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We Can’t Boycott Our Way Out of a Meaningless Referendum

Originally published on September 20, 2026 in issue 24 of Forward Weekly

I have a tendency to overuse the word “epiphany.”

I blame it on an undergrad infatuation with James Joyce, a misspent youth reading  Dubliners and Ulysses.

Nonetheless, I’ve had two startling moments of clarity and revelation this summer that have reshaped the way I’m thinking about Alberta’s looming referendum season. 

The first came at a dinner party I attended in July. Among the dinner guests was a charming Edmonton academic. We were chatting about the current political climate when this courtly intellectual said something that stopped me cold. He told me he wasn’t planning to vote at all on October 19 — as a protest against Danielle Smith’s entire referendum endeavour.

We know that, in any election, those who want change are highly motivated to vote. There’s much less excitement around defending a status quo.

I must have looked shocked. He quickly started explaining his position: low voter turnout, he argued, would be the most effective way to undermine the political legitimacy of the entire enterprise.

Here was this smart, thoughtful, progressive professor, telling me he didn’t plan to vote on the ballot questions that have been obsessing me all summer. 

To say a clear majority of Albertans are opposed to separation is an understatement; the polls tell us it’s as many as 75 percent. But this referendum won’t be decided by opinion polls. It will be decided by the number of people who actually go through the steps of getting a ballot and filling it out — times ten.

We know that, in any election, those who want change are highly motivated to vote. There’s much less excitement around defending a status quo, and even less when defenders of that status quo believe victory is assured. Given how complicated the province has made it for people to vote at all, and especially since the separation question is non-binding, I worry that if the unmotivated majority stays home, while the impassioned minority turns out we could end up with a final tally that does not at all represent public opinion. Even if the separatists don’t win outright, we could end up with a vote that’s close enough to give them the momentum they need to continue their fight to rip the country apart. 

The premier is already speaking publicly about the logistics of holding a “binding” follow-up referendum as early as next spring. So why, as my dinner companion argued, should we even dignify this charade by participating?

And that’s when I had my second epiphany: maybe that’s the entire point of this referendum? 

It’s possible the goal of the referendum is to debase and dilute the entire concept of voting, so that by the time the next actual election rolls around, we’ll have become so numb, so cynical, we won’t bother to vote at all. We’ll have been trained, indeed conditioned, to accept that our votes don’t matter.

Remember back in 2021, when Premier Jason Kenney held two referendums? Perhaps not, since it was in the middle of the pandemic — but I’ll refresh your memory: The first was about whether we should adopt daylight saving time year-round. The majority of Albertans voted against that proposition. But it didn’t matter. Despite the referendum result, the Smith government has decided we won’t “fall back” this year at all. We’ll keep to summer time year-round — defying the sun, making a mess of time zones and making our winters longer and darker. 

But however absurdist this piece of political theatre seems, we must vote — even if the results don’t seem to matter.

The second referendum was even more absurd. It asked Albertans if they wanted to remove the principle of equalization from the Constitution, something Alberta could never actually do. A majority of Albertans, riled up by false suggestions that the Alberta treasury was subsidizing other provinces, voted to abolish equalization. Of course, nothing ever came of that. It was empty political theatre, mischievously designed to whip up resentments against our fellow Canadians, and to give Albertans some illusion of control.

Now, we’re facing nine even more mischievous and nonsensical questions, plus the two-part separation question. As vile and divisive and unconstitutional as all the questions are, they are, in many ways, utterly meaningless. Most of the things they purport to consult us on can’t be done by Alberta, not legally and not politically. Since none of the questions is binding, it’s likely that however we vote, the government will once again do what it wants to do anyway.

But however absurdist this piece of political theatre seems, we must vote — even if the results don’t seem to matter. Preemptive compliance is no answer. We cannot be cynical or numb. We cannot be resigned. We must vote to protect the idea and the ideal of voting itself. We must vote to send a message — if not to the premier, then to the rest of the country — that we don’t support this self-destructive madness.

We must vote to save the soul of the province we love.