Alberta separatists aren’t just enthused by the fact they have apparently surpassed the necessary 177,000 signatures to force their referendum onto ballots — they’re also celebrating when they reached the target.

Stay Free Alberta claimed that accomplishment a week before a judge in Edmonton hears a First Nation’s injunction bid against the citizen’s initiative on April 7, arguing that the independence bid would violate Indigenous treaties.

A casual legal/political observer might puzzle over this logic. After all, it might not matter that enough signatures were collected if Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation gets its injunction, because that would likely freeze the whole Elections Alberta process of vetting and approving the petition.

However, this could set up a Plan B for separatist leader Mitch Sylvestre: appeal directly to Premier Danielle Smith to put the referendum to leave Canada on October’s ballot, regardless of what the court had just said.

“Let’s get the signatures first before the 7th, before they can go to court over it, and just say: all right, we’ve done our share,” Sylvestre told CBC News. “We’ve followed the rules up to now.”

To him, having the legally required number of petition signatures to succeed is his way of court-proofing his group.

“We don’t necessarily have to turn the signatures into Elections Alberta,” Sylvestre said. “We have other options. We could actually bring them to the government and have them vet them.”

The Citizen Initiative Act does say a successful petition has to be turned in to Elections Alberta (Section 10 if you’re curious). But the scenario Sylvestre envisions would involve his initiative sidestepping the law for citizen petitions altogether.

There are two ways a referendum gets on the ballot: with a successful petition drive by Albertans, or by the government’s order through the Referendum Act — the method Smith has already employed to pose nine other ballot questions this fall on immigration and federal constitutional reform. 

“The premier can call this any time she wants with or without the [petition],” Sylvestre told a YouTube interviewer last month.

The host clarified with Stay Free Alberta’s leader: “We will still have a referendum if the premier calls for it, just to be clear.” Sylvestre replied: “I would absolutely expect it to go through.”

Sheldon Sunshine, chief of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation worries that Smith would work around any court setback for the separatists.

“What we’ve seen over this process is that the UCP has been bending over backwards to accommodate this small group of people,” Sunshine said in an interview.

Sylvestre’s petition has lost already in court. Last December, a different King’s Bench judge ruled that separatism couldn’t be pursued under the Citizen Initiative Act, in part because the proposal contravened the Constitution and in part because of its potential to violate First Nations’ treaty rights.

But the Smith government circumvented that judicial decision by changing the law to remove Elections Alberta’s ability to have courts review the legality of a proposed referendum, and allowing the separatist group to refile their petition as though that never happened.

And this was the second time the UCP government used legislation to ease the path toward a successful petition drive. 

Last May, days after the Carney Liberals won the federal election, Justice Minister Mickey Amery tabled a bill to drastically slash the number of signatures a constitutional referendum petition needed — from 587,952 to 177,732.

The UCP’s reforms mean Sylvestre’s group needs the support of only six per cent of the provincial electorate, instead of 20 per cent under the old law.

While Smith has repeatedly maintained she supports a united Canada (with more sovereign powers for her province), she’s politically motivated to give a wide berth to the movement to sever the country.

While polls have consistently shown that as few as one-fifth or one-quarter of Albertans support leaving Canada, the idea is far more popular among UCP voters. And a section of her party’s activist base is driving the petition efforts, including Sylvestre, a UCP riding president in northeast Alberta.

CBC News asked Smith and Amery if they’d approve the referendum anyway, even if an injunction froze the citizen initiative. The emailed answer from Amery’s spokesperson signalled some openness to the idea.

“The independence petition has until May 2 to collect their signatures,” Heather Jenkins’s statement begins. “We’ll wait to see this process play out and for the final signature count from Elections Alberta once the signature verification period ends.”

That would suggest that Amery would let the process carry out as the law currently dictates. However, Jenkins added: “The premier has said that any current citizen initiative that gets the requisite number of signatures will be put on the Oct. 19 referendum ballot.”

Sylvestre maintains he has the requisite forms filled out, plus dozens of boxes still to come in and more canvassers still soliciting pro-independence support. So would that be enough in the premier’s eyes?

This prospect of injunction-sidestepping by Smith would remain in the realm of the purely hypothetical, of course, if Sturgeon Lake fails in its bid to persuade a judge next week that the reforms to the petition law violate treaty and constitutional rights.

The injunction hearing will be followed by a related legal challenge by other First Nations groups next week, heard by the same judge. 

Orlagh O’Kelly, Sturgeon Lake’s counsel, said rulings won’t likely come right away, but rather at some point before the May 2 deadline for Sylvestre’s petition.

She acknowledged the possibility of Smith calling the independence referendum herself. “And I suspect that will be a question of the court [as well],“ O’Kelly added.

Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation was an intervenor the last time the separatist petition lost in court, and Chief Sunshine said his nation will “protect our rights with every means possible.”

Sylvestre, too, is confident he can continue to keep fighting, come what may, in the political arena.

All of this means that many factors may ultimately be proven moot in the upcoming weeks, including the opinions of more than 177,000 Albertans and another King’s Bench judge.