Alberta Premier Smith tells UCP separatists to toe pro-Canada line or find new party

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her United Conservative Party is a pro-Canada party and that any members who want to stump for separation need to leave.

Smith said Wednesday it can’t risk a split in the ranks that would open the door to an Opposition NDP win in next fall’s general election.

“The United Conservative Party is not an independence party,” Smith told party members in a video posted on social media.

“We must be unified. If we aren’t, our party will split and Alberta will suffer terribly as a result.”

She said party members can have any views they wish but that she would respectfully invite those who want to actively stir up separatist sentiment “to join a different party.”

Smith also said anyone running for the party or serving it in an official capacity must toe the pro-Canada line.

One constituency president plans to defy that.

Mitch Sylvestre, president of the UCP’s Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul constituency association and a high-profile separation activist, said he’s going to keep talking up the concept of leaving Canada.

He also said he’s not going anywhere and that Smith is not his boss.

“She does not run the party; she runs the government. There’s a big difference,” Sylvestre said in an interview.

“Never will we be leaving to start a new party — not at this stage.”

Sylvestre spearheaded a petition calling for a binding separation vote. When that petition became bogged down in court earlier this year, Smith tied it to a pro-Canada petition as reason why it was time to resolve the separation question with Monday’s referendum.

In the referendum, 75 per cent of Albertans voted to keep the province in Canada, rejecting the other option of starting the process to hold a second, binding referendum on leaving the country.

The premier, in Wednesday’s video, says she knows that some who voted against Confederation are members of her UCP and she doesn’t hold “ill will” toward them.

“What matters now is that, as a party, we accept the results of the referendum and support and implement the clear mandate given to us by Albertans to pursue a strong Alberta within a united Canada,” Smith said.

Polls leading up to the vote suggested that a slight majority of UCP members were leaning in favour of a binding separation referendum. Separatist leaders have pushed it further, claiming party members who want to see Alberta go its own way represent a “supermajority” of the rank-and-file.

The referendum result and Smith’s pledge to not hold a binding vote while she’s premier has led some in the separatist movement to call for her resignation or a leadership review at the party’s annual general meeting next month.

Asked by reporters later Wednesday if she would expel or disqualify those who want to keep the separation debate alive in the party, Smith said she would wait to see if it becomes necessary.

“I’m asking people to do some self-reflection,” she said.

“If they are able to accept the results and the mandate that Albertans gave us through a free and democratic process, then we can have a reset. And those who cannot — they have opportunities through other political parties.”

Sylvestre said he didn’t think it would go over well if Smith started revoking memberships. “I don’t know how our people are gonna react to it,” he said

The next election is set for Oct. 18, 2027.

The lone member of Smith’s UCP caucus to publicly advocate for a second, binding referendum on separation was backbencher Jason Stephan. As polls closed Monday, he announced he would not run again.

University of Calgary political scientist Lisa Young said the premier’s comments suggest the 2027 election campaign has unofficially begun.

Young said drawing a line within the party suggests the premier is concerned she can’t win crucial ridings in Calgary or Edmonton unless the separation issue is stamped out.

“She clearly thinks that she’s in trouble,” she said.

“(Smith has) clearly made a calculation here that to continue to allow them to dictate party policy, she’s not going to be able to get enough support in the rest of the province from the general electorate to form a government.”

Smith also appears to be pivoting away from a slogan she has used in some fashion since 2022: A sovereign Alberta within a United Canada.

The first bill her government passed bore a similar name, and throughout the referendum campaign the language of sovereignty was prominent in government advertising.

But in a TV address Tuesday, the sovereign messaging was gone.

Instead, Smith spoke behind a lectern bearing a placard stating: Stronger Alberta within a united Canada.

She repeatedly used the phrase Wednesday, saying it’s the position of her party and government.

Her office did not immediately respond to questions about the word change.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2026.

— with files from Lisa Johnson in Edmonton

Jack Farrell and Dayne Patterson, The Canadian Press