Elections Alberta announced Friday that a citizen-led petition looking to force a vote on Alberta quitting Canada is successful.
The agency said it verified nearly 223,000 signatures out of almost 280,000 valid names counted.
It needed almost 178,000 signatures to be successful.
Despite the result, the separatism petition is largely moot.
It was quashed in court in May, although the ruling is being appealed by those behind the petition campaign as well as Premier Danielle Smith’s government.
Smith has cited the separatist petition and a competing pro-Canada petition as the reason why she has put a separation question on the province’s Oct. 19 referendum
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The question asks Albertans if they want to remain in Canada or hold a second, binding referendum on leaving the country.
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The premier has said the court decision throwing out the separatist petition prevented her from holding a binding vote on the issue in the fall.
Elections Alberta started verifying the signatures after a judge ruled last month that the names should still be counted in case the appeal is ultimately successful.
The judge said if the verification process was delayed any longer, it risked the integrity of the petition as those who signed it could move away or even die.
A group of First Nations challenged the petition as being unconstitutional. They argued they were not duly consulted, given the impacts separation would have on treaty rights and how holding a vote could damage the treaty relationship.
— More to come…
It would be great if Alberta separated.That would give all of the True Canadians a place to move to where we could build a civilized powerhouse of a Nation while simultaneously leaving the Elbozos, Communists and Liberals behind to wallow in their own mire.
Rigged as donny trumpy would…
The verification process conducted between July 6 and July 23 has now been completed by Elections Alberta.
“Stay Free Alberta” claimed that the petition had almost 302,000 signatures when they submitted it.
In the information released by Elections Alberta today, they stated the number of signatures on the petition was actually 279,337 – a difference between fact & fiction of more than 20,000 signatures.
Of the 279,337 signatures appearing on the petition, only 222,597 of them were verified – meaning more than 55,000 signatures on that petition were rejected as invalid.
That looks like a very big credibility issue for the “Stay Free Alberta” group when the difference between what they were claiming and what was verified differs by more than 75,000 signatures.
While the number of signatures on their petition may have met the required numbers, it is by no means the “overwhelming support” that has consistently been claimed by the petition supporters.