The cash-strapped, disorganized fight to keep Alberta in Canada

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The organizations lobbying to keep Alberta in Canada ahead of a fall referendum vote are short on cash, tight on time and hamstrung in their ability to organize a concerted campaign for the federalist side.

Public opinion polls consistently show that separatist voters are in the minority in Alberta – but they are also highly motivated. That means in the Oct. 19 vote on whether to launch a formal separation referendum, how many people show up to vote could be the determining factor between a nail-biter and a decisive win for the federalist side.

Such a pro-Canada campaign requires immense levels of organization, co-ordination and money to ensure turnout is well above the levels seen in general elections.

But all of those are in short supply as Alberta barrels toward referendum day – just six weeks away. Further complicating efforts are restrictive election-finance and co-ordination rules and an absence of government leadership in get-out-the-vote efforts.

The campaign’s home stretch arrives at a tense moment for Canadian sovereignty. The country’s bitter trade war with the United States has revived President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on annexation and declarations of economic warfare, and Quebec’s fall election could bring the separatist Parti Québécois to power.

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The Alberta vote follows more than a year of lobbying from separatists, eliciting overtures from members of the Trump administration and igniting a polarizing campaign in the western province.

“Turnout is a concern, and the hardcore separatists will crawl over broken glass to vote,” said former Alberta premier and staunch federalist Jason Kenney.

The referendum question asks voters if they wish to remain in Canada or lay the legal groundwork for a binding secession vote. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said that the formal separation referendum, if approved by voters, would happen within months.

That makes this first vote “do or die for the separatists,” but not for federalists, Mr. Kenney said. The former premier is helping to lead the third-party group Vote to Stay and is also co-chairing a separate initiative from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

About 25 to 30 per cent of Albertans support separation in most public opinion polling, meaning turnout around 40 per cent could lead to a disastrous result for federalists, he said. (Roughly 60 per cent of Albertans voted in the 2023 provincial election.)

Janet Brown, a renowned Alberta pollster, said that the separatist-federalist divide has been “locked in” for years, making the referendum about who and how many people participate, rather than persuasion.

“If there’s 100-per-cent turnout among the separatists and 60 per cent turnout among the non-separatists, it’s going to be a much closer race than any polls are predicting,” Ms. Brown said.

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A single, unified campaign would smooth the way for the remain side and avoid groups duplicating work and targeting the same voters, said Ken Boessenkool, who is part of Lead Not Leave.

But the provincial campaign rules prevent co-ordination among citizen-led groups that are registered as third parties, and enforce strict spending limits. The Alberta government and registered provincial political parties, however, have no spending limit during the referendum.

Mr. Boessenkool said Ms. Smith’s government and party should be running a concerted, pro-Canada campaign, but he believes they aren’t because separatists make up a large segment of her United Conservative Party base. Last year, a poll conducted by Ms. Brown showed that close to half of the UCP’s base supported separation. And in May, UCP president Rob Smith said he believes a majority of UCP members will vote to separate. In the absence of provincial leadership, none of the third-party groups have enough cash to go it alone, Mr. Boessenkool said.

“The inability to communicate between the groups that exist is a big barrier,” he said. “They all seem to be underfunded and therefore, underwhelming.”

But it doesn’t appear the federal government will fill that void.

Elections Alberta said provincial laws prevent Ottawa from taking a direct role in the vote unless it registers as a third party and subjects itself to the accompanying $607,000 spending limit – a budget that is vastly lower than the millions that political parties spend in a typical five-week campaign. The provincial agency said the same rules apply to any federal political party that plans to take part.

Those rules add a layer of tension to the debate over how involved Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government should be in the remain campaign. Mr. Carney has made dramatic policy changes in an effort to show how Canada can work for Alberta, but so far, Ottawa has left voter-turnout efforts to the roughly half-dozen registered pro-Canada advertisers and the Alberta NDP.

A senior federal official said the government believes Albertans do not expect Ottawa to be leading the ground campaign during the referendum, and there’s a risk that doing so could backfire.

Still, the official said the Prime Minister will play a prominent role as the vote nears. They said Mr. Carney has already been to Alberta 11 times since taking office and will be there again this week.

The federal government is also already running ads in Alberta with its “Canada strong” message, but they are not specific to the referendum. The official did not rule out more explicit advertising closer to the vote.

JOBFlocks is not naming the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The official agreed that turnout will be paramount, but added that Ottawa believes the patchwork approach is more effective than is obvious at first glance. They said Mr. Carney’s team is confident in the federalist position, but that they aren’t discounting the risks of the vote.

The federal Conservatives, meanwhile, registered a third-party advertiser last week called Conservatives for Canada.

Conservative MP Dane Lloyd, who Pierre Poilievre tasked with leading his party’s referendum response, also said low turnout “is the biggest threat” in the coming vote. But he argued the solution is not a heavy response from Ottawa or to break rules set by the province.

“My belief is that there’s going to be a very decisive vote for Canadian unity,” Mr. Lloyd said. “Why taint a successful vote with any sort of perception or allegations of breaking rules?”

Others, though, are agitating for Ottawa to take a bigger role.

Stephen Carter, who leads a remain campaign called Alberta’s Voice, said the federal government should be given as much spending power as the provincial government.

“Brexit is a great example of unintended consequences,” he said, in reference to Britain’s surprise vote to leave the European Union in 2020.

Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke said the federalist case should be led by Albertans – such as his previous boss, former prime minister Stephen Harper – but that shouldn’t preclude Ottawa from having a leading role. He said the notion that the federal government is a third-party actor in a vote on the future of the country is “inherently absurd.”

He argued that Ottawa should not allow itself to be constrained by the provincial rules, and it should be doing more to “unabashedly” make the case for Alberta within Canada.

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With no federal or provincial cash going toward turnout efforts, third-party groups are relying on individual and corporate donations. Money has trickled in over the summer, and while donations have increased slightly in recent weeks, they remain low.

Among those already registered with Elections Alberta, the separatist groups have raised hundreds of thousands more than remain campaigners. For example, the pro-independence group Let Alberta Decide has raised $484,988 since mid-June. Vote to Stay, led by heavyweights like Mr. Kenney, has raised just $97,791, according to public disclosures.

Alberta’s Voice, led by Mr. Carter, has raised the most for the pro-Canada camp at a total of $152,421. He said a well-run campaign would need the ability to spend $100,000 weekly.

Fundraising has been a grind, Mr. Carter said, and the corporations that could more easily donate the maximum $5,000 contribution limit are holding back. As of last week, he said just two corporations had donated so far.

“It’s not just a lack of interest. I’d say that it’s actually a fear of being involved. No one wants to cross Danielle Smith,” Mr. Carter said.

Mr. Kenney attributes the fundraising challenge to two other factors. The first is the complacency created by public-opinion polls that suggest a cakewalk for the remain side.

The second is much thornier.

“Everybody knows somebody in their family or friend group or in their place of business who’s going to vote to separate,” Mr. Kenney said.

“People would rather not rupture professional and personal relationships by taking sides, and so it has been a harder push.”

While her government isn’t running a get-out-the-vote campaign, Ms. Smith has argued her actions, such as working with Mr. Carney to build a bitumen pipeline to the West Coast, will show Albertans that Canada is worth fighting for.

The lion’s share of the organizing and turnout work has fallen to the provincial New Democrats. The party is deploying thousands of volunteers to identify voters and is planning for major turnout drives during the advance vote and on Oct. 19.

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But the opposition party is constrained both by how much money it has (the governing UCP has out-fundraised the NDP by almost double this year) and by how much it needs to set aside for next year’s provincial election.

Two NDP sources said that since May, the party has devoted almost all of its efforts to the referendum and that turning out the vote is its main priority. But the scale of the task is enormous, and as one of the sources put it, they will only know on Oct. 20 whether their efforts were enough.

The sources said to stretch their dollar as far as possible and to reduce duplication between the federalist groups, they have stopped handing out free signs and are now charging for merch and signs.

The Globe is not naming the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the party’s strategy.

“If we have a lower voter turnout, that could really – falsely, I think – give the impression that there’s more support for separatism in this province than there really is,” Alberta NDP deputy leader Rakhi Pancholi said.

One of the Liberal government’s sole Alberta MPs, Corey Hogan, said he is more optimistic about the state of the remain campaigns than he was in the spring, and that pro-Canada signs are all over Calgary.

He acknowledged that “nobody has full situational awareness” of the activities of the remain campaigns, but given what he sees on the ground, he doesn’t believe separatists have the advantage.

The best funded pro-Canada grassroots organization in Alberta is Forever Canadian. Thomas Lukaszuk, the group’s leader, said roughly 300,000 people have signed up to receive communication from his group, and it has distributed about 45,000 red and white lawn signs that say “Choose Unity.”

He said the group has raised more than $500,000. Forever Canadian is exempt from publicly disclosing its contributions to Elections Alberta because it isn’t taking a position on the specific referendum question, Mr. Lukaszuk said, meaning its advocacy isn’t considered third-party advertising.

Mr. Lukaszuk has opted against doing direct voter turnout work. The former deputy premier said while he is concerned about low turnout, he believes his members are civically engaged and will vote without his prompting.

The handful of other pro-Canada groups have been spearheaded primarily by conservatives. Monte Solberg, the former federal Conservative cabinet minister behind Vote to Stay, created to mobilize voters and provide pro-Canada commentary, said his group’s presence on the airwaves will depend on fundraising.

Vote to Stay has received a few high-profile donations, including from AltaGas Ltd. and former Enbridge chief executive, Al Monaco. But Mr. Solberg said separatist groups – which have spent years building lists and invigorating supporters at town halls – have a head start in the campaign.

“We’re a long ways behind the separatists, so we’re going to have to make up a lot of ground between now and Oct. 19,” Mr. Solberg said.

Still, his co-campaigner, Mr. Kenney, said while the rules around the referendum are “not optimal,” the context heading into the fall vote has shifted in the federalists’ favour. He said he doesn’t think low turnout will be a given on Oct. 19, and that the U.S. President’s constant attacks on Canada are renewing a sense of patriotism and national unity.

The disparate nature of the campaigns reflects Alberta’s independent spirit and political culture, he said.

“Maybe it’s not optimal. On the other hand, maybe it is. Let a thousand flowers bloom.”