Alberta's Referendum Lost When It Stopped Being About Independence
Alberta's independence referendum is all but final. With 99 percent of the vote counted, 25.1 percent chose to begin the process of leaving Canada and just under 75 percent chose to stay. Daniel Miller opened this week's Late Night Coffee Talk with his read on why. The yes share tracked Donald Trump's approval rating in Alberta to within about a tenth of a point. Once the Alberta Prosperity Project tied its campaign to Washington, with trips to State Department staff and talk of a 51st state, the vote became a verdict on Trump rather than on independence. Daniel set it beside Scotland in 2014, where the yes vote landed within a couple of points of the SNP's previous general election result because the independence white paper had bound the question to the party's own program.
The lesson for Texas is one he has repeated for years: keep the main thing the main thing. Every policy promise made in the name of independence hands a voter one more reason to vote no, and none of those policies can be settled until Texans govern themselves. He noted that Alberta's first nine ballot questions, the sovereignty measures, passed, and that Ottawa's resistance to them could bring independence back sooner than anyone expects. A full podcast episode on Alberta is in the works.
Daniel also previewed the Texian Partisan's live results desk for election night, which pulls early voting county by county from the Secretary of State and tracks every Texas First Pledge signer on the ballot, and the new Buy Texian directory of businesses run by Declared Texians. He ended by explaining his frazzled start. As a technology consultant, he has spent the last 72 hours patching a wave of newly exposed vulnerabilities, including a PHP flaw he said touches 60 to 70 percent of the public web, with attackers probing systems that run power, water and industrial plants. TNM's own systems were patched within half a day.
Questions answered in this episode
- What is the status of the Alberta independence vote, and what happens next?
- The Alberta government reportedly spent more than $4 million on its campaign. What were the Project Fear talking points?
- Did dark money from sources like George Soros sway the Alberta referendum, and could it affect independence movements elsewhere?
- Has Texas independence ever come close to being on the ballot, and who was president at the time?
- If independence is kept separate from policy, would you welcome a supporter who wants a welfare-state Texas?
- What explains the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America in recent years?
- Do you ever host a Q&A on X Spaces?
- Would an independent Texas do something about offshore IT staffing firms squeezing tech job seekers?
On the ballot question, Daniel pointed to the referendum bills filed by Kyle Biedermann and Bryan Slaton in the two sessions before last, both during the Biden administration, and said the bill will be filed again next session. Independence, he said, does not depend on who is president.
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