Residents were lined up all the way out of the doors of the MacKenzie Conference Centre last week to sign the Stay Free Alberta petition, which aims to bring a referendum for Alberta separating from Canada.
Marlin MacDonald, the co-provincial lead for the area covering Drayton Valley, Devon, Beaumont, Leduc, Spruce Grove, and Stony Plain, says the petition only needs 177,000 signatures to be put forward to the province for a referendum on the question of separation.
The proposed question for the referendum is: Do you agree that the Province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?
Officially, the petition kicked off on January 3, and canvassers have until approximately May 2, to collect the signatures. Should they have enough signatories, MacDonald says the referendum could take place as early as the fall.
January 16 was the first time the petition was available in Drayton Valley as there were delays in getting the pages printed. However, more than 200,000 people had signed a letter of intent to help speed up the petition process, allowing canvassers or members of the organization to reach out to those individuals for signing the petition.
MacDonald says he’s not worried about the 465,000 signatures that the rival Forever Canadian petition garnered earlier this year.
“Their question is on policy, where ours is on constitution,” says MacDonald. “Their referendum was to… change policy so that we couldn’t have another referendum for five years.”
The petition ran from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and was located next to an information session about Alberta independence that ran from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Jason Lavigne was the emcee for the event and introduced attendees to Nadine Wellwood, a chartered investment manager, and Bruce Pardy, a law professor from Queens University, respectively.
About 200 people listened as Wellwood discussed the economic viability of separation and Pardy spoke about possibilities open to a new country with the chance to create a new constitution.
A similar event took place on Saturday afternoon at the Buck Creek Hall and drew a steady steam of people looking to sign the petition.
