Alberta independence referendum petition must register with election agency

"Alberta's petition has hit the required number of signatures to trigger a referendum," claims the caption of an April 30, 2025 Instagram post. "The issue is now headed to a province-wide vote."

The second slide in the image carousel appears to show a petition titled "Alberta separation/Western Alliance" signed by more than 192,000 people.

Versions of the claim spread alongside the notion that this many signatures would trigger a referendum on Instagram, Facebook and X, along with posts in French.

Image

Screenshot of an Instagram post taken May 13, 2025

Image

Screenshot of an X post taken May 13, 2025

Simmering appetite for Alberta independence or secession of the western Canadian provinces regained momentum after US President Donald Trump began taunting Canada's sovereignty and proposed making the country the 51st state.

AFP previously fact-checked claims that a petition for Alberta's separation had garnered enough support to trigger a referendum, but unlike French-speaking Quebec, an independence question has never gone to a vote in the western province (archived here and here).

On April 29, Alberta's government proposed legislation which would overhaul the province's election rules (archived here), including a change potentially redefining the signature threshold as 10 percent of people who voted in the last election for a petition to move to a referendum vote.

According to data (archived here) from Elections Alberta, the province's independent election agency, changing the requirement would put the number of signatures to trigger a vote at 176,060.

However, the bill that would implement such change has not passed into law and the current requirement for a constitutional change is 20 percent of provincial electors or 587,952 (archived here).

Further examination of the petition seen in the social media posts reveals it was posted to Change.org and keyword searches show it remains available (archived here). Such a petition, signed online, does not meet the requirements laid out by Elections Alberta.

"Initiative petitions must be signed by electors, in ink, on official paper petition sheets," said Robyn Bell, a spokeswoman for the agency, in a May 1 email. "Signatures collected in any other way are not accepted."

Petitions must first be presented through a Citizen Initiate Application and once they are approved, a Notice of Initiative Petition is posted to the Elections Alberta website (archived here). At the time of publication, there are no such petitions underway (archived here).

The Alberta Prosperity Project group advocating provincial sovereignty released its potential secession referendum question May 12, but said it would not launch a citizen initiative until it had garnered the pledged support of 600,000 people.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said in a May 6 news conference that she does not support separation, but would allow a referendum to take place if a petition received enough signatures.

According to a May 8 Angus Reid Institute poll, 19 percent of Albertans would "definitely" vote to leave Canada while 52 percent said they would vote to stay (archived here).

Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.