From Theo Moudakis
That lengthy and confusing damned Alberta referendum is finally over. But likely never to be forgotten. I just hope it will never be repeated.
Here is the Poliwave vote page for all of the Alberta referendum questions.With half the vote counted, Alberta is showing a Remain landslide of 76+ per cent - hopefully that will hold up.
Here is the Poliwave map showing the Remain/Leave vote so far - the red colour shows which answer leads in each riding. Deeper colour, bigger lead. (The only place showing majority support for Leave is that blue patch around Grande Prairie but its misleading because less than 4 per cent of that vote had actually been counted so far.)
On the other Nine questions, the vote is much closer. The Poliwave site shows the five anti-immigrant questions likely passing, unfortunately, while the four mostly-constitutional questions may also pass. Since it is unlikely that negotiations with Ottawa would actually implement any of these constitutional or immigration changes, I expect they will end up as just another grievance-nursing opportunity.
CTV has made the (pretty easy) call: Alberta has voted not to hold an independence referendum. With a bit less than half of the vote counted, it's 77% in favour of remain.
— Justin Ling (@justinling.ca) October 19, 2026 at 11:24 PM
In Sunday's Toronto Star, columnist Justin Ling discussed Patrick Lennox's new book On Treason - the one I had talked about in one of my blog posts last week.I understand that they need to talk to supporters on both sides of the separatist issue because otherwise Pierre Poilievre and his five supporters will January 6th the CBC building, but the lack of pushback on separatists' arguments as to why poor lil Alberta deserves righteous justice is maddening
— Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood.bsky.social) October 19, 2026 at 11:08 PM
Ling notes the Alberta separatist movement's profound disconnect with reality, a common feature now in the right wing of various democratic countries across the world:
Updates relating to the Wainwright tragedy
In the House on Monday:
The Globe and Mail covers what it was like to be at the Wainwright health centre as the casualties arrived:
Jillian Carter posted this on Threads and said it was the wind east of Leduc Alberta on Sunday. "They are straw not hay so, probably between 700 and 900 lbs." When you see these bales tumbling, you can understand how strong and fast Alberta winds can be
...to be against the Canadian Confederation isn’t treasonous.[gift link] A significant portion of Quebec has, famously, never been happy with our arrangement as a country — the majority of seats in the National Assembly are now held by sovereigntists. My native Nova Scotia bitterly fought Confederation, worried that annexation to Canada would allow its fishery to be plundered and doom the province’s most lucrative industry. (They were right.) Certainly, some will vote for independence without really wanting it, perhaps believing it will buy Alberta leverage in negotiations with Ottawa.Already, we're seeing attempts to question or undermine the results
But this isn’t about self-determination nor figuring out which configuration of self-governance would most benefit Albertans. This vote is predicated on lies. The instigators lie about a plot to destroy Alberta, they lie about the state of our conflict with Washington, they lie about the bountiful abundance that awaits their province as an independent republic — it’s lies all the way down. When my colleague Richard Warnica spent time with Mitch Sylvestre, the man whose name sits atop the referendum petition, he heard beliefs “dangerously disconnected from reality.”
You cannot separate the instigators of this cause from its outcome.
As we’ve seen time and time again — from Brexit to MAGA — paranoid populism only dresses up in the concerns of regular people. But at the earliest opportunity, proponents of these big lies revert to form. Given power, they will continue to pursue their imagined enemies, line their own pockets and find new windmills to tilt at.
Whatever the separatists claim, they do not care about the rights of First Nations people nor the concerns of working Albertans. The instigators of this cockamamie vote are hungry for power, and they will happily give away the farm to the Americans to get it.
The only way to destroy the big lie is for Albertans to turn out overwhelmingly to reject it. This independence vote will almost certainly fail — but the bigger the failure, the better we’ll be able to exorcize ourselves of this for good....
The stupid it burnsElections Alberta has used tabulators in provincial elections since at least 2014. Two of the premier's top advisors don't know this.
— Charles Rusnell (@charlesrusnell.bsky.social) October 19, 2026 at 10:18 PM
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Their memory seems extraordinarily deficient as well. Example: They can't (won't) remember how, when Danielle Smith came to power, Alberta was begging (and advertising) for more immigrants – but now half the referendum questions are essentially attacks against those immigrants come into province.
— BernardoVerda 🤔 (@bernardoverda.bsky.social) October 20, 2026 at 12:06 AM
And Tod Maffin makes a great point here:CTV just said Marlaina will be doing a press conference at 645pm tomorrow. My guess is she will say she's been vindicated by the 5 immigration questions, blame Ottawa and then declare Albertans are on the side of the UCP. With some more bullsh*t about a sovereign Alberta.
— Andrew (@hoistthatrag.bsky.social) October 20, 2026 at 12:17 AM
Updates relating to the Wainwright tragedy
In the House on Monday:
The Globe and Mail covers what it was like to be at the Wainwright health centre as the casualties arrived:
In just minutes, tiny Wainwright hospital became scene of horrors and heroism[gift link]
... When a friend told Mr. Simmons there had been an explosion at the military base, he wheeled outside and tucked himself into a corner near the emergency doors, out of the way of people coming and going, and sheltered from a wind so strong it was bending trees near the hospital almost in half.
Mr. Simmons was recording video as the first vehicles arrived with injured soldiers from the base. It didn’t take long for him to see the scope of the tragedy that had occurred, and get a sense of what was coming.
“I knew that hell was about to break loose,” he says...
It's an outstanding piece of journalism, well worth reading.
Another great article is this substack from Black Cloud Six talking about the training base at Wainwright:
...Soldiering, real soldiering not a video game, is incredibly dangerous, even in peacetime. What makes Canada’s small Army so good is that it trains as it would fight, with large-scale, combined arms exercises using live ammunition. Military training does not ordinarily stop because it rains, the wind blows, or conditions become uncomfortable. Soldiers must learn to operate under difficult and dangerous conditions approximating combat operations as closely as possible. However, there is a fundamental difference between accepting the inherent risks of military training and ignoring threats to safety. That is why the Army maintains an extensive system of controls over live-fire training. But nothing is perfect. I have run live-fire ranges in Wainwright myself several times. Once upon a time, I knew the training area like the back of my hand. Even now, years later, I am certain that I could take a visitor to any point within its boundaries without needing a map. Canada, by virtue of its size, has fantastic training areas – the envy of our allies – and this size permits activities, especially live fire, that would be difficult to conduct elsewhere. Wainwright is very busy as a result...Finally, this reminded me of Ian Tyson's"And those winds sure can blow cold way out there":
Jillian Carter posted this on Threads and said it was the wind east of Leduc Alberta on Sunday. "They are straw not hay so, probably between 700 and 900 lbs." When you see these bales tumbling, you can understand how strong and fast Alberta winds can be
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