Referendum Results

The Order in Council to conduct a constitutional referendum on equalization was issued on August 9, 2021. The referendum vote took place in conjunction with the 2021 Alberta Municipal Elections. The referendum question asked electors:

Should section 36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 – Parliament and the government of Canada’s commitment to the principle of making equalization payments – be removed from the constitution?

Electors could vote “yes” or “no” on the question.

• Provincial Results: The top row reporting “Provincial Total” is the provincial results of the vote.
• Municipal Results: The totals reported by each municipality are provided. Where a municipality conducted the vote for a summer village, First Nation, improvement district or special area, the additional jurisdiction included in that municipalities reported total can be accessed by clicking on the arrow.
• Rejected Ballots: This number represents the ballots that were rejected during the count. It includes ballots where no votes were cast (blank ballots), where more than one vote was cast, or where the intent of the voter could not be determined during the count. There were 50,969 rejected ballots on the referendum vote on equalization, of which 49,336 were blank.
• Blank Ballots: This number reports a subset of the rejected ballots – those that were left blank. In the Local Authorities Election Act, the process to decline a ballot is to leave it blank.
• Estimated Turnout: Turnout information by municipality is not available, as most municipalities do not use a list of electors and all voters register at the polls. Elections Alberta maintains the provincial List of Electors, which as of April 2021 included 2,822,303 electors. This figure does not include any new registrations that occurred during the municipal elections at the polls. The estimated turnout for the senate election, using the provincial List of Electors, is 38.7%.

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