The ‘Or Else’ Scam It’s important for the independence crowd to understand that they were deceived by Danielle Smith right from the outset in that despite all their hopes, the fix was in right from the start with respect to getting a referendum on independence. Thus, nearly four years ago in October 2022, during a UCP leadership event, Ezra Levant with Rebel News pointedly asked Danielle Smith what her “or else” would be in response to eventual dissatisfaction with Ottawa. Smith replied that she herself had no such “or else” in mind, that is, would not be initiated by her, but rather, such an “or else” would have to rest with the “people” through using the Citizen Initiative Act. To be understood, just go out there and try to collect the necessary number of signatures. That Act had been brought in by Kenney in 2021 to put “more power in the hands of ordinary Albertans…giving Albertans the ultimate say on big issues”. So, in July 2025 the Alberta Prosperity Project’s Mitch Sylvestre stepped up only to find his first attempted petition effort stopped in its tracks and ending up in court to be quashed by Justice Feasby in December 2025. So, why did it end up in the court after the people being directed by Smith to use the Act? Surprisingly, to date, not one independence person that I have asked that question knew why. The reason was that while the Bill 54 amendments to the Act had lowered the signature threshold to 177,000 signatures, making a petition exercise even possible, the Smith government, at the same time, left clause 2(4) (stating that an initiative petition proposal must not contravene sections 1 to 35.1 of the Constitution Act) in the Act, which functioned as a filter or screen precluding a referendum on independence. As observed by @PardyBruce with that clause in the Act, an independence referendum was “verboten” and Smith and her Minister of Justice, Mickey Amery, knew that full well. Noteworthy, that a constitutional referendum on equalization payments was able to be held in October 2021, since being enshrined in section 36(2) of the Constitution, it fell outside the restricted window. Thus, while Smith had said that the Citizen Initiative Act was to “give the people…the power to be the ‘or else’”, the reality is that she had no intention of allowing the people to have such a “power”. And, similarly, with the recent court setback, despite clause 2(4) having been removed from the Act by Bill 14 amendments in December 2025, with the second petition attempt by Mitch Sylvestre after a successful signature collection campaign, Danielle Smith refused to use section 1 of the Referendum Act to give the people what they had worked so hard for, claiming that she was ‘boxed in’ by the court ruling and had no other choice. It should be clear by now that the promise that the people could be the “or else” by exercising their voice through the Citizen Initiative Act, was, in fact, never to be. In fact, there was to be no such “or else”, as Smith had explained in 2022 that she had no such option in mind, and, rather, has shown that she is determined that Alberta should remain shackled to globalist Carney’s Canada.