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Originally Posted by Wolven
I don't think the UCP will let the Forever-Canadian question go to referendum. More likely they would let it go to committee where the decision would then be to dismiss the question because the report would show that Alberta should absolutely stay in Canada and it does not make sense for the government to put that question on the ballot. (The referendum only works if it is a 'people led' question)
As much as the UCP are willing to flirt with separatism and support the people driving it to referendum, it is a very different thing for the UCP to outright declare in legislature that they are separatists. That is a level of political suicide that I think they are trying to avoid.
As for the new ridings, yes, I think the UCP is interested in an election before those ridings are put in place. However, I thought they were still trying to steal those ridings from the big cities and put them in rural areas to "reduce the driving time of MLAs" or something equally stupid. It goes hand in hand with their gerrymandering plan for Lethbridge and really reinforces the idea that we should simply convert the province over to a proportional representation government. It makes no sense for a vote in slave lake to have 3 times the voting power of a vote in downtown Calgary.
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It will definitely be interesting to see how they handle it. While this has been a uniting issue for people across many different spectrums, the outcome that satisfies folks is an interesting question. I wonder if most people will take no referendum (ie the prevention of a referendum) as a sufficient 'win' here. While those of us more engaged would like to see a clear and strong policy adopted, or a referendum where the issue gets stomped out emphatically.
But I worry there is a lot of leeway for them to quietly bury this into obscurity while satisfying the letter of the law:
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3. Within 90 days if the Assembly is sitting, or within 15 days after the commencement of the next sitting, the committee may either table a report with respect to the policy proposal at the earliest practicable opportunity or table a report recommending the policy proposal be referred to the Lieutenant Governor in Council for the purpose of a referendum.
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Where a report leads to an amendment to the Alberta Bill of Rights (or whatever makes sense) along the lines of:
Whereas a long and rambling preamble that says nothing of substance, the following is to be added : Albertans are Canadians.
The other thing on the election front is that apparently an interim report on the MHCare scandal comes on Sep 24. Who knows how much if anything the public gets to see, but if there is any indication that their dubiously designed investigation is going to blow up in their face, maybe they try to get ahead of it, too. I doubt they'll trade in 2 more years of security (particularly when the party brass knows they can just revert to the old playbook of blaming+punting Marlaina before the election.