What Happened to the Forever Canadian Petition?

Summary

• The Forever Canadian petition was classified as a policy petition.

• As a policy petition, it was up to the full Legislative Assembly to determine whether it should be referred to a referendum or should be dealt with in some other way. This determination was to be made following receipt of a recommendation from a committee of the Legislative Assembly.

• After the Chief Electoral Officer certified the success of the Forever Canadian petition, the Alberta government slow-walked the creation of the committee, and the committee slow-walked the start of its proceedings while Mitch Sylvestre continued to collect signatures on his opposing petition for Alberta to separate from Canada.

• After Justice Leonard quashed the Sylvestre petition, the committee recommended to the Legislative Assembly that the Forever Canadian proposal be included in the October 19 referendum, with the NDP members of the committee in dissent primarily as they wanted the legislature to vote on it directly.

• However, by then, the Legislative Assembly was no longer sitting and the government decided to act on its own to create a double-barreled question for the October 19 ballot, including both the Forever Canadian question and a question about commencing the legal process for a referendum on separation.

Analysis

The Forever Canadian petition, sponsored by Thomas Lukaszuk, asked the question: Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?

The Forever Canadian team canvassed the province collecting signatures from the end of July to the end of October 2025. Following a process of verification and counting, the Chief Electoral Officer certified on December 1 that the petition had been successful, collecting over 400,000 signatures.

The process that followed might best be described as a long and winding road filled with potholes and speedbumps that ultimately went nowhere.

Forever Canadian was classified as a policy petition, not a constitutional petition, because the proposal did not contemplate any constitutional change. Different rules apply to these different categories of petitions. A successful constitutional petition must be referred to a referendum. A successful policy petition follows a more complicated route.

The first step requires the Chief Electoral Officer to deliver the proposal to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. That happened on December 1, the same day that the success of the petition was certified.

The second step requires the Speaker to lay the proposal before the Legislative Assembly. That happened the next day, on December 2.

The third step requires the government to bring forward a motion to have the proposal referred to a committee of the Legislative Assembly within 10 sitting days after the proposal is tabled. Although the Legislative Assembly was still sitting, the government did not bring forward the motion before the fall sitting ended on December 10. Rather, it waited until the spring sitting and the last date allowed under the legislation, which was March 10, 2026 – 10 sitting days but 98 calendar days after the proposal was tabled in the Legislative Assembly. (In the meantime, Mitch Sylvestre continued to collect signatures on his petition for Alberta to separate from Canada.)

The committee was named the Select Special Citizen Initiative Proposal Review Committee. The Chair was a UCP Member of the Legislature, as was the Deputy Chair. The remaining members comprised two UCP MLAs and two NDP MLAs. Under the Citizen Initiative Act, the committee was required to table a report before the Legislative Assembly recommending either that the proposal be put to a referendum or that the proposal be dealt with in some other way. That could include, for example, a vote in the Legislative Assembly on the question.

The fourth step requires that the committee’s report must be tabled before the Legislative Assembly within 90 days after the day the committee is tasked with this responsibility or, if the Legislative Assembly is not sitting, within 15 days after the commencement of the next sitting. In this case, this timing was particularly important. The spring sitting of the Legislative Assembly was set to end on May 14, 2026. The fall sitting was not set to commence until October 27, 2026. If the report was not completed by May 14, it could not be tabled before the Legislative Assembly until the end of October, after the October 19 referendum had already been held.

While the committee was constituted on March 10, the Chair did not call the first meeting of the committee until 42 days later, on April 21. This was140 days after the Forever Canadian petition was presented to the Legislative Assembly. Again, throughout this time, Mitch Sylvestre continued to collect signatures on his separatist petition.

The next meeting of the committee was not held until May 11, another 20 days later. At that meeting, the committee received an expert briefing from Russ Brown, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, confirming that the committee was not required to recommend a referendum and could recommend that the petition proposal be dealt with in some other way.

On May 13, Justice Leonard issued a decision in the Court of King’s Bench quashing the decision of the Chief Electoral Officer to approve the Mitch Sylvestre petition proposing separation of Alberta from Canada. While both the petitioner and the government indicated an intention to appeal this decision, from a practical perspective the appeal could not be heard, and a decision could not be rendered, in time to allow the separatist petition to move forward to a referendum on the October 19 referendum ballot, even if the appeal were to be successful. As Justice Leonard ruled that the government of Alberta had a constitutional duty to consult with Indigenous peoples before calling a referendum proposing Alberta independence, the government of Alberta could not move directly to put a question proposing separation on the October 19 ballot. That left the Forever Canadian petition.

The spring sitting of the Legislative Assembly ended the next day.

The committee met again on May 20. While the committee was debating the issue and before any decision had been made, the UCP caucus issued a press release announcing that the committee had recommended that the petition go to a fall referendum. The NDP members called a point of privilege against the Chair of the Committee; the UCP members voted against referring the point of privilege to the Speaker. The proceedings that day ended before any resolution was passed.

The committee met again the next day and the UCP members of the committee proposed a recommendation to the Legislative Assembly as follows:

• That the Alberta Forever Canada citizen initiative proposal and the Committee’s report be referred to the Lieutenant Governor in Council for the purpose of a referendum in accordance with the Referendum Act;

• That the Alberta Forever Canada citizen initiative policy proposal be appended to the Committee’s report;

• That the question to be put to the electors in the referendum include an option for Albertans to vote for Alberta to remain in Canada;

• That the referendum be held in conjunction with the referendum ordered to be held on October 19, 2026.

The NDP members of the committee argued that the Albertans who had signed the Forever Canadian petition did so to oppose a referendum on separation. They argued that Thomas Lukaszuk, the petitioner, had confirmed to the committee that the purpose of the petition was to prevent a referendum in favour of separation. The NDP members also proposed an amendment requiring consultation with First Nations before any referendum was held. The UCP members of the committee voted against this amendment and it was defeated.

The proposed recommendation was passed, with members of the committee voting along party lines. A majority report and a minority report, again splitting along party lines, were referred to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly.

While the report recommended to the Legislative Assembly that the Lieutenant Governor in Council should put this question on the October 19 ballot, the problem remained that the Legislative Assembly was not scheduled to reconvene until October 27. The body designated to decide whether to accept the recommendation to refer the question to a referendum could not do so until after the date proposed for that referendum, unless the Legislative Assembly were to be recalled at an earlier date. By delaying the creation of the committee and delaying the commencement of the hearings of the committee, the government had run out of time.

In the result, no decision has been made by the Legislative Assembly on the steps to be taken arising from the successful Forever Canadian petition.

As the process under the Citizen Initiative Act was no longer available to the government to get a question on separation on the October 19 ballot, the only remaining process available was for the government, on its own initiative, to pose a question under the Referendum Act. As the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta had ruled that a question proposing separation could not be put to a referendum before the Alberta government had consulted with First Nations, the options available to the government were limited. They chose to combine the question whether Alberta should stay within Canada with the question whether the government should commence the process of consultations required before a referendum proposing separation could be called.

On the evening of May 21, within hours after the committee made its recommendation to the Legislative Assembly, the Premier announced that a double-barrelled question on separation would be placed on the October 19 ballot. On May 28, the cabinet issued an order-in-council establishing a referendum to be held on October 19 on the following question:

Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?

The Forever Canadian question ended up on the ballot for the October 19 referendum, not through the petition process, but by direct action of the Alberta government.