Comment by arrowsmith
5 hours ago
I don't get it. They're having a referendum on whether or not to have a referendum? Why bother with two steps?
I googled the Clarity Act and it appears to be recently-passed US (not Canadian) legislation about regulating cryptocurrencies or something. What's its relevance here?
I am not Canadian and know nothing about Canadian politics. Someone please enlighten me.
It's a very complicated situation in Alberta. There were basically two competing petitions. A "Forever Canada" petition which supported Alberta staying in Canada, however it was built to force the provincial government to hold a vote in parliament about separation, therefore forcing all representatives to show their true feelings on separation.
A second petition by "Stay Free Alberta" asked the government to hold a referendum on separating. However, it was blocked by a judge because a previously ruling basically said that separating would violate treaty rights of Indigenous peoples in Alberta. It's also fraught with controversy as the individuals running the petition were able to (likely illegally) obtain the voter rolls for every Albertan. They used it to build an online tool to track their progress. There is speculation (without evidence since the signatures on the petition is not public) that they simply used it to fill out the petition for people they knew. There are pieces of evidence that point to this being a possibility, for example, a Stay Free Alberta leader claimed that in some communities, nearly 98% of residents signed the petition. These are generally right leaning communities, however, getting 98% of people in a community to do a single thing would be incredibly hard.
Interestingly, my state (Wisconsin) has a two step process for constitutional amendments. An amendment has to pass a referendum in two consecutive legislative sessions. It still doesn't prevent us from doing stupid things, but it seems to be programmed as a check on hasty voting, or on people assuming that nobody's going to vote.
> I don't get it. They're having a referendum on whether or not to have a referendum?
Exactly. Albertans are scratching their heads, wondering what on earth Premier Smith is trying to accomplish. Utterly ridiculous ''solution'' to some internal problems within her party, I'm guessing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarity_Act
Bill C-20 passed in 2000. It's not so much effort to type "canadian clarity act" into a search engine or wikipedia.