Forever Canadian advocating for Albertans to vote yes on potentially confusing separatism question

The Forever Canadian movement announced they will be shifting gears as they launched their “Get Out the Vote” campaign on Monday, a month before the upcoming referendum.

A day earlier, the non-partisan movement hosted their Calgary Unity Party at the Confluence, which saw over 10,500 attendees, said leader and former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk at a media event in their Calgary headquarters along Riverfront Ave.

Over the last year and a half, they have collected more than 450,000 signatures from Albertans looking to remain part of a united Canada and have attempted to avoid a divisive referendum that should have been resolved by officials in the Alberta legislature, he said.

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“I have implored upon our Premier, Danielle Smith, to at least postpone, if not cancel the referendum as Quebec has, in their wisdom, to do so to keep Canada united during very turbulent international times and during our difficult negotiations and invasion of our national integrity, our national security, and our national sovereignty by (the) United States,” Lukaszuk said. “Unfortunately my pleas to Premier Danielle Smith have fallen upon deaf ears. The question Premier Smith has chosen for this exercise is long, complex, non-binary, and frankly unintelligible to most voters.”

Lukaszuk said there is confusion by both supporters and Albertans on the upcoming question 10, with many unsure on how to respond.

Question 10 asks “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?”

Moving forward, the movement will target its advocacy to a yes vote for the upcoming separation referendum question.

“I am announcing today that as of this moment Forever Canadian is officially entering the arena of a third party advertiser, and we will encourage all supporters and all Albertans to choose option A on question number 10, meaning we choose for Alberta to stay in Canada and we do not want any more referendum,” Lukaszuk said.

This pivot to focus on question 10 is a lesson learned from other referendums like Brexit on what happens when complacency sets in, he said.

“This is not the time to send a message to Ottawa,” he said. “If there was a message to be sent, (…) I suggest that it has already been sent and it has been heard. If there are other issues, and there are that we need to resolve with Ottawa or with other provinces, we will do this as we always do as Canadians through negotiations, arbitration and conversation, not through threatening separatism.”

Forever Canadian must become a third-party advertiser if they decide to advocate for a certain answer to a specific question in the referendum, as per the rules by Election Alberta.