Even before the clock struck midnight on Monday night, “it was clear … from the first million votes counted in Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s divisive separation referendum that the separatist campaign to leave Canada was going down to a definitive defeat,” according to Alberta-based Rabble writer David Climenhaga, who, it’s worth noting, was sufficiently confident in the outcome to share his analysis even as the ballots were still being tallied the following day.

“It’s safe to say Albertans have not come remotely close to endorsing the idea of holding a binding referendum on the province leaving Canada, and the sentiment to remain Canadian was particularly powerful in the province’s two largest cites,” he noted, while acknowledging that the final numbers could shift when the official results were due to be released on Wednesday.

“Nor, according to the first results last night, were the nine referendum questions at the heart of Smith’s sovereignty-association strategy faring particularly well. Her five questions designed to promote a narrative scapegoating immigrants for Alberta’s problems, were leading, but in most cases not by much.”

Given those trend lines, the “biggest loser” will likely turn out to be Smith herself, he predicts.

“Her erstwhile separatist allies are furious at her for what they view with some justice as a profound betrayal,” he points out.

“Alberta’s federalist majority is outraged at the impact of the divisive and harmful referendum and its noxious nine additional questions, all of which her government drafted. Her referendum strategy for increasing Alberta sovereignty appears to be in tatters.”

As for the “biggest winner,” that may be Smith’s chief political rival, New Democrat leader Naheed Nenshi, he suggests.

“Despite his low-energy leadership of the party he inherited from former NDP premier Rachel Notley …  Nenshi could well surf into power in the wake of widespread disgust with the high-risk referendum strategy implemented by Smith and her separatist-dominated United Conservative Party at a time when Canada is under economic and ideological attack by the Trump Administration in the United States.”

Elsewhere on the site, Gabriela Calugay-Casuga chatted with the workers who rallied outside Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Ottawa-area constituency office as part of a cross-country “national day of action to protect the right to strike,” which was timed to take place as the federal Liberal government’s bid to overhaul the current labour laws “continues to progress towards becoming law,” she notes.

“’We are strong because of the work we do,’ Siobhan Vipond, executive vice president of the Canadian Labour Congress, told the crowd in Ottawa. ‘We’re strong because of the power that we have at the bargaining table and in our workplaces. Our power is our labor, and our power to negotiate comes from when we decide we’re not getting a good enough agreement, and we’re pulling our labor.’”

In a separate back-and-forth with Rabble, Vipond warned that the proposed changes to Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, which effectively allows the government to ask the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to order an end to a strike or lockout — “is losing a constitutional right that is protected based on a minister’s opinion.”

Vipond also “highlighted” that if the federal bill passes, “provinces are likely to follow with their own legislation that will further erode labour rights,” Calugay-Casuga notes.

“To her, these conditions do not promote industrial peace, they jeopardize it.”

Over at Ricochet, Isaac Peltz and Aedan Burnett join forces to highlight “two major electoral campaigns (that) are being run by former Airbnb and real estate lobbyists” — namely, British Columbia New Democrat leader David Eby’s high-risk bid to secure a new mandate with a more robust seat count and Toronto mayoral hopeful Brad Bradford’s attempt to oust incumbent Olivia Chow.

“Using On the Trail’s database of lobbyists from every jurisdiction across the country, Ricochet found that Bradford and Eby’s campaign staff hold long-term connections with both Airbnb and the real estate industry at large, and bring into question how serious both campaigns are with their claims of making housing more affordable,” they note.

“Bradford’s campaign spokesperson is Laryssa Waler-Hetmanczuk, former director of communications for Doug Ford, and the CEO and founder of Henley Strategies, a highly active lobbying firm, (whose) past clients include Airbnb, Aventus Developments (a luxury condo developer), as well as High Art Capital Inc., and Willowdale Asset Management Holdings Inc., both real estate investment and holding firms. In a similar fashion, Cheryl Oates, a lobbyist and former chief of staff for the BC NDP, has been appointed as Eby’s campaign manager in the provincial election campaign. Oates was noted as being a lobbyist for Uber in 2021, and Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. in 2024, and Gateway casinos and entertainment as recently as October 2025. Records show she also lobbied on behalf of Teranet Holdings LP, a property registry for Ontario and Manitoba.”

Ricochet “reached out to the BC NDP and Brad Bradford’s campaigns for comment,” the story notes.

“Neither responded.”

For her part, Press Progress executive editor Rumneek Johal is keeping tabs on the ongoing controversy surrounding B.C. Conservative hopeful Heather Maahs, who “is standing by her defence of  ‘slave auctions’ and blackface in Chilliwack schools,” she reports.

“In a blog post from March 2021, when Maahs was a Chilliwack school trustee, she wrote about ‘political correctness’ in education, spurred by two events in Chilliwack that prompted cultural sensitivity training for staff in the school district. The events in question involve one student wearing blackface in a school rendition of To Kill A Mockingbird, and a fundraising event called ‘Slave for a Day.’”

Maahs issued a statement via X on Sunday “that said President of the Chilliwack Teachers Association, who circulated Maahs’ blog post on X the day prior, was simply ‘vilifying teachers who were using drama for instruction,” PP notes.

“Neither Maahs nor the BC Conservatives responded to questions from PressProgress regarding whether or not they disavow “Slave Days” and blackface in education, or whether they find these kinds of events acceptable. BC Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson has previously said he ‘will always stand up against hate,’ but has repeatedly refused to disavow Maahs as a candidate.”

Meanwhile, Canadian Dimension contributor Christo Aivalis thinks the ongoing standoff over planned layoffs at Stelco “offers a test of just how seriously” Prime Minister Mark Carney “takes the principle” that Canadians should be ‘masters in our own home,’ as he has repeatedly declared.

“American-owned Cleveland-Cliffs is pressing ahead with hundreds of layoffs at the Ontario steelmaker, despite warnings from Ottawa that the company may be violating employment commitments made in 2024,” he notes.

“Industry Minister Mélanie Joly insists that ‘everything is on the table,’ including legal action and a potential forced sale. Yet the government has stopped short of considering public ownership. And here’s the contradiction: Carney’s hypercapitalist ideology sits uneasily with the ideals of ‘Maîtres chez nous.’”

In fact, “if we take seriously the idea of making Canadians masters of their own economic destiny — and not merely servants of a domestic capitalist class — we must embrace democratic socialism,” which “is precisely what NDP leaders Avi Lewis and Marit Stiles are proposing in their calls to nationalize Stelco’s steelmaking operations,” he contends.

Rounding out the progressive-left media circuit, The Maple’s Alex King once again sounds the alarm over Canada’s minimum wage, which may be rising, but not by nearly enough, in his view.

“On October 1, minimum wage workers in five Canadian provinces received a modest pay increase,” he notes.

“Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan all raised their statutory wage floors, delivering small gains to some of the lowest-paid workers in the country. Yet these incremental pay raises leave little to celebrate. Despite a persistent cost-of-living crunch characterized by widespread housing unaffordability, food inflation and energy price gouging, none of the five provinces have established a minimum wage sufficient to meet workers’ basic needs. In several cases, the gap between what employers are legally required to pay and what workers need for even a modest standard of living remains enormous.”

Trending on the right-of-centre side of the Canadian activist mediaverse:

• In the wake of the Alberta vote, Rebel News commander Ezra Levant makes the case that the 25 per cent of voters who backed the option that “every party, every former premier and the prime minister himself campaigned against” “is now the most important number in Canadian politics.”
• For her part, Rebel Alberta bureau chief Sheila Gunn Reid, who was the listed contact for pro-binding referendum third-party advertiser Alberta’s Choice, disputed ia Bloomberg News headline that framed the result as a “victory for Carney,” given that Albertans “backed most of the nine he opposed” — which, it’s worth noting, was written before the rollout of the final results, in which all four of the constitutional questions went down to defeat.
• Over at Juno News, podcast host Marc Patrone chatted with avowedly pro-independence lawyer Keith Wilson, who “predicts another binding vote within five years and expects a very different result.”
• Juno contributor Alex Dhaliwal goes through the fine print of the “five-year environmental strategy” recently released by CBC/Radio Canada, and finds “no implementation budget, projected expenditures or estimate of additional costs.”