The Right Kind of Help: What the Church Asks After Alberta Votes to Stay in Canada

On Monday, Albertans voted roughly three to one against starting down the road out of Canada. Premier Danielle Smith has promised there will be no second try while she governs, and in the same breath promised to assert the province’s autonomy with every tool she has. The separatists say they aren’t finished. Most of the news coverage has focused on the results of the vote: who won and by how much. The Church asks a question that sits underneath both: which decisions belong to a province, which belong to a country, and what does each owe the other?

The News Story

Voters in Alberta rejected a proposal to start the province down a legal path toward leaving Canada, with roughly three in four ballots cast in favor of remaining part of Canada, according to unofficial results released Tuesday, October 20, by Elections Alberta and reported by the Associated Press, Reuters and Canadian broadcasters.¹

With more than 1.8 million votes counted and results in from about 81 percent of voting areas, 75 percent had chosen to keep Alberta a province of Canada, and only 25 percent had backed beginning the separation process. CTV News projected the remain side the winner. Central Peace-Notley, in the province’s northwest, was the only riding where a majority favored the separation track in early returns. In Calgary, 22 of 26 ridings were above 80 percent for remaining.²

Voting took place Monday, October 19. More than 100 of the roughly 1,400 polling stations opened late and extended their hours, which delayed the count. Ballots are being counted by hand.³

The question asked whether Alberta should remain a province of Canada or whether the provincial government should commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding referendum on separation. A win for the second option would have led to a further vote on independence itself. It was 1 of 10 questions on the ballot. Five of the others concerned immigration, including whether the province should seek more control over immigration levels and whether temporary residents should pay fees toward some public services. Early returns showed the immigration measures leading by much narrower margins, and several constitutional questions, among them a proposal that provincial laws take priority over federal ones, were close or tied. Official results for those 9 questions are expected on Wednesday.⁴

The referendum followed a long fight over petitions. In May, an Alberta judge threw out a separatist citizen petition, finding that the province had a duty to consult First Nations, whose lawyers had argued that separation would violate treaty rights. Smith called the ruling “anti-democratic,” and days later the province announced it would put its own remain-or-separate question to voters in October. Thomas Lukaszuk, a former deputy premier, led the Forever Canadian campaign against separation.⁵

Smith, who leads the United Conservative Party, said she voted against independence. In a televised address Tuesday evening, she pledged not to hold another secession referendum while she is premier and said she would “honour this mandate from Albertans.” She urged separatist voters to “believe and hope in Canada again.” She also said her government would “use every legal and political tool at our disposal” against federal interference in provincial jurisdiction and would move ahead with greater provincial control over immigration.⁶

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who grew up in Alberta, called the result “absolutely clear” and said in a statement, “Albertans chose Canada.” He said some who backed the separation track were voicing frustration with Ottawa rather than support for independence. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre wrote that “the promise of Canada is worth fighting for.”⁷

Separatist leaders said they would keep going. Jeffrey Rath of the Alberta Prosperity Project said the group would not stop “until Alberta becomes a free and independent country” and predicted Smith would face a leadership review. His colleague Mitch Sylvestre said the group would challenge the results where it could, though he declined to allege fraud.⁸

The vote came during a trade war with the United States and after President Donald Trump’s repeated talk of making Canada a 51st state. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had called Alberta a “natural partner” for the United States, and Elon Musk posted that the province “should separate.” Alberta holds the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves, and anger over federal energy policy has fed the separatist movement. The province was also mourning 4 soldiers killed in a fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright.⁹

Catholic Social Teaching Analysis

Ballots Counted by Hand

Across Alberta on Monday night, election workers counted paper ballots by hand, 10 questions per ballot.¹⁰ When the separation question was tallied, about 75 percent had chosen to keep Alberta in Canada. Only one riding, Central Peace-Notley in the province’s northwest, leaned the other way.¹¹ Reuters noted in May that this would be the first time a province outside Quebec had put the separation question to its voters.¹²

On Tuesday evening, Premier Danielle Smith went on television and said two things at once. She would honor the vote and hold no second secession referendum while she is premier. At the same time, she would “use every legal and political tool at our disposal” against federal interference in matters that belong to the province.¹³ Prime Minister Mark Carney said some of the quarter who backed the separation track were voicing frustration with Ottawa rather than asking to leave Canada.¹⁴ One Edmonton voter told the AP exactly that: he voted to begin the process without wanting Alberta to go anywhere.¹⁵

The question that survives Monday’s vote is narrower than independence, and it will last long after this vote is a page in a history text. How much should Alberta govern itself? And what does it owe the rest of Canada while it does? The Church has a name for the principle that answers both halves of that question. She calls it subsidiarity.

A Principle from 1931

Pope Pius XI set it down in Quadragesimo Anno, in the middle of the Great Depression, calling it “that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed.” Here is the heart of it: “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.”¹⁶

The word comes from the Latin subsidium, which means help. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church draws out the lesson: “all societies of a superior order must adopt attitudes of help (‘subsidium‘)” toward the societies beneath them, so that those smaller bodies can do their own work “without being required to hand them over unjustly to other social entities of a higher level.”¹⁷ Pope Leo XIV put it in the plainest words of all in Magnifica Humanitas this year: “decisions are made at the closest level possible to the persons involved.”¹⁸

Notice which way the principle runs. Downward, it protects: the larger body may not swallow what the smaller one can do for itself. Upward, it obligates: the larger body exists to help the smaller one do it.

What Alberta Gets Right

Read that way, Alberta’s complaint deserves a fair hearing, and Catholics in the rest of Canada shouldn’t wave it off as sour grapes from an oil province. The Compendium says subsidiarity “is opposed to certain forms of centralization, bureaucratization, and welfare assistance and to the unjustified and excessive presence of the State in public mechanisms.” It asks the State to “refrain from anything that would de facto restrict the existential space of the smaller essential cells of society.”¹⁹ The Catechism teaches the same thing. Excessive intervention by the state can threaten personal freedom and initiative, and a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a lower one. It should support the lower community when it is in need and help coordinate its work with the rest of society, always for the common good.²⁰

Alberta holds the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves, and much of its separatist anger grew out of how the oil industry has been managed from Ottawa.²¹ A voter in Wainwright told the AP that his province is treated like a colony.²² I can’t judge every item on Alberta’s long list of grievances, and I won’t pretend to. But the shape of the complaint, that decisions about a people’s livelihood are made far away from them and without them, is a complaint the Church takes seriously. Subsidiarity was written to address that complaint.

The principle also cut against the separatists this year. In May, an Alberta judge threw out their petition because the province had a duty to consult First Nations, whose lawyers argued that separation would violate treaty rights.²³ Among the conditions the Compendium lists for subsidiarity to work is “safeguarding human rights and the rights of minorities.”²⁴ A province that asks Ottawa to respect the communities beneath it has to respect the peoples beneath it as well.

The Half That Gets Left Out

Here is where the argument usually stops, and where the Church keeps going. Subsidiarity never stands alone. The Compendium puts the warning in a single sentence: “Solidarity without subsidiarity, in fact, can easily degenerate into a ‘Welfare State’, while subsidiarity without solidarity runs the risk of encouraging forms of self-centered localism.”²⁵ Pope Leo repeats it: “When subsidiarity is not linked to solidarity, it ends up becoming merely the protection of particular interests.”²⁶

Self-centered localism is the precise temptation of a movement whose leaders said this week that they will not stop “until Alberta becomes a free and independent country.”²⁷ Subsidiarity settles who should make a decision, but it gives no community license to decide that it owes the larger community nothing. St. Thomas Aquinas, explaining why every law must aim at the common good, put the reason in one line: “every part is ordained to the whole, as imperfect to perfect,” and each man is “a part of the perfect community.”²⁸ A province is a real community with its own proper work. It is also part of a larger whole, and its good is tied up with the good of that whole.

Pope Francis described the balance in Fratelli Tutti. We need to pay attention to the global, he wrote, “so as to avoid narrowness and banality,” and to the local, “which keeps our feet on the ground.” The local “is capable of being a leaven,” capable “of sparking mechanisms of subsidiarity.”²⁹ A healthy province is that kind of leaven. It makes the whole country better by doing its own work well, and it needs the country as much as the country needs it. That last line is the key through which to view these events. Both sides of the coin need one another, and they need one another healthy and doing that which is proper to their state.

What Each Side Owes Now

So what does the principle ask, the week after the vote?

Of Ottawa, it asks help in the strict sense. Pius XI wanted the higher authority to leave lesser matters to the groups beneath it, so that it could “more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them.”³⁰ A federal government that takes Alberta’s frustration seriously will go looking for the decisions it holds that a province could make better, and hand them back. Carney and Smith spoke on Tuesday about cooperation between the two governments, immigration among the subjects.³¹

Of Edmonton, it asks that autonomy serve something beyond itself. Smith’s promise to use every legal and political tool is legitimate as far as the common good is its measure. The Compendium is explicit that “the common good correctly understood” must remain the standard “for making decisions concerning the application of the principle of subsidiarity.”³² A province that wins a power back from Ottawa and uses it well proves the principle right. A province that treats every power it wins as a step toward the next exit vote has turned subsidiarity against its own purpose.

Finally, of the people of Alberta, all of them, it asks participation. The Compendium calls participation “the characteristic implication of subsidiarity,” and adds that it “is a duty to be fulfilled consciously by all, with responsibility and with a view to the common good.”³³ The quarter who voted to begin the separation process are still Canadians, and many of them, by their own account, simply wanted to be heard.³⁴ Subsidiarity offers them a better road than a referendum on a referendum: the slow, local work of making their province, and their country, answer to the people who actually live there.

What I’d Watch

Watch the official results on the other 9 questions, due Wednesday, and what Smith’s government does with the immigration measures. Watch whether the separatist groups follow through on challenging the count or splitting off into a new party. Finally, watch whether Ottawa offers Alberta anything concrete beyond relief.

As always, we must pray. Pray for the people of Alberta, that a hard-fought vote heals more than it wounds. Pray for Premier Smith and Prime Minister Carney, that they govern with the humility subsidiarity asks of anyone who holds power. Pray for the First Nations whose treaties bind them to the Crown. Pray for the families of the 4 soldiers who died in the fire at Wainwright. And pray for Canada, that a country able to argue this hard over its own shape keeps hold of the bonds that make it one people.

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This story turns on subsidiarity: decisions belong as close as possible to the people they touch, and the smaller community never stops owing solidarity to the larger one.

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Notes

1. ↑ Rob Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence from Canada in Victory for Carney,” Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, October 20, 2026, pbs.org; “Alberta Voters Reject Separation from Canada, Early Results Show,” Al Jazeera, October 20, 2026, aljazeera.com.
2. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence”; “Alberta Referendum: Immigration Vote Close, Separation Rejected,” CTV News via CP24, live updates, October 20, 2026, cp24.com; “Alberta Referendum: Danielle Smith to Honour Voter Mandate,” BNN Bloomberg, live updates, October 20, 2026, bnnbloomberg.ca.
3. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence”; CTV News, “Immigration Vote Close.”
4. ↑ Al Jazeera, “Alberta Voters Reject Separation”; “Alberta Puts Separation from Canada to Voters in Pivotal Non-Binding Referendum,” Fox News, October 19, 2026, foxnews.com; CTV News, “Immigration Vote Close”; BNN Bloomberg, “Danielle Smith to Honour Voter Mandate.”
5. ↑ Stephanie Ha, “PM Carney Says Canada ‘Best Place’ for Alberta After Judge Overturns Separation Petition,” CTV News via CP24, May 14, 2026, cp24.com; David Ljunggren, “Carney Says Alberta Vote on Separation Could Become ‘Dangerous Bluff,’” Reuters via Kitco News, May 25, 2026, kitco.com; Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
6. ↑ Al Jazeera, “Alberta Voters Reject Separation”; Jesse Snyder, “Danielle Smith Makes Plea to Separatists in Televised Speech, Vows No More Secession Referendums,” National Post via Unpublished, October 20, 2026, unpublished.ca; Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
7. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence”; CTV News, “Immigration Vote Close”; Al Jazeera, “Alberta Voters Reject Separation.”
8. ↑ CTV News, “Immigration Vote Close”; BNN Bloomberg, “Danielle Smith to Honour Voter Mandate”; Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
9. ↑ Al Jazeera, “Alberta Voters Reject Separation”; Fox News, “Alberta Puts Separation from Canada to Voters”; Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
10. ↑ CTV News, “Immigration Vote Close.”
11. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence”; CTV News, “Immigration Vote Close.”
12. ↑ Ljunggren, “Dangerous Bluff.”
13. ↑ Snyder, “Danielle Smith Makes Plea.”
14. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
15. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
16. ↑ Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno: On Reconstruction of the Social Order (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 15, 1931), no. 79, vatican.va.
17. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), no. 186, vatican.va.
18. ↑ Pope Leo XIV, Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 15, 2026), no. 70, vatican.va.
19. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, nos. 186-187.
20. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), nos. 1883-1885, vatican.va.
21. ↑ Al Jazeera, “Alberta Voters Reject Separation”; Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
22. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
23. ↑ Ha, “Canada ‘Best Place’ for Alberta.”
24. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 187.
25. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 351.
26. ↑ Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, no. 73.
27. ↑ CTV News, “Immigration Vote Close.”
28. ↑ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 90, a. 2, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, in New Advent, newadvent.org.
29. ↑ Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, October 3, 2020), no. 142, vatican.va.
30. ↑ Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, no. 80.
31. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”
32. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 188.
33. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 189.
34. ↑ Gillies, “Alberta Voters Reject Independence.”

Books Cited

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• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image, 2003)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Latin-English edition, Complete Set (Aquinas Institute / Emmaus Academic, 2012)