William D. Marriott is a retired economist who specialized in public policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.Now that we are in September, the independence campaign news and analysis will ramp up significantly. Many of you are already disgusted or bored and may have checked out or tuned out the daily drama. Also, many of you have already made up your minds on Option 1 or Option 2 and don’t need any more information. But there still may be some curious folks who would like a route map through all the hysteria. Or maybe you just want a quick reference to keep you up to date. If you only make one media stop per week, this may be the right place. Also, feel free to use what you read for ammunition in discussions with friends and family.Of course, Keith Wilson is also providing regular updates on Youtube. Each weekend between now and October 19, I will provide my perspective on the state of the debate, along with my assessment of who won or lost the preceding week. I am not unbiased, but at least I will declare up-front both my position and the particular conceptual framework I will be using to review the proceedings. Some of this I have already provided in my Open Letter, so that is a good place to start if you wish to understand my perspective.First of all, I will be voting for Option 2 because it enhances Alberta’s leverage with the Rest of Canada (ROC) starting on October 20. Option 1 doesn’t mean progress can’t be made to gain more respect for Alberta, but it means that any progress will be slow and can be reversed at any time if not accompanied by concurrent structural democratic change. When the best you can aim for is “thanks for not screwing us over,” you are very likely to be continually disappointed and occasionally outraged.Second, I tend to analyze the news from the perspective of the objectives of the parties engaged in the campaign. Often their motivations, and consequently their actions and statements, have nothing to do with the question at hand and are entirely about what they really want.For example, everything Smith and Nenshi do from here forward is driven almost entirely by the general election in fall 2027. The referendums are a subtext for the broader, and far more important, election campaign which we are now in. For Smith, she does not use Nenshi’s name because it feeds the Nenshi cult which delivered him the NDP leadership. Rather, she refers to him as “the NDP official opposition leader.” A small but effective dig at his tenuous hold on that position..And the Alberta NDP, having noticed the lack of broader voter connections with Nenshi and the outright fear of Avi Lewis’ far Far Left views, now talk of ‘Alberta’s New Democrat Caucus’ and regularly parade folks who they hope will have more appeal than Nenshi. It won’t help the party but will certainly allow a whole bunch of leader wanna-bes to test the waters in advance of the inevitable NDP leadership contest after the next provincial election.Third, the mainstream media, which in Alberta is just one company publishing four newspapers, is a great disappointment in fulfilling their obligation as a non-partisan arbitrator in the debate. Of course you already know this, which is why you are reading the Western Standard. The mainstream media’s biggest misdirection on this issue is to continue to call the October 19 vote a “separation” vote. It is no such thing, but this fact will do nothing to stoke the “fear and loathing” that they hope to instill in the average voter. Nonetheless, I will report on it here so you can bring some semblance of truth and perspective in your discussions with friends and family. And also to gauge my scorecard as I attempt to judge the effect on the typical voter.The real tragedy of this media failure is that it undermines the public confidence in the institution, the so-called fourth estate. No wonder more and more people are tuning into their social media feeds or turning to alternative media or tuning out altogether.But on to this week’s highlights.Veteran Calgary Herald columnist Chris Nelson says things are so bad for Nenshi that, depending on the vote in the September 14 by-election in Calgary Shaw, he may be gone before Christmas. This would be great but unlikely, as the NDP have never been a party quick on their feet and tend to hang on to past loyalties long beyond their best-before dates. But Chris also makes a great point in saying the tally for the newly minted Progressive Tory Party will be interesting, as Peter Guthrie and Tom Lukaszuk are both hoping for political rebirth in this party just a shade left of the UCP.You may want to take Don Braid rants about the brilliance of defying the bully Trump to heart when your son or daughter gets laid-off due to Canadian retaliatory tariffs. And those of you who may be independence-minded might also be surprised to know that you are agents of Donald Trump. “Every move Trump makes hurts the Alberta separatist movement that has deep ties to the U.S.” This type of fear-mongering will likely escalate but eventually backfire. Also, Rob Breakenridge didn’t get the memo, as he argues that Doug Ford’s willingness to sacrifice Alberta might actually help the independence side in this debate. Ya think? Ford isn’t backing down, and he seems to think that calling Smith and Moe traitors will enhance Canadian unity. It was almost comical to see Ted Morton and Jack Major remind Albertans that federal interference in Alberta’s oil and gas business is illegal. Of course that didn’t stop either Trudeau 1.0 or Trudeau 2.0 from doing it. The only thing stopping Carney now is the referendum on October 19. .The polling results released last week should be largely ignored because, at best, they reflect the problems with modern political polling. Generally, when polls are released they are trying to convince you to agree with a position rather than giving an accurate picture of what people actually think. Also, they never qualify their respondents by verifying if they ever actually vote. How predictive can that be?If you are really interested in this polling stuff, you should look at aggregators like Eric Grenier or Phillipe Fournier. These guys tell a different story. When the differential between stay/leave varies by as much as 20% or five times the margin of error, you know the poll is meaningless. Also, when Leger announces that the “undecided” have risen significantly, more than doubling, then you know that the curious are starting to think hard. It is also important to look at where the trends are going, but only by looking at the same pollster at different points in time. And finally, the pollsters know that they generally underestimate the conservative vote, usually by about a five-point spread. I think (an opinion only) this will likely mean an additional ten percentage points on the Option 2 numbers so they are now close to the pure “separation” numbers that were reported after the Liberals won the election last spring. The pollsters will change their tune as time goes on and they realize the lopsided predictions will affect voter turnouts and skew the actual results in favour of Option 2. The polls in the final week will be “surprisingly” close, but by then nobody will be reading.By far the most disappointing entree into last week’s debate is Gary Mar’s bald-faced lies through the Canada West Foundation. He has forever tarnished the reputation of this institution as an independent “honest broker” of Western Canadian interests. When you have to repeatedly emphasize your work is a “non-partisan policy project,” then we can be assured that it is anything but. “Its goal, Mar said, is not to tell Albertans how to vote, but to give them a clearer picture of what separation could mean in practice before they head to the polls.” With all due respect, Mr. Mar, “separation” is not on the ballot. The report confirms that Alberta grievances are real, and yet the report at no point lays out any solutions on how to address those grievances. In an op-ed from August 22, Mr. Mar was a little bit more vague: the study “does not tell Albertans how to vote. It is intended to give them a clearer understanding of the choices before them.” Really? It seems that where you ended up was choosing to obscure the actual choices before them: the status quo vs leverage to do better. Perhaps Mr. Mar is also looking for some sort of political resurrection with Peter Guthrie and Tom Lukaszuk. My advice is to not give up your day job.An underreported story on Elections Alberta activities was a bit of a shocker, as it claims there have been 225,000 special ballots mailed out for the referendums. This is compared to around 60,000 for the 2023 general election. So interest is definitely up, although the 2023 election saw more than 100,000 fewer voters than in 2019. This high interest may also reflect that the voting day will be very time-consuming, with 10 ballots all having to be deposited in different boxes. What is certain is that a lot of these mail-in ballots will be spoiled as folks fail to meet the mailing deadlines. I think this will benefit Option 2, as they are more likely to vote in person, and the other side may procrastinate on the mail-in and then not bother with the in-person. I personally vote in the advance polls to avoid the crush on election day. And finally, here is who I think won the contest last week. Picking an actual number for the final vote tally is foolhardy, but last week the Option 2 folks made substantial progress.William D. Marriott is a retired economist who specialized in public policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.
