CTV News Edmonton has reported:

Alberta’s provincial governments have put eight questions directly to voters over the past 111 years. On Monday, the governing United Conservative Party is set to ask voters to decide 10 more, adding to a referendum history that began in 1915 with a vote on alcohol sales and later covered electricity, daylight saving time and federal equalization payments.

The push for direct votes began soon after Alberta was formed in 1905. Groups including the United Farmers of Alberta pressed the government to let the public decide on proposed initiatives, with elected representatives acting as proxies. The UFA was then a non-partisan lobby group and went on to win a majority government in 1921.

The Direct Legislation Act, in force from 1913 to 1958, allowed 20 per cent of voters to petition the government to pass a proposed law. Legislators then had to pass it or hold a binding referendum. Temperance and agricultural groups gathered enough signatures to trigger Alberta’s first plebiscite, on the proposed Liquor Act.

The 1915 vote grew out of the temperance movement, which had developed in the 19th century when alcohol consumption was relatively heavy. Groups such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, supported by several Protestant denominations, urged governments to warn people about alcohol’s dangers and ban it. Under the British North America Act of 1867, provinces had authority to restrict alcohol sales.

On July 21, 1915, the “Drys” prevailed over the “Wets.” Sixty-one per cent of voters answered yes to, “Do you approve of the proposed act, the ‘Liquor Act’?” The legislation would ban alcohol sales and close bars and saloons. About 70 per cent of eligible voters participated: 95,804 people, all men. White and non-Indigenous women in Alberta gained the right to vote less than a year later. The Liquor Act took effect July 1, 1916.

A second prohibition-related vote followed in 1920, amid national changes. The federal government had introduced temporary prohibition across Canada in 1918 under the War Measures Act, then repealed it a year later. In 1920, Ottawa encouraged provinces to hold plebiscites on tightening existing prohibition rules, specifically on whether liquor could be imported.

Seven of Canada’s nine provinces held votes, and majorities in each, including Alberta, supported the measure. Ontario, which had prohibited alcohol sales in 1916, voted in 1921 and also recorded a majority in favour. Alberta voters were asked, “Shall the importation and the bringing of intoxicating liquids into the province be forbidden?” Sixty-one per cent, or 68,012 of the 112,333 voters who participated, said yes, matching the share from the 1915 vote.

Prince Edward Island and Quebec took different approaches. P.E.I. adopted strict prohibition laws in 1901, which remained in place until 1948. Quebec banned hard liquor in 1919, but in a referendum that year voters approved sales of beer, cider and wine containing less than 2.5 per cent alcohol. Quebec ended prohibition in 1921 and created its provincial liquor control board, allowing sealed spirits to be sold. The Société des alcools du Québec, or SAQ, was North America’s first all-inclusive government-controlled alcohol system, a model later adopted by other provinces.

Alberta’s own prohibition regime came before voters again in November 1923, after “hotelmen” submitted a petition with about 50,000 signatures in January. Voters ranked four choices: retain prohibition; license beer sales in hotels and other locations; sell beer through government vendors for home consumption while making spirits available by prescription; or sell all alcohol through government vendors for licensed venues or private use.

Nearly 58 per cent ranked the fourth option first, while 38 per cent chose continued prohibition as their top preference. The result led to the creation of the Alberta Liquor Control Board, predecessor to today’s Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis.

The next provincial plebiscite came in 1948, alongside the general election, and concerned how electricity should be distributed. Voters could support a publicly owned utility serving the entire province or retain the existing arrangement of municipal and private operators. Rural communities were largely without utility service, making the issue a prominent and contentious campaign matter ahead of the August vote.

Premier Ernest Manning warned that a public utility would cost several million dollars and could leave taxpayers responsible for losses. He also said his Social Credit government would follow voters’ wishes. Edmonton, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat favoured keeping the existing system, arguing that losing their municipal utilities would raise property taxes. The Opposition Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, predecessor of today’s NDP, strongly backed public ownership.

The privately run system narrowly won, receiving 50.03 per cent of the vote. Manning’s Social Credit party easily retained its large majority in the general election, winning 51 of 57 seats.

Daylight saving time became a provincial issue after the Second World War. Calgary and Edmonton began observing it in 1947 after plebiscites during the previous year’s municipal elections. Supporters argued that shifting clocks would make better use of summer daylight for business and recreation. The province mandated Mountain Standard Time across Alberta the following year, preventing municipalities from setting their own time rules, but urban municipalities continued to press the Social Credit government for a province-wide vote.

Efforts by Calgary and Edmonton councils gained momentum in the early 1960s, as did a 1964 motion by Opposition Liberal MLA William Dickie. Neither initially succeeded. Manning said in fall 1965 that voters would be asked about daylight saving time and water fluoridation, but neither issue appeared in the February 1966 Speech from the Throne. Opposition Liberals called for legislation, and the legislature later passed another motion from Dickie for a daylight saving plebiscite. The province scheduled the vote for the 1967 election.

In May 1967, 51.25 per cent voted against province-wide daylight saving time in response to the question, “Do you favour province-wide daylight saving time?” Premier Harry Strom, who had replaced Manning a year after that election, announced in 1969 that the issue would return to voters at the next election. Alberta and Saskatchewan were then the only provinces that had not adopted daylight saving time. In 1971, 61.5 per cent supported province-wide daylight saving time. The newly elected Progressive Conservative government announced the change the following spring.

Equalization payments became the subject of a provincial vote in 2021 after years of political debate. Jason Kenney began emphasizing the issue during the fall 2017 campaign for leadership of the new United Conservative Party, which he won. Equalization has long drawn objections from “Have” provinces, and Alberta had consistently been among them since the early 1960s.

Introduced in 1957 and incorporated into the Constitution in 1982, equalization is funded mostly through federal taxes. Its stated purpose is to ensure federally funded services are delivered evenly across the country. Ottawa adjusts the formula every five years. Kenney floated a referendum on removing fossil-fuel revenues from the formula in fall 2017. The proposal remained part of the UCP’s campaign over the next year and a half, often alongside promises to eliminate Alberta’s carbon tax and efforts to build support for new energy pipelines. The party won the May 2019 election.

A few months later, Kenney’s government appointed the Fair Deal Panel to consult residents and stakeholders through town halls, interviews and a survey, then recommend ways Alberta could improve its position in Confederation. The panel, led by Preston Manning, issued its report in May 2020. It identified pursuing equalization reform with other provinces and Ottawa as the first step, followed by a referendum asking whether voters supported removing equalization from the Constitution.

The province announced the next year that an equalization question would appear on the ballot during fall municipal elections, along with another question on daylight saving time. Voters were asked: “Should Section 36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 - Parliament and the Government of Canada’s commitment to the principle of making equalization payments - be removed from the Constitution?” Of slightly more than one million votes cast, 61.7 per cent supported removal. The result did not lead to negotiations between the federal and provincial governments.

The 2021 daylight saving vote came more than 50 years after Alberta’s previous province-wide vote on the issue. Some jurisdictions had ended the practice or were moving in that direction, and the Alberta ballot asked whether the province should adopt year-round daylight saving time, or summer hours, and stop changing clocks twice annually. Kenney described the result as “as close as it gets to a tie” after 50.2 per cent answered no to the question, “Do you want Alberta to adopt year-round Daylight Saving Time, which is summer hours, eliminating the need to change our clocks twice a year?”

The source account ends by referring to an announcement from the premier earlier this year, without providing the announcement’s details. It also says the UCP would put 10 questions to voters on Monday, without specifying their subjects in the supplied text.