Alberta is going out of its way to develop trade ties with existing or new partners.
One such example is the establishment of a trade office in Washington, D.C., with other locations in the United States: Seattle, Denver, and Chicago.
However, the upcoming referendum on Oct. 19 could change Alberta’s trade relations with its global partners and with its current partners in Confederation.
“Under international law, if Alberta were to separate from Canada, it would not automatically be a member of all the trade agreements to which Canada is a party,” said Gitane De Silva, Executive Director of the Peter Lougheed School of Politics and Democracy at the University of Alberta.
Among the agreements Alberta would no longer be privy to should it vote in favour of leaving in a binding referendum would be the Canada Free Trade Agreement, which would leave the province to figure out its relationships with the other nine provinces and three territories.
“We would need to figure out what our relationship is with Canada and then what types of tariffs Canada might be charging us,” said De Silva.
The referendum on Oct.19 will feature ten questions, the most prominent and oft-debated of which asks the electorate whether it wants to remain in Canada or whether the provincial government should begin the legal process of holding a binding referendum on Alberta independence.
Premier Danielle Smith has been promoting the province’s economy on social media, despite the July jobs report from Statistics Canada showing Alberta has the second-highest unemployment rate in Canada.
De Silva points to case studies that indicate where Alberta may be headed, including Brexit.
The narrow vote in favour of the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union trading bloc has had several ramifications, including a contraction in Britain’s gross domestic product and the need to renegotiate trade agreements with the EU.
De Silva says passports are just the start of things that will need to be looked at.
“You look at the UK’s access to the EU region and how people should be able to travel in that zone without the need of visas and things like that,” she said. “Then you haven’t even got into questions around currency and the military and all those other things that you need when you’re setting up a country.”
Another case study involves the 1995 Quebec referendum, where the Leave side made several promises to the electorate, including dual citizenship.
Despite the fact that the vote failed and Quebec narrowly voted to remain a part of the Canadian federation, De Silva says the Clarity Act, passed after the 1995 vote in Quebec, is clear on what can be promised and what needs to be done.
“If Alberta were to separate, if it wanted to become its own country, that means it would need to stand up everything that is required to be an independent country or to negotiate some type of customs union or something so that you could continue to use the Canadian currency. But all of that would be up in the air and not for negotiation,” she said.
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