Guthrie says Smith can’t survive Alberta referendum fallout

Alberta Progressive Tory Leader Peter Guthrie said Premier Danielle Smith will not survive the fallout from Monday’s separation referendum, while Smith told separatists in her United Conservative Party to accept its pro-Canada stance or find another party.

“I don’t think Danielle Smith can come back from that, because she’s at the centre of it,” Guthrie, a former cabinet minister who was removed from the UCP caucus, told The Canadian Press on Wednesday. He said the referendum angered both federalists and separatists, leaving Smith with more enemies than supporters.

About 75 per cent of voters chose to keep Alberta in Canada and rejected a second, binding referendum on leaving, as early results showed on Monday night. Smith said the next day that there would be no binding separation referendum while she is premier, and the count on the other ballot questions ran late into this week.

In a video posted on social media Wednesday, Smith said anyone running for or speaking for the UCP must accept the party’s pro-Canada position, and that separatists who want to turn it into a vehicle for independence should join a different party, CBC News and The Canadian Press reported.

“Members can say and believe whatever they wish. But as a party, we cannot permit the next year to be one of internal division and endless debates about separation when Albertans have spoken so clearly against it,” Smith said in the video.

Guthrie, who was removed from caucus after criticizing the government over health-care procurement, now leads the Progressive Tory Party of Alberta, formed when the Alberta Party rebranded. He said Smith courted the independence movement to win the UCP leadership in 2022, the 2023 election and her 2024 leadership review. “They are the ones that have volunteered for her, travelled all across this province to help her,” he said.

Smith’s press secretary, Ryan Fournier, said in a statement Thursday that the government and the UCP will honour the referendum results. “MLA Pete Guthrie is out of touch with Albertans and his constituents,” Fournier said, adding that Guthrie is peddling misinformation and sides with the NDP in the legislature.

Separatist organizers are split on what comes next. Mitch Sylvestre, a separatist leader and president of the UCP constituency association in Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul, has said he is not leaving the party. Cory Morgan, an organizer behind the Pathway to Independence group, said Smith still has his support and does not face an immediate revolt.

“I’m telling them to keep their powder dry for a year,” Morgan said Thursday of disgruntled UCP members.

The UCP holds its annual general meeting next month in Calgary, and a small number of constituency associations have pushed for a leadership review, according to The Canadian Press. Former premier Jason Kenney stepped down in 2022 after members gave him 51 per cent support in a review. Kenney earlier linked the UCP’s Calgary-Shaw byelection loss to the separatism debate.

Backbencher Jason Stephan, the only member of Smith’s caucus to publicly push for a binding separation vote, announced as polls closed Monday that he will not run again. Alberta’s next provincial election is set for Oct. 18, 2027.

Sources: interviews and statements reported by The Canadian Press; Smith’s video, via CBC News.

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