Citizen Initiative Petition Received, Verification on Hold

May 04, 2026

EDMONTON, AB – The signature period for “A Referendum Relating to Alberta Independence” citizen initiative petition ended May 2, 2026, and Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure today received the petition and signature sheets from proponent Mitch Sylvestre. The Chief Electoral Officer has also received a signed affidavit from the proponent that all copies of signature sheets have been destroyed, as required by section 6(1.1) of the Citizen Initiative Act.

Boxes with the petition signature sheets were sealed, signed, locked in cabinets, and are secured and stored with 24/7 security monitoring until the verification process begins.

Petition verification is on hold pending an Alberta Court of King’s Bench decision. On April 10, 2026, in response to a lawsuit from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Blackfoot Confederacy, Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard issued a temporary stay preventing the petition’s certification. The injunction halts the verification process until a full judicial review is completed.

Pending outcome of this matter and once the Justice permits, Elections Alberta will have 21 days to verify the petition, using the method as prescribed in the Act to achieve a 95% confidence level.

On May 1, the Chief Electoral Officer directed that the Citizen Initiative petition verification process be amended. Verification will now include determining if any of the seeded names from the Republican Party of Alberta’s List of Electors are contained in any incoming petition. If any of the seeded names are included, further scrutiny will result. This updated process will apply to the “A Referendum Relating to Alberta Independence” petition.

Elections Alberta cannot alter a petition that has been delivered to us. What we can and will do is conduct a very thorough petition verification process. The process is outlined on our website.

“We validate every signature on the petition and every canvasser witness statement. We check for and remove duplicate signatures from the count. We will check for the seeded names from the Republican Party of Alberta’s copy of the List of Electors,” says McClure.

In any petition verification process, if people selected by statistically valid random sample to be contacted choose to not verify their information for any reason, that is recorded as not verified, and applied against the signature count.

Should information during the verification process reveal anomalies, further steps will be taken to ensure a 95% confidence level the signatures on the petition are valid and verified.

Initiative Petition Background Information
The “A Referendum Relating to Alberta Independence” citizen initiative application from the proponent is for a constitutional proposal with the proposed question: “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?”

The application was approved and the Notice of Initiative Petition issued on January 2, 2026. Please see: New Citizen Initiative Petition Issued – Elections Alberta.

More information on the citizen initiative process, including recent changes to legislation, what happens next if a petition is successful, the status of citizen initiative petitions, proponent financing rules, third party advertising rules, and answers to frequently asked questions may be found on Elections Alberta’s website.

Elections Alberta is an independent, non-partisan office of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta responsible for administering provincial elections, by-elections, and referenda.

For media inquiries, please contact:
Michelle Gurney
Media Relations
Phone: 403.431.0759
Email: [email protected]

Posted in: Press Releases