith said she’s not involved in the campaign.“I’ve been supporting a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada,” she said,“Thomas Lukaszuk is the person behind that petition.”The petition is filed under the legislative proposal option, meaning that Lukaszuk is hoping the question will be brought to the legislature for a vote by MLAs, rather than proceeding as a public referendum.“We don't need to have a referendum. That is why we very strategically filed this petition under the policy stream, not the constitutional stream,” Lukaszuk told the CBC in July.Lukaszuk said he has around 5,000 volunteers across Alberta helping to gather signatures..Alberta Prosperity Founder says a successful independence referendum would fix Canada.“It sounds like [Lukaszuk has] gotten 200,000 signatures,” Smith told reporters, stating she is watching the process with great interest.“It may well be that he gets enough signatures for it to be put to a vote... He's also operating under the old rules, [where there’s] a higher bar and a lower period to collect... That law was in place before I got in.”Smith also took shots at former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government’s policies for having fueledthe Alberta independence debate.“I've told Prime Minister Mark Carney that Justin Trudeau created an independence movement in Alberta, and he can take the wind out of it,” Smith said, reiterating she is worried about investment capital coming into the province.“All [Carney] has to do is just address the nine bad laws that have depressed our economy for the past ten years,” she said.“I'm really worried that we're going to have the same ten bad years that we had over the last ten bad years because of the federal Liberal policies.“So I would say that that's been the biggest depression in investment capital in our province. And I'm hoping that we'll be able to get to an agreement by mid-November so that we can turn the page on that.”
