By Olakunle Adeniran

September 30, 2026

On October 19th, Albertans will be handed an unusual ballot. Ten questions will ask them about immigration, public services, voting rules, judges, the Senate, federal spending power and, finally, whether Alberta should stay in Canada or start down the road toward a binding vote on leaving.

It is easy to treat these as separate issues. Read together, they raise a more basic question: Who is “we” in Alberta?

The first five questions ask who belongs fully to the Alberta political community and what that membership should entitle them to:

1. Do you support the Government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities?

2. Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law mandating that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an Alberta¬ approved immigration status will be eligible for provincially funded programs, such as health care, education and other social services?

3. Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for social support programs as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring all individuals with a non-permanent legal immigration status to reside in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for any provincially funded social support programs?

4. Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for public health care and education as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with a non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family’s use of the healthcare and education systems?

5. Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate or citizenship card, to vote in an Alberta provincial election?

The next four ask how much authority that community should hold against Ottawa:

6. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to have provincial governments, and not the federal government, select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts?

7. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to abolish the unelected federal Senate?

8. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to allow provinces to opt out of federal programs that intrude on provincial jurisdiction such as health care, education, and social services, without a province losing any of the associated federal funding for use in its social programs?

9. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to better protect provincial rights from federal interference by giving a province’s laws dealing with provincial or shared areas of constitutional jurisdiction priority over federal laws when the province’s laws and federal laws conflict?

The tenth asks whether it should stay inside Canada at all:

10. Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?

Option 1: Alberta should remain a province of Canada.

Option 2: The Government of Alberta should commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada.

The ballot was not designed as a single argument. Premier Danielle Smith announced nine questions in February; the tenth arrived in May, after rival citizen petitions and a court ruling against the separatist one. Voters will now meet these questions on one sheet of paper, in this order, and that deserves more attention than the horse race on question ten.

None of this means Albertans must choose between being Canadian and being Albertan. Most are attached to both. What the ballot does ask, again and again, is how much political weight Albertan identity should carry. For Canada’s future, that answer may matter more than the result on separation.

Start with the first five questions. They ask whether Alberta should take more control over immigration in order to reduce it and give Albertans first priority for new jobs; whether provincially funded health care, education and social supports should be limited to citizens, permanent residents and people with an “Alberta-approved” status, with waiting periods and fees for temporary residents; and whether voters should have to prove their citizenship.

Each can be argued on its merits. Together, though, they draw the boundary of membership. Who gets priority? Who qualifies, and who waits? Who gets to vote? And whose approval makes someone belong?

The government’s language points the same way. Announcing the referendum, Smith said that “Alberta taxpayers can no longer be asked to continue to subsidize the entire country,” and accused Ottawa of letting new arrivals “flood our borders.” She also framed the constitutional questions as strengthening Alberta’s position “within a united Canada.” Nothing about that seems separatist. What stands out is the company these membership questions keep.

Here, the referendum holds a real paradox. For decades, Western alienation has cast Alberta as an outsider in Canada: a province that contributes heavily, gets too little recognition and lives with decisions made elsewhere. The first five questions turn that problem of belonging inward. A province asking whether it is fully included in Canada is being asked, at the same moment, to decide who is fully included in Alberta.

That does not make Alberta’s grievances any less real. It does show how a politics of grievance can turn into a politics of membership, and membership is where disputes about federalism become disputes about identity.

There is one group the ballot’s “we” has trouble accommodating, and it is not newcomers but the First Nations whose treaties are older than the province itself.

A province asking whether it is fully included in Canada is being asked, at the same moment, to decide who is fully included in Alberta.

Treaty 6 was signed in 1876, Treaty 7 in 1877 and Treaty 8 in 1899. Alberta did not exist until 1905. First Nations have long established that their relationship is with the Crown, not with a provincial government. In January, the Confederacy of Treaty No. 6, the Blackfoot Confederacy, Tsuut’ina Nation and Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta said jointly that they “will not tolerate any action that seeks to undermine our Treaties, our Rights or our Sovereignty.”

That position has already reshaped the referendum. On May 13th, Justice Shaina Leonard of the Court of King’s Bench quashed Elections Alberta’s approval of the separatist citizen petition, on an application by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Blackfoot Confederacy, finding that First Nations should have been consulted first. Question 10 takes its current form partly because of that ruling.

The membership questions assume a settled “we”: an Alberta community deciding who else may join it. Treaty First Nations raise a prior question, which is whether that provincial community is the right body to decide anything about the land the treaties cover. Theirs is the clearest case of “who is we?” being contested right now, and it is being fought out in court, not on the ballot.

The boundary this referendum draws has two edges: one faces newcomers, the other faces nations older than the province.

Alberta’s separatism is usually explained through Western alienation: resource policy, equalization, and a sense that Ottawa does not listen. That still holds but grievance on its own cannot tell us when regional frustration becomes a claim to self-government.

A 2025 study in Publius: The Journal of Federalism by Chassé, Jacques, and Scott helps here. Both provincial identity and grievance against Ottawa predict support for decentralization. More interesting is how the two interact. In Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, where political actors regularly push for more autonomy, grievance strengthens the link between provincial identity and demands for decentralization.

Newfoundland and Labrador is the useful exception. Its residents report strong provincial identity and sharp grievances, yet the researchers found no such interaction there. They point to the province’s fiscal dependence on federal transfers and the absence of a strong autonomy movement. Newfoundland’s grievance is mostly about what it receives; Alberta’s is about what it contributes.

So, neither identity nor grievance produces separatism on its own. What matters is the step in between, when political actors connect the two and frustration over a policy becomes evidence that “our” community is being mistreated by another one.

Clark Banack’s ethnographic research in rural Alberta shows how fertile that ground can be: alienation there ran through people’s identities as Albertans, as rural citizens, and as “ordinary people,” and coloured how they processed seemingly separate issues, including immigration.

Still, five questions written by a government are not enough to paint a picture about five million people. In a Leger survey from May 2025, 44 per cent of Albertans called themselves primarily Canadian, 21 per cent primarily Albertan and 32 per cent both equally. Yet an Angus Reid poll in mid-August 2026 found 33 per cent supporting the route toward a separation referendum.

If about a fifth put their provincial identity first but a third are prepared to start the process of leaving, something beyond core identity is doing the work. The Publius findings suggest what: grievance, mobilized.

Referendums do not simply measure identities. They can in fact contribute to changing them. A recent study in the British Journal of Political Science by Larner, Griffiths, and Wincott found that after both the 2014 Scottish referendum and the 2016 Brexit vote, voters on the losing side moved away from the identity they associated with the winners. In Scotland, the shift soon faded. After Brexit, it persisted and widened.

Quebec shows how far a provincial identity can carry political claims, although it is not a perfect comparison. Quebec’s autonomy rests on language, culture and institutions, and its immigration powers under the 1991 Canada-Quebec Accord exist partly to acknowledge a distinct society.

Alberta’s identity politics has been about autonomy, contribution, fairness and control: a civic-economic idea of community rather than a cultural-national one. Political identities do not have to begin with language or ethnicity; they can be built from shared experiences of contributing and feeling overlooked.

The four constitutional questions push the same way. They ask whether provinces should select the judges of the Court of King’s Bench and Court of Appeal; whether the Senate should be abolished; whether provinces should be able to opt out of federal programs without losing the money attached; and whether provincial laws should prevail when they conflict with federal ones, reversing the principle of federal paramountcy.

This is not merely asking for “more powers for Alberta.” It is a view about where legitimate authority should sit.

Question 10 itself is non-binding. It asks Albertans to choose between affirming Alberta’s place as a province and directing the government to begin the constitutional process, per the path set by the 1998 Supreme Court of Canada Secession Reference and The Clarity Act, toward a later, binding vote.

Whatever the result, the more lasting question is what happens to Albertan identity along the way. A grievance can be negotiated. A citizen who thinks Ottawa made a bad policy can be won back when the policy changes. A citizen who comes to believe Ottawa speaks for a different political community, one whose interests keep running against “ours,” is asking a different question. A better policy will not answer it.

The British evidence shows that identity shifts after a referendum can fade or harden and much depends on what governments do next. For Ottawa, that is an argument for treating Alberta’s grievances as grievances, things to be negotiated and fixed, before they settle into something harder to move.

Canada’s longer-term challenge may not be whether Alberta votes to remain. It may be whether the language of “Alberta and Canada” gradually replaces the older language of “Alberta in Canada.”

The difference between those two phrases is small on the page. In a federation, it can eventually become enormous.

Olakunle Adeniran is Program Manager (Gender Equality & Youth Program) for the Forum of Fdederations.