A judge in Alberta on Wednesday delivered a blow to activists\u2019 efforts to hold a referendum on the Western Canadian province\u2019s split from the country, siding with an Indigenous group that argued the government has an obligation to consult with it as their rights would be directly affected by secession.<\/p>\n
The Court of King\u2019s Bench of Alberta ruling sided with the Indigenous group, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, in its lawsuit against the provincial government.<\/p>\n
The group argued that the secession of Alberta from Canada would introduce new international borders, violating its rights under long-established treaties.<\/p>\n
The group maintained that the government was obliged to consult it before allowing activists to collect signatures to force a vote.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Stay Free Alberta, a pro-separatist group that had been energetically canvassing, submitted a petition with more than 300,000 signatures to Elections Alberta, the province\u2019s electoral body.<\/p>\n
The signatures would need to be counted and validated by Elections Alberta, but were well over the threshold required to trigger the referendum, which had been slated for the Fall. The counting process had not begun because of the court case.<\/p>\n
In her ruling on Wednesday, Judge Shaina Leonard said that \u201cas a matter of logic and common sense, there can be no doubt that Alberta\u2019s secession from Canada will have an impact on Treaties 7 and 8,\u201d referring to the treaties relevant to the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.<\/p>\n
Mitch Sylvestre, a leader of the Stay Free Alberta pro-independence movement that submitted the petition, said that they were appealing the ruling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a setback for us, it\u2019s exactly what we were expecting,\u201d he said by phone on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, said in a televised news conference that her government would appeal the decision. \u201cWe think there\u2019s been an error in law,\u201d she said. \u201cWe think it\u2019s undemocratic.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge in Alberta on Wednesday delivered a blow to activists\u2019 efforts to hold a referendum on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9473,17,19438,19436,14568,19437,15993],"class_list":{"0":"post-44100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-alberta-canada","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-danielle-1971","11":"tag-indigenous-people","12":"tag-referendums","13":"tag-secession-and-independence-movements","14":"tag-smith"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}