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DAVID DELANEY: Alberta referendum should concern all Canadians

Such an outcome is of particular relevance to our region.

Alberta’s fast-approaching Oct. 19 referendum is much more than the offering of a tepid question on the future of that province in our country.

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Its real purpose, while clearly trying to assuage the perennial heartbeat of an element whose lifeblood flows through veins of a forever discounted body-politic, is to reconstitute our country’s institutional framework.

In this sense, it is a referendum that should concern all of us. Should its questions draw even substantial affirmative support, count on the province’s separatist element to demand further diminishment of federal authority in favour of broad areas of increased provincial autonomy. Such a change cannot come alone for one province.

It will require amendment to the current Constitution Act, thereby bringing all provinces into play.

It’s at such a point that we must all be aware of the consequences of what would be a devolution of federal authority and, with it, jeopardization of national standards. Such an outcome is of particular relevance to our region.

There are 10 referendum questions in all, touching on matters of immigration, ceding to Alberta effective sole control of that file, closing provincial programs to persons not having sufficient residency requirements; charging fees to non-residents for use of health care, education and other social services; whether to abolish the Senate; allowing Alberta to opt out of federal........

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