William D. Marriott is a retired Economist who specialized in public policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.The final vote percentage really matters, even for next year’s election.Remember that Premier Danielle Smith’s top priority isn’t the referendum but winning the coming general election. She may have been better served if she had treated the past six weeks like they were next year.Instead, ignoring the existential threat independence supporters pose to the UCP, she thought Alberta could take some time to reflect on its core identity and its place within Canada. But no, Naheed Nenshi’s NDP decided to hijack this debate in favour of a partisan NDP vs. UCP battle. The NDP continued its strategy from the last election, making it about Smith’s personality and character. And it has partially worked, at least if the polls can be believed, as they show higher support levels for the NDP and a drop in Smith’s personal popularity. Will this shift prevail in the October 19 vote?First of all, the emotional forces fuelling both sides are both powerful and primal.Patriotism is the ‘go-to’ fuel when a country is under existential threat. However, it works for both sides, one of which believes that Alberta values are under attack and that the way to save a continually faltering Canada leads through a stronger, more influential Alberta.When you play the fear card, you are really exploiting people’s lack of knowledge about the basic forces driving society, whether economic, psychological, or medical. We saw this in spades with the COVID hysteria, and you would think that we should have learned something.If anger acts as a catalyst, the resulting decisions are very rarely judged to be wise. And yet we are seeing this in the angry comments and letters and the vilification and vandalism by one side particularly.Calls to justice and equal treatment are powerful forces as well. They have fuelled revolutions and will never go out of style. Respect remains a central core value of our society, particularly in intentionally adversarial situations like courts of law or houses of parliament.And finally, hope can be a powerful motivator, particularly if we are considering our children and grandchildren..The question remains: how will today’s animated debate, driven by these emotions, affect the general election one year from now?Let’s look at some different October 19 scenarios.First off, any ‘proceed to another referendum’ result of less than 30% is the end of both Danielle Smith and the fragile coalition called the United Conservative Party (UCP). For those who think a rout of the independence supporters will quiet them and magically erase the issue of Alberta’s unaddressed grievances, you may want to try reading the room one more time. The genie of Alberta’s legitimate issues is firmly out of the bottle, and this can of worms is impossible to re-can. Besides, a resounding victory by some odd collaboration of Thomas Lukaszuk, Naheed Nenshi, Jason Kenney, Danielle Smith, and Mark Carney would surely be the oddest of all Alberta political collaboration oddities. Below 30%, some independence supporters, who are mostly ego (hat) and no cattle, will want Smith’s blood and control of the UCP. They will not stop until they get it or destroy both in the process. A year from now, many angry left-leaning UCP voters will vote for Thomas Lukaszuk, who will run with Peter Guthrie’s Progressive Tories. The more hardline independence supporters will move to either the Republican Party of Alberta or another newly formed independence party. Naheed Nenshi will campaign on raising the thresholds for citizen initiatives, if not outlawing them outright. And perhaps the NDP will even propose some weird ban on “Canadian denialism” to go with the trends towards banning climate change denialism and residential school denialism. Remember, not so long ago it was illegal for oil companies to talk about their environmental initiatives. Because of support for these absurd, undemocratic ideologies and vote splitting, Nenshi will surely become the next premier. At the other extreme, a result of more than 50% for ‘Option 2’ would trigger all of the horrors that have been paraded before us these last several weeks [warning! — satire ahead]. Because of ‘uncertainty,’ the Canadian dollar and stock market will collapse, oil and gas flows from Alberta will stop, Alberta capital investment will evaporate, and tens of thousands of Alberta seniors will move to Saskatchewan, taking their lucrative CPP benefits with them. The real estate market will collapse, as will employment, except at liquor/cannabis stores and Tim Hortons. The Canadian Army will face off using drones on the US Marines at Coutts. In short, an apoplectic apocalypse. To quote Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!” Might happen, but thankfully it is uncertain.More likely, the ‘let’s continue to have a debate’ vote will get more than 30%, but will it be as high as 40%, and does either of these numbers signify some critical threshold? Ted Morton, in recommending an Option 2 vote, opined that even a vote above 20% would “open a window ... for a discussion to catalyze responsible change”, but “To create that political leverage needed for meaningful reforms, the leave vote will need to be in the 30% to 40% range.” Odd for him to use the word “leave” to characterize Option 2..It is important to remember that Option 2 actions, broadly considered, are already happening. Thus, hoping to stop “the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum” is a bit late. Alberta government lawyers have already provided legal briefings and opinions to Cabinet on both the Supreme Court’s reference decision on Quebec secession and the federal Clarity Act. No doubt they have reported that secession is allowed under certain conditions. More importantly, they probably recommended that the Clarity Act needs either a similar reference review or a direct challenge to its constitutionality. And then there is the not-so-small matter of the appeal of a judge overturning Mitch Sylvestre’s petition. Oh, and just to make matters interesting, the First Nations have now filed an application for judicial review in Federal Court challenging Ottawa’s decision to designate the Pacific Link pipeline as a project in the national interest. So there are a lot of unfinished ‘legal processes’ ultimately influencing how Alberta can hold a binding provincial referendum.But if Option 2 manages 40%, Smith can vigorously read the riot act to both the independence supporters and her party, saying, “Give me till after the next election to sort out these issues, and leeway to negotiate a new constitutional deal with the First Ministers. After that, UCP members can decide my future, and we can let Albertans decide if they want a binding referendum, or if they would rather have Naheed Nenshi as Premier.” As the current premier and leader of the UCP, she should be given a chance to make this work. And perhaps once again the agile cat, Smith, will land on her feet.But is there any chance of Option 2 making 40%? Maybe. For example, Mac Van Wielingen’s op-ed in the Herald is a calm and accurate assessment of the oil industry’s view of Ottawa. Further, he sums up what thousands of oil patch workers viscerally know to be true — it’s time for a substantive change, not just for Alberta’s natural resource industries but for all Canadian resource development. In short, to save Canada, we need to save Alberta first.But what do I personally think is going to happen? (If you don’t care, please vote, but you can stop reading.)It is probably a mug’s game to provide a prediction about the vote on Question ten, and yet a few observations can provide a reasoned view of what we can likely expect.First, an opinion on the polling. 338canada.com, the polling aggregator, gives the ‘Leave’ side a probability of 23% with a plus or minus of 6%. If we factor in the usual conservative/liberal statistical bias, then that gives us at least 29% as a likely floor. However, we know that on the independence question, the Option 2 side is generally less likely to even answer the phone and is likely ‘shy’ about answering candidly. So it would not be unreasonable to add another 5%, so we are now in the mid-30% range. The second factor is turnout. The turnout of 80% to 85% anticipated by Elections Alberta will never happen. Even for the 2019 Kenney romp over Notley, the turnout was only 67%. In the far more consequential 2023 vote, only 59% showed up since those UCP voters who could not ‘hold their noses’ and vote for Smith just chose to not vote at all. Many of them will not repeat that mistake. I think the turnout will max out at about 65%, which will help the Option 2 folks..Finally, it is probably trite to say that the side that wants this most will likely win. It has been said that independence supporters “will crawl across broken glass” to break up Canada. I’m not sure about broken glass, but I did wait one and a half hours to cast a vote at an advance poll. Hopefully, most voters will take advantage of this option because voting-day line-ups will likely be much longer. The question is: who is more likely to drop out of the line and not bother voting? Answer: the person who, in their heart, knows that their vote doesn’t make any difference. This is what happened in the Calgary Shaw by-election. The NDP didn’t win; the UCP just didn’t bother showing up because it didn’t affect Smith’s majority. Plus, there was bleeding of votes to the Progressive Tories and the Liberals that will likely disappear in a ‘real’ election. In this referendum, it is the Option 1 voters who know that an Option 2 vote isn’t really a vote to separate at all, and they can always ‘fight another day’ when the hard stay/leave question is being asked. Why not skip the line-up and watch TV instead?Even with that being said, I don’t think the final result will make it into the 40% range, making Smith’s work that much harder.There is a lot going on with the vote on October 19, not the least of which is dealing on October 20 with the consequences of having missed what was a golden opportunity.So vote. Suffer the wait and the cumbersome voting procedure; you may not get another chance.William D. Marriott is a retired Economist who specialized in public policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.
