CTV News Edmonton has reported:

Sen. Paula Simons says Alberta’s referendum is unnecessary and that separatist supporters will not be satisfied by its outcome, as advance voting begins in a 10-question ballot. She urged Albertans who oppose the process to vote anyway, saying participation is needed to shape the province’s and country’s future.

Advance polls opened Tuesday and run until Saturday. Simons discussed the referendum with Michael Higgins on CTV’s Alberta Primetime after speaking in the Senate chamber the previous week about Alberta reaching a “critical inflection point.”

Asked how necessary the referendum was, Simons said, “This referendum is entirely unnecessary.” She described it as “an expensive spirit and a waste of shame, as Shakespeare would have put it,” and said the process had sent damaging signals to investors around the world and to other Canadians whose cooperation Alberta needs to build important projects.

Simons said the referendum also tells disgruntled Albertans that they can pursue a vote on an issue they care about. She argued that its purpose is to satisfy the far right of the United Conservative Party base, but said that effort would fail. “The only reason for this referendum is to placate the far right of the UCP base, and that is also a waste of time because those people will not be placated by anything.”

Simons said she was concerned that Albertans were not sufficiently informed about the ballot. While people who want to vote for separation are engaged, she said, news consumption has changed: “We are in an era in which, frankly, we don’t have the kind of strong daily newspapers we once had; we don’t, sorry to say, have the kind of strong nightly TV news watching that we once did.”

She praised people watching the interview, but said most Albertans are no longer consuming news as they once did. Simons said she had seen accounts of residents who still did not know the referendum has 10 questions rather than one.

She also described conversations with progressive Albertans who planned to stay home because they believed voting would lend legitimacy to the process. Simons quoted their reasoning as: “‘Oh, pshaw! I’m not going to vote at all. It just will encourage her, and it will just add legitimacy to this ridiculous process. So I’m staying home.’”

“I beg of you, if you are thinking that way, please do not,” she said. “We need every person who cares about the future of this province and the future of this country to get to the polls.” She hoped for strong advance-poll turnout so that voting on Monday might be less hectic.

Simons also addressed the referendum questions on immigration, which she had focused on in her Senate remarks. She rejected the idea that Alberta is facing an immigration crisis, calling it “an imaginary construct.” In the first quarter of the year, she said, international migration was negative, meaning more people left Alberta than arrived.

Migration has increased somewhat since then, but Simons estimated the province would see less than two-per-cent growth this year, putting it at 1.52 per cent. She said such low growth had not been seen since the pandemic, or in more typical conditions since 2016, when a major oil bust took place. “So the idea that we’re being overrun is nonsensical,” she said.

She also described as imaginary the claim that Alberta faces a fiscal crisis requiring cuts to services for refugees and newcomers. When Premier Danielle Smith announced the referendum questions, Simons said, the province was projecting a $9 billion deficit. Alberta is now on track for a surplus of $2 billion to $3 billion, she said, adding that economic anxiety had evaporated.

Simons argued the province needs newcomers across its workforce and community. She cited 62,000 job vacancies despite Alberta having the country’s highest employment rate. Immigrants are needed, she said, in laboratories and as entrepreneurs, engineers and technology specialists, including people who studied at the University of Alberta and turned their projects into successful businesses.

She also pointed to immigrants who conduct symphonies and perform surgeries. Alberta’s health-care system is under strain, Simons said, and would face further difficulty without immigrant nurses, blood collection workers, X-ray technicians, doctors and skilled surgeons.

“Alberta’s secret success has always been that we’ve recruited the very best people from around the world,” she said. She said that includes small-business owners, highly skilled professionals, trades workers and people in the service sector. In a boom-and-bust economy, she warned, telling people not to come could mean they would not return when the province urgently needs workers.

Simons was also asked how the referendum, particularly the separation question, was viewed beyond Alberta. She said the issue appeared to draw little attention in Ottawa, where she spends much of her time while currently at home in Alberta. “What’s really interesting, and I find this somewhat disquieting, nobody in Ottawa appears to care,” she said.

She said the Prime Minister’s Office had handled the issue appropriately by avoiding a heavy-handed response or alarm. Simons said she believed the government had chosen “quiet competence,” focusing on a pipeline agreement and a recently announced major investment in the defence sector.

Some of her fellow senators, she said, did not know the referendum was taking place, despite her efforts to draw attention to it. Simons said separatists who wanted to vote for Option 2 to send a signal were not getting that message across. People elsewhere instead hear that Alberta is the richest province, is getting a pipeline and has favourable circumstances, she said, and ask what more the province wants.

Simons said that perception was unfair because Alberta has real historical grievances. She said the province has sometimes been treated as “the Rodney Dangerfield of Confederation,” taken for granted by others who benefit from its resources and economy without respecting Albertans’ work.

She argued the solution was not to “pitch a fit, have a strop, or throw a tantrum,” but to take a leadership role in the country. Simons said Alberta should lead as it did under former premiers Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein, and under former premier Ernest Manning.

“The fact is, we have become so navel-gazing and so into letting our inner child cry, ‘Wah wah wah,’ when instead we should be saying, ‘We have the vision to take this country where it needs to go,’” she said. Simons described the Alberta she is proud of as “tolerant, inclusive, smart and brave.”