‘Late to the party’ or ‘asleep at the switch’? Carney, Poilievre make last pitches for unity in Alberta

Despite representing nearly 90 per cent of Alberta’s ridings, Conservatives have been ‘largely silent’ during the referendum, said Duanne Bratt, a Calgary-based political science professor, while the province’s lone NDP MP made a failed bid for an emergency debate in the House.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, right, and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre at separate press conferences, their photographs overlaid via editing. Poilievre says Conservatives have knocked on 'thousands' of doors campaigning for Canadian unity, and Carney says the Oct. 19 vote needs a ‘decisive result … to settle this question.’The Hill Times photograph by Aidan Raynor

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BY MARLO GLASS

October 16, 2026

In the final days ahead of Alberta’s referendum, MPs from all political stripes are speaking up for a united Canada, though the province's lone NDP MP says Ottawa is “sleepwalking” on separatism, while a political scientist says the Conservative Party has been “large...

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