Premier Doug Ford is blasting Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s decision to hold a referendum on whether her province should move toward secession from Canada.
“I’d never do it. Premier Smith knows how I feel. She wants to, I guess, protect her 30 per cent base,” Ford said Friday in Sault Ste. Marie.
That was an apparent reference to separatist elements with Smith’s United Conservative Party that want Alberta to secede.
“It’s not going to win, as far as I’m concerned,” said the Ontario premier, who has criticized Smith in the past for courting separatists in her party.
“It’d be a disaster for Alberta to split away from our country. We have the greatest nation from coast to coast to coast,” said Ford.
“I’m proud to be Canadian, everyone in here is proud to be Canadian, and I would never do that,” he said.
“But then again, I’m not the premier of Alberta. That’s up to Premier Smith to decide, but I would never ever put that poll to Ontarians.”
Ford’s comments came the day after Smith announced an Oct. 19 referendum to ask Albertans whether they want a future “binding” plebiscite on independence from Canada.
The Albertan insisted she would be campaigning for the province to remain in the federation.
Her gambit comes as the Parti Québécois, which failed to win referenda on Quebec independence in 1980 and 1995, is pledging a third sovereignty vote if the party wins an election there this year.
Ford was in the Sault with federal Industry Minister Melanie Joly to tout a $306-million investment by Tenaris, a manufacturer of steel pipe products for the energy industry that employs 800 people in the city and will be hiring another 200 workers.
Queen’s Park is giving the firm up to $72 million through the Invest Ontario Fund and Joly said there would be up to $76 million in additional federal funding.
“We also think that we have the responsibility to make federation work, and so that is exactly why we’re in the Sault today, announcing investments and creating new jobs,” said Joly.
“But this will have an impact also in Alberta, because in Alberta we believe in the energy sector, we just signed an important MOU, and that what is happening here has clear linkages also to the Alberta energy sector,” she said, referring to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s memorandum of understanding with Smith regarding a bitumen pipeline to the Pacific.
“We know that this is just a perfect example of us all working together.”
