Alberta's Referendum Has 10 Questions and a Lot of Confused Voters

Alberta votes on Oct. 19, and political scientist Jared Wesley describes it as the largest exercise in direct democracy in Canadian history — never before has one event put so many questions to the public at once. There are 10 referendum questions in total, five of them related to immigration, and Wesley says they aren't particularly concisely worded; a lot of people are struggling to understand them. He has been running community town halls to offer a non-partisan view of why the government introduced the questions and how to parse them. His read on the mood is uneasiness in most Alberta communities, plus considerable confusion. On the central question, Wesley notes that public opinion polls have consistently shown over the last two years that about 70 to 75 per cent of Albertans want to remain in Canada.