Alberta said no to independence. Now separatists want Danielle Smith gone.

Alberta's separatists lost Monday's referendum decisively, with 75.7 per cent of voters backing remaining in Canada and 24.3 per cent voting to begin a legal process toward independence, according to unofficial results from Elections Alberta. But the movement's leaders aren't conceding anything — they're changing targets. Jeff Rath, co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project, told Global News he will push for a special general meeting of the United Conservative Party to remove Premier Danielle Smith as leader.

"An avowed federalist"

Rath described Smith as an "avowed federalist," telling Global News that "Alberta independence will never be realized as long as Smith remains leader." He claimed the movement's "hundreds of thousands of members and volunteers" are "committed to taking back ownership of the UCP." The remarks echo a position he staked out before the vote: in a CBC's fifth estate investigation, Rath said UCP separatists must get rid of Smith "sooner rather than later" through a special general meeting "the same way we did with [former premier] Jason Kenney" — a campaign in which Rath played a role. Smith, for her part, has said she is not in contact with the separatist leaders and told CBC before the vote that "as you've probably seen, I'm kind of public enemy number one for that group."

The fight lives inside the governing party

Why Smith? Polling released around the vote shows the separatist vote lives inside her own party's coalition. Abacus Data found that 52 per cent of UCP supporters would have voted to trigger a referendum, against 44 per cent who backed remaining — and 77 per cent of all pro-referendum voters support the UCP. In other words, Rath's campaign is not coming from outside the governing party; it is coming from within it. The UCP's own rules set a high bar, though: 22 of the party's 87 constituency associations would need to demand a special general meeting to force a leadership review, and as of October only two associations had backed review motions, according to reporting on the party's internal process — organized opposition, but well short of the threshold.

"We're not going anywhere"

Speaking to supporters at an Edmonton restaurant on referendum night, Rath said, "We're not going anywhere. We've dominated the conversation in the last year." He had said beforehand he would have been thrilled with 30 per cent support; the unofficial 24.3 per cent fell short of that, but Rath framed the result as a beginning. On social media, he wrote that the movement had "already won the first series of battles in the war for Alberta independence" and that from Tuesday it would dedicate itself and its volunteers "to the replacement of the Federalist Smith as leader of the Alberta UCP." Fellow separatist leader David Parker told supporters the campaign was "only the beginning" and accused Smith of having "betrayed the people who put her there repeatedly," as quoted by the Alberta politics newsletter daveberta.

Smith says it's time to move on

Smith framed the result as a mandate to put the question behind Alberta. "Albertans have voted for a stronger Alberta in a united Canada," she posted on social media, and she has ruled out a second referendum if the remain side won — telling Radio X it was "time to have a vote, understand the will of Albertans on this subject, and move on." She is scheduled to address the province on Tuesday evening. Whether that message holds inside the UCP is the open question: analysts quoted by daveberta expect separatists to use the party's annual general meeting in Calgary at the end of November to entrench themselves further inside Smith's party.