Tag: secession

Fact check: Canadian law does allow provinces to hold sovereignty referendums

Commentary circulating online following the Alberta referendum court ruling is incorrectly claiming that provinces cannot legally hold referendums on separation or sovereignty.

That is not what Canadian constitutional law says.

Columnist Andrew Coyne claimed Canadians “can’t lawfully hold a referendum” on “the sovereign territory of Canada.”

But Canada has already held two provincial sovereignty referendums in Quebec, in 1980 and 1995.

Neither referendum was declared illegal.

In fact, the federal government responded to the 1995 referendum by asking the Supreme Court of Canada to clarify the legal framework surrounding secession in the 1998 Secession Reference decision.

The court concluded that a province cannot unilaterally separate from Canada under existing constitutional law. However, it also held that a clear vote on a clear question in favour of secession would create a constitutional obligation for governments to negotiate.

That framework later formed the basis of the Clarity Act.

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Smith pledges to appeal judge’s “anti-democratic” decision to quash independence petition

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government will appeal a court ruling that blocked a citizen-led effort to force an Alberta independence referendum, calling the decision “incorrect in law and anti-democratic.”

The ruling, issued Tuesday by Liberal-appointed Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice S. Leonard, quashed the approval of a proposed referendum question asking Albertans whether the province should become independent.

In the decision, the judge claimed Alberta failed to fulfil its duty to consult affected First Nations before allowing the citizen initiative process to move forward.

Justice Leonard also ruled the referendum proposal could not legally proceed under transitional provisions added to Alberta’s Citizen Initiative Act.

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FURIOUS Democrats in Tennessee Demand SECESSION of Memphis from the State in Epic MELTDOWN After Republicans Erase Last Race-Based Democrat Stronghold

After Tennessee Republicans rammed through a new congressional map that dismantles the state’s lone Democrat-held congressional district centered in Memphis, at least one furious Democrat is now openly floating the idea of Memphis seceding from the Volunteer State altogether.

Tennessee State Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), apparently unable to stomach the political reality of a deep-red Tennessee exercising its legislative authority, called for Memphis to separate from the state following the explosive redistricting battle.

As The Gateway Pundit reported just days ago, all hell broke loose in the Tennessee House when Republicans passed a new congressional map eliminating the state’s only majority-Black, Democrat-held district in Memphis.

The map, now signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee, cracks up Shelby County and spreads those heavily Democratic voters into three Republican-leaning districts stretching into rural and suburban areas.

A potential 9-0 Republican sweep in Tennessee’s congressional delegation, exactly what fair maps and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling against race-based mapmaking were designed to achieve.

The 9th District will now potentially see Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat, likely replaced by Charlotte Bergmann, a black female Republican.

But the sore-loser Democrats can’t handle it. Instead of accepting the will of the people and the rule of law, they’re throwing the ultimate hissy fit: secession.

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Canadian Judge Pauses the Certification of the Results in the Citizen Petition for the Independence of Oil-Rich Alberta Province

Will Alberta leave decadent Canada behind?

The process of forcing a referendum on oil-rich Alberta’s independence from woke Canada is going so well that the Canadian liberal establishment has started openly trying to derail the process.

It has arisen today that a Canadian judge has granted a month-long stay preventing Alberta’s chief electoral officer from certifying the results of a petition.

CBC reported:

“Justice Shaina Leonard’s ruling on Friday afternoon also prevents Stay Free Alberta, the group behind the petition, from referring the matter to Justice Minister Mickey Amery once signatures are submitted.

The decision follows an application from two of three First Nations groups who say they believe the petition process threatens treaty rights. The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) and the Blackfoot Confederacy have been seeking a stay on the petition campaign pending a final ruling.”

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Alberta Surpasses 177,000 Signatures, Officially Triggering Its Independence Referendum for October 19th

Alberta has entered a historic chapter.
This week, organizers confirmed that the movement for an Alberta independence referendum has officially passed the required threshold of 177,000 verified signatures, clearing the final legal barrier for a vote set to take place on October 19th.

According to the organizers behind the petition, signatures continue to pour in even after the requirement was met — a sign of the momentum and frustration that have been building across the province.

For many Albertans, this referendum is the result of years of tension with Ottawa, fueled by policies that have targeted the province’s energy sector, restricted development, and undermined the economic backbone of Western Canada. Residents and local leaders argue that Alberta has carried the financial weight of the federation while receiving little more than political pushback in return.

The announcement marks a dramatic turning point in Canada’s national landscape.
Independence movements have existed before, but none had crossed the official threshold required to trigger a formal vote — until now. This makes Alberta the first province to force a federal showdown over sovereignty in the modern era.

Political analysts say the development could reshape the country’s balance of power, testing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s already strained relationship with Western regions. The federal government, por su parte, has avoided making strong public comments, aware that any misstep could inflate separatist sentiment even further.

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Staten Island Renews Push to Secede From New York City Due to Zohran Mamdani Mayoral Win

Staten Island is renewing its push to secede from the city of New York and be its own city following the mayoral victory of Democratic Socialist (communist) Zohran Mamdani.

Unlike Manhattan and to a lesser extent Brooklyn, Staten Island is home to a much more traditional, slightly more conservative, blue-collar, working community. Most of the people who live there have no interest in the fantasy of free stuff that Mamdani is promising.

Of course, this is unlikely to happen. New York City won’t want to let go of Staten Island because they want all of the tax revenue they can squeeze out of the people who live there.

The Post Millennial reported:

Staten Island sees renewed NYC secession push after Mamdani victory

Following the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s next mayor, Staten Island lawmakers are reviving efforts to secede and form an independent city.

State Senator Andrew Lanza told the New York Post he plans to “put the foot to the pedal” on the initiative in January, arguing that Mamdani “could not be further out of sync with the values of communities on Staten Island, and I’d argue that this time around Democrats won’t want to stop [the borough’s secession] because it would make it even less likely [NYC] ever elects a Republican mayor again.”

Lanza has repeatedly pushed for secession legislation since 2008 with little progress, but he said the city’s increasingly far-left politics could motivate new support, even among some Democrats. He said he believes the “timing is right” and that independence for Richmond County next year would align symbolically with the United States marking its 250th anniversary.

On Friday, State Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo held a rally in Richmond where he read an independence declaration for Staten Island. He delivered the remarks at the location where British soldiers were first read the Declaration of Independence on Staten Island.

Who can blame these people for wanting independence from NYC?

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Canada’s Alberta Province Heading Toward Secession Referendum

Alberta is careening toward a referendum with the possibility of a divorce between the conservative, oil-rich province and liberal Canada.

Initiating the Referendum

Less than 24 hours after globalist Mark Carney and his leftist government won control on April 28, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith introduced a bill lowering the threshold needed to trigger a secession referendum. The bill, which has since passed, reduces the necessary number of signatures from 20 percent of voters who participated in the last general election to 10 percent, which equals somewhere around 200,000 names. It also increases the number of days allowed for collecting signatures by an entire month, from 90 to 120 days.

Citizen groups have already collected hundreds of thousands of signatures, according to reports. The Alberta Prosperity Project, for instance, says it has gathered about 240,000. The secession referendum will take place in 2026 if enough signatures are verifiably collected.

A recent Angus Reid Institute poll found that 30 percent of voters “say they would vote to leave [the] federation, whether to form their own country or to join the United States.” 

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Now conservative Canadian province is looking to secede from its liberal-leaning neighbors

A conservative Canadian province plans to secede from its liberal-leaning neighbors, and some residents are even open to becoming the 51st American state. 

Alberta, a western province known for its oil and gas resources, has just about had it with the overwhelmingly liberal country – especially since a new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, took office.

The area, often referred to as ‘Canada’s Texas’ because of its political views and oil industry, is home to a small batch of conservatives who have recently gained momentum amidst Trump’s controversial call for the US to take over Canada. 

Despite Carney being from Alberta, he plans to continue on the same path as his predecessor Justin Trudeau and not allow the US leader to take control of the country or allow provinces to separate. 

But now that the liberal movement continues in Canada, many of Alberta’s about five million residents feel that they are different enough from the rest of the country to branch off on their own. 

‘If there was a referendum on it, I would not hesitate to say separation,’ Bob Gablehaus, a local resident and retired government worker, told The New York Times. 

‘I don’t like the way the liberals treat Western Canada. I think it’s unfair,’ he added. 

Gablehaus is not the only one who believes the province could be better off leaving the rest of the county behind as approximately 30 percent of Albertans were in favor of independence if the liberals won a fourth time in office, according to polling numbers before the election. 

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Oil-Rich Province of Alberta May Hold Referendum To Secede From Woke Canada

Canada may have escaped for now the (for them) humiliating fate of becoming the 51st US state, but things are in motion that suggest nothing will ever be the same in the ‘Great White North.’

The conservative premier of Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta said yesterday (5) that a referendum on separation from Canada will be held next year if a citizen-led petition reaches the required number of signatures.

Associated Press reported:

“Speaking on a livestream address, Danielle Smith said she personally does not support the province leaving Canada and expressed hope of a ‘path forward’ for a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.

‘Should Ottawa, for whatever reason, continue to attack our province as they have done over the last decade, ultimately that will be for Albertans to decide’, she said. “I will accept their judgement’.”

This development follows the victory of Mark Carney, ushering in the fourth consecutive Labour government.

New PM Carney will meet US President Donald J. Trump today (6) to work out trade issues and the threat of annexation.

“Smith accused previous federal Liberal governments of introducing different legislations that hamstring Alberta’s ability to produce and export oil, which she said has cost the province billions of dollars. She also said she doesn’t want the federal government meddling in provincial issues.”

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Secession: Why Redrawing US State Borders Makes Politicians So Mad

Over the past five years, 33 counties in Illinois have voted to secede from the state, presumably to either form a new state or join another state. In most of these counties, the voters were given the option to vote yes or no on  a ballot question that looked generally like this:

“Shall the board of (the county) correspond with the boards of other counties of Illinois, outside of Cook County, about the possibility of separating from Cook County to form a new state and to seek admission to the Union as such, subject to the approval of the people?”

Many of the voters and policymakers supporting the separation note that they consider themselves to be economically, culturally, and historically separated from Chicago and the counties surrounding it. Most of the state’s 13 million residents—more than nine million people—live within the greater Chicago metro area, but that potentially leaves one or two million people—a “state” the size of Montana or Nebraska—who are interested in breaking free of Chicago metro politics.

The fact that the secession efforts keep coming up again and again suggest some political staying power, as does a new development in Indiana: last week, the Indiana House of Representatives passed new legislation creating a Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Commission. The purpose is to facilitate the secession of separatist Illinois counties and their subsequent annexation into Indiana. This greatly simplifies the matter, politically. Were Indiana to actually annex Illinois’s separatist counties upon separation,  the change would not even raise the problem of admitting a new US state.

Essentially, were Illinois and Indiana to redraw their border, the matter of Illinois’s secessionist counties would be of minor national impact. For virtually everyone in the United States, life would go on as it had before.

Yet, the Illinois ruling class, centered in Chicago, is dead set against the idea. Illinois’s Governor JB Pritzker called the secession effort a “stunt” and declared that it is “not going to happen.” The Illinois attorney general has declared the effort illegal. Critics have adopted the usual posture of those in power when faced with secession efforts like these: a mixture of authoritarianism and patronizing contempt.

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