For once, Alberta’s separatist movement has a right to be angry. Wednesday’s decision by Justice Shaina Leonard of the Court of King’s Bench quashed their petition to create a referendum on Alberta independence, effectively invalidating the months of work they did and the over 300,000 signatures they claim to have collected. They have only one person to blame for that: Danielle Smith. 

Let’s first take a moment to appreciate the bravery shown here by Justice Leonard, who must have known that members of the separatist movement would have her home address thanks to the recent leak and dissemination of an electors list among separatist organizers. She must have known that Smith would immediately attack her for the decision and direct the ire of her separatist supporters in her direction. “This is a decision by one judge,” Smith said yesterday. “We think that this decision is incorrect in law and anti-democratic, and we will be appealing it as a result.”

You can be sure that in the days and weeks to come, Smith’s separatist supporters will lash out at the “Liberal-appointed judge” and her decision to defend the constitutional rights of Indigenous people. You can be even surer that anti-Indigenous racism, which was already a conspicuous part of the separatist political culture, is about to get ratcheted up even higher. But once they’re done lashing out at the nearest Liberal or Indigenous leader, they might come to realize that it was their own chosen premier and political leader who did them the dirtiest. 

After all, she was the one who let them waste their time........

© National Observer