CP of Canada assesses independence referendum in Alberta

On October 19, a referendum was held in the Canadian province Alberta on ten separate ballot questions, one of which addressed Albertan independence from Canada. More than 2.2 million ballots (representing a 70.4 percent voter turnout) were cast for the separation question. Albertans soundly rejected (with almost 75 percent against) the proposal to initiate a process of separation, while narrowly passing five immigration questions and voting down four constitutional questions.

According to the early November issue of People's Voice, the organ of the Communist Party of Canada, Albertans voted to remain in Canada, but they gave a green light to a range of anti-labour, anti-Indigenous and anti-immigrant policies. The United Conservative Party's (UCP) passed referendum proposals include limiting immigration numbers to Alberta, reducing immigrants’ access to jobs and social services, and charging them for access to universal healthcare and public education.

Speaking to People’s Voice the day after the referendum, the Communist Party of Canada – Alberta leader Naomi Rankin warned that the government and other right-wing forces were banking on shifting public discourse further to the right through the referendum.

Rankin asserted that the UCP government will resort to xenophobia and racism "for sweeping attacks on the rights of unions and all workers, for more ferocious cuts to healthcare, education and other social services, for a two-tiered medical system, for making public education non-universal, for dismantling environmental safeguards, and for steamrolling over Indigenous rights and human rights generally.”

The Communist Party representative continued as follows: “The decline of a fossil-fuel based economy in the province is inevitable because of technological advance in renewables globally. Right-wing governments like the UCP will double down on anything that helps them to shift the burden of the decline onto working people to protect corporate profits. The propaganda of scapegoating and racism is the key to dividing working people and weakening their resistance to impoverishment and repression. Indigenous people and visible minorities will bear the brunt of the attacks, but the attacks will not be limited to them.”

Rankin called upon the union movement and the progressive movements and organisations to unite and escalate the Alberta Federation of Labour’s “Fight Back Now!” campaign against the UCP government.