Lukaszuk Pushing To Quash Separation Rhetoric

The launch of Medicine Hat’s effort to sign up citizens as part of the Forever Canadian movement earlier this summer.

The Forever Canadian petition that has been popping up across Medicine Hat, the region and province is seeking any referendum on Alberta’s future within Canada be based on one question.

“Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?”

The movement’s founder says with more than 230,000 signatures in hand, it’s already poised to make its mark.

“This will be the biggest petition in the history of Canada,” said Thomas Lukaszuk in an interview with the Owl. “There’s never been a petition with 300,000 signatures on it.”

And Lukaszuk stressed how serious the matter at hand is.

“This probably one of the most important signatures people will place on a piece of paper because what it will do is put to an end this rhetoric about separation,” he said.

There have been challenges with the recent Canada Post strike making mailing in returns from across the province an issue. But Lukaszuk says he’s confident that come the Oct. 28 deadline to submit the petition, they’ll be more than the 300,000 signatures required to make their question the one Albertans will be voting on in a referendum.

Lukaszuk says the 5,000 canvassers along with 15,000 volunteers with the Forever Canadian movement, “have just doubled down and they are everywhere.”

While there is a competing movement in Alberta to separate from Canada and possibly even join the United States, Lukaszuk was critical of those efforts.

Alberta Prosperity Project’s Mitch Sylvestre. (Photo courtesy of APP Facebook page)

He says the question being proposed by the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), "Do you agree that the province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada," is legally fraught.

The province’s chief electoral officer submitted the question to the courts to review which dismissed APP’s CEO Mitch Sylvestre arguments to strike the referral in a decision in August.

“A referendum on Alberta independence that could lead to the break-up of Canada is serious business,” wrote King’s Bench Justice Colin Feasby in his decision.

He added he struck down APP’s arguments, “because I conclude that it is not plain and obvious that the constitutional referendum proposal is constitutional.”

 But Lukaszuk said there are other issues with those supporting a more separatist approach to a referendum question.

Namely, they don’t have the support of Albertans nor anything close to the documented signatures which the Forever Canadian movement has garnered.

And the referendum can only have one question which Lukaszuk says will be the one Forever Canadian submits when it has garnered the requisite signatures.

“Once we receive 300,000 signatures and our petition is successful, certified, no one can file a question on the same or similar issue for five years,” he said.

Lukaszuk added the only certified petition in existence in Alberta is Forever Canadian’s with anything else purporting to be one in support of separation is not officially recognized.

Lukaszuk is currently touring the province as he pushes toward the final signature count and is expected to be in Medicine Hat next week.