Elections Alberta has verified 222,597 signatures on a citizen initiative petition seeking a referendum on Alberta independence, exceeding the required threshold by 44,865 signatures. The petition has been declared successful, but no referendum can proceed until the Court of Appeal resolves an ongoing legal challenge.

A citizen initiative petition seeking a referendum on Alberta independence has collected enough verified signatures to be declared successful, but ongoing court proceedings prevent it from moving to the next stage.

Elections Alberta announced July 24 that 222,597 signatures were verified through its validation and statistical sampling process. The petition needed 177,732 signatures, equal to 10 per cent of the 1,777,315 votes cast in Alberta’s 2023 provincial election.

The verified total exceeded the requirement by 44,865 signatures, or about 25 per cent. It represents an estimated 7.5 per cent of the 2.97 million electors registered in Alberta as of May 2025.

The petition proposes asking Albertans: “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?”

Elections Alberta initially counted 286,593 signatures. After reviewing the signature sheets and removing invalid entries, 279,337 signatures remained before the statistical verification process reduced the estimated verified total to 222,597.

Common reasons signatures were rejected included incomplete residential addresses, missing declarations confirming the person was an eligible elector and canvassers signing their witness declaration before the elector signed the petition.

Signatures were also rejected when electors provided a mailing address instead of their physical residential address. Elections Alberta identified and removed 292 duplicate signatures. Signing the same petition more than once is prohibited under the Citizen Initiative Act.

During the final verification stage, some signatures were rejected because information provided by electors did not match the information recorded on the petition sheet or because an elector was unable or unwilling to verify the information.

Elections Alberta used a statistically valid sample of 384 completed verifications to reach a 95 per cent confidence level. The agency contacted 952 people whose names appeared on the petition to obtain the required number of completed verifications.

People who did not answer a call or return a voicemail or email were not automatically treated as having failed verification. Elections Alberta also said none of the people completing the verification process reported that their information had been fraudulently placed on the petition.

The petition was also screened for seeded names contained in the Republican Party of Alberta’s copy of the provincial list of electors. Elections Alberta confirmed none of those names appeared among the submitted signatures.

The additional screening measure was introduced after Elections Alberta reported the unauthorized use of the Republican Party’s list by Centurion Project Ltd. The agency said individual copies of the provincial voters list contain security features that allow it to determine which authorized recipient received the information.

Petition remains before courts

The petition was issued Jan. 2 following an application from proponent Mitch Sylvestre. The 120-day signature collection period ended May 2 and the petition was delivered to Elections Alberta on May 4.

However, the process was interrupted by legal challenges brought by First Nations.

On May 13, the Alberta Court of King’s Bench quashed the chief electoral officer’s decision approving the petition. The court found, among other issues, that the Crown had failed to meet its duty to consult the Blackfoot Nations and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation before the petition was approved.

Sylvestre and the Alberta government appealed the ruling.

On June 29, Court of Appeal Justice Alice Woolley granted a partial stay that allowed Elections Alberta to count and verify the signatures. The order did not allow the petition to proceed beyond the verification and public reporting stage while the appeal remains unresolved.

Under Alberta’s normal citizen initiative process, a successful constitutional referendum proposal would be submitted to the justice minister and referred to cabinet for a provincewide referendum. In this case, Elections Alberta has not been directed to submit the proposal to the minister and all further steps remain.

The petition’s success therefore does not mean an independence referendum will automatically be held. Its future depends on the outcome of the Court of Appeal proceedings and any further directions issued by the court.

Even if a referendum were eventually approved and a majority voted for independence, Alberta could not unilaterally leave Canada. The federal Clarity Act states that secession would require a constitutional amendment and negotiations involving the federal government and provincial governments.