Elections Alberta has issued a citizen initiative petition asking whether Alberta should cease to be part of Canada and become an independent state. Proponent Mitch Sylvestre’s Stay Free Alberta campaign can collect signatures from Jan. 3 and needs 177,732 valid names — 10 per cent of votes cast in the 2023 election — by May 2.
What Elections Alberta approved
Elections Alberta issued the petition on Jan. 2, 2026, under the Citizen Initiative Act, the law that lets electors force a provincewide vote on a constitutional question. Organizers have 120 days to gather signatures, starting Jan. 3 and ending May 2, 2026.
The bar is set by statute: 177,732 signatures, equal to 10 per cent of the 1,777,315 votes cast in Alberta’s 2023 provincial general election. The province has an estimated 2,966,192 registered electors, so roughly one in every 17 electors must sign for the petition to succeed. If it does, the proposal for a referendum on independence moves forward under the Act.
The question put to signers is direct: “Do you agree that the province of Alberta should cease to be part of Canada to become an independent state?”
The approval closed out a fast administrative track. Proponent Mitch Sylvestre, a member of the Alberta Prosperity Project, filed his notice of intent on Dec. 11, 2025, and Elections Alberta approved the application on Dec. 22.
A second attempt, on friendlier rules
The launch follows months of legal and political wrangling. An earlier version of Sylvestre’s proposal became tied up in court in 2025 after the chief electoral officer sought a ruling on whether it met the Citizen Initiative Act’s constitutional requirements, and a Court of King’s Bench judge found the earlier proposal fell short. A fresh application followed under rules the United Conservative government had already rewritten: changes in 2025 lowered the signature threshold and lengthened the collection period, making citizen petitions easier to qualify than they were when the process was created.
Premier Danielle Smith has kept her distance from the campaign itself, saying her preference is a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada. But she has said her government will not put separation on a ballot itself — and would honour a successful citizen petition seeking such a vote. Smith announced a panel in May 2025 to discuss Alberta’s future in Canada, days after the federal Liberals won the April 28 election.
The separatist drive is also running against a rival petition from the other side. The “Forever Canadian” petition led by former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk, which asked whether Alberta should remain in Canada, was verified as successful on Dec. 1, 2025, with 404,293 confirmed signatures — well above its own required threshold. Recent polling by Mainstream Research, however, suggested most Albertans are not behind the separatist push, with 30 per cent supporting the petition and 58 per cent opposed.
Organizers say the names came fast
Canvassers fanned out across the province in January, holding signing events in community halls and parking lots. By mid-January, Stay Free Alberta volunteer Jaeger Gustafson told CityNews that organizer Mitch Sylvestre had reported canvassers had already collected the required 177,732 signatures, less than two weeks into the drive.
“What we are really excited about is our volunteers are bringing people’s voices directly to government,” Gustafson said. “We want people to stand in their own sovereignty. This is their province, and it’s our future together.”
Elections Alberta could not confirm the claim. Signatures only count once the sheets are submitted by the May 2 deadline, and the agency verifies them using a random statistical sampling method at a 95 per cent confidence level. Gustafson said the campaign would keep collecting names anyway, in part because a court challenge to the petition was already expected.
What happened next
The signature sheets were delivered to Elections Alberta on May 4, 2026, with an initial count of 286,593. The petition then survived a legal roller-coaster: a Court of King’s Bench judge quashed its approval on May 13, finding the province had not met its duty to consult First Nations, and both the province and Sylvestre appealed. A Court of Appeal judge granted a partial stay on June 29 that allowed verification to proceed.
On July 24, 2026, Elections Alberta announced the verdict: 279,337 valid signatures counted and an estimated 222,597 verified — comfortably above the 177,732 required. The petition that opened on a January weekend was declared successful, and the separation question it forced now sits at the centre of Alberta’s Oct. 19 referendum, where Smith has added a question of her own asking whether Alberta should stay in Canada or hold a binding vote on leaving.
