Image source, Getty Images

Today’s referendum happens in the shadow of a terrible fire that swept through a Canadian military base in Wainwright, Alberta this weekend.

The fire killed four Canadian service members and sent 39 people to hospital - 19 of them are in life-threatening condition.

The flames, the origins of which are still being investigated, spread rapidly through the military base, jumping one kilometre in the span of a minute as the wind shifted.

Addressing Canada’s parliament a short while ago, Prime Minister Mark Carney honoured the victims as “young men with bright futures who chose to serve our country and who died in that cause”.

“This loss touches every corner of our nation,” he added.

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative opposition party and MP for the riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, Alberta, also addressed the House of Commons and urged people to stand with the wounded, and pray for their families.

“There will be birthdays, Thanksgivings, Christmases, weddings and many more special events with an empty chair at the dinner table. So we remember those families,” he said.

After Quebec narrowly voted to remain in Canada in 1995, a law was passed outlining the legal parameters concerning a province’s right to secede from the country.

The Clarity Act stipulates that a formal constitutional amendment is required for a province to leave Canada. Meaning that even if a majority of people vote for a province to secede in an official referendum, that doesn’t guarantee an immediate secession.

Instead, a successful independence referendum would kick-start negotiations. A province can vote to initiate secession discussions, but can not unilaterally vote to leave Canada.

As a reminder, today's vote is not an official referendum on secession.

Nadine Yousif
Reporting from Edmonton, Alberta

John Chmilar, 28, says he waited over an hour and a half in line to vote at a polling station in downtown Edmonton.

He voted for Alberta to remain in Canada, saying he disagrees with those who say Alberta has a distinct identity.

“Honestly, compared to the rest of the world, we just don’t have a history for it,” he says. “We’ve been a province for like a 100 years. How can you say we have a unique culture?”

“We’re part of Canada. That’s who we are,” Chmilar adds.

Jessica Murphy
Canada digital editor

Canada has grappled with threats to its unity before, including with occasional violence.

The province of Quebec held two referendums on independence, in 1980 and 1995. Both were unsuccessful, though the second one was a nail-bitter - the “No” side won, squeaking by with just 50.58%. of the vote.

Alberta independence supporters don’t hide the fact that they gain inspiration from the majority French-speaking province.

They view Quebec as having successfully used the threat of separation to gain significant political leverage over Ottawa, and more autonomy over provincial affairs.

The movement shaped Canadian political debates for decades and 20 years ago, Parliament passed a motion officially recognising that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada, for the preservation of their unique language and culture within the country.

And despite support for Quebec sovereignty being at historic lows, a newly elected provincial government has pledged to hold a third referendum on independence by 2030.

Nadine Yousif
Reporting from Edmonton, Alberta

Outside the Alberta legislature in Edmonton yesterday, we ran into two men dressed as superheroes, each representing opposite sides of the separation debate. They declined to give us their names, but “Canada Guy” and “Mr Alberta” explained to us why they feel so passionately about today's vote.

Stay Free Alberta is the organising vehicle behind the citizen-led petition calling for an independence referendum. They claimed to have collected more than 300,000 signatures to support their cause.

Stay Free Alberta is backed by a group called the Alberta Prosperity Project, which describes itself as “a growing movement of Albertans who want freedom from federal overreach”, according to the group’s website.

Mitch Sylvestre, a gun-shop owner from an Alberta town called Bonnyville, is one of the group’s leaders, along with Jeffrey Rath, a lawyer based in Calgary. They argue that the province's economic growth has been hindered by years of Liberal party rule in Ottawa.

This sentiment has its roots in “western alienation” which is a term that has been used for decades by some in Canada’s western provinces to describe a feeling of being ignored or overlooked by the federal government.

Nadine Yousif
Reporting from Edmonton, Alberta

Image source, BBC/Eloise Alanna

We’re outside a polling station in south Edmonton, and we’re already seeing a steady trickle of voters.

One of them, 35-year-old Scarlet, says she voted for Alberta to remain in Canada because “I want to be Canadian.”

“I’m nervous that if Alberta was its own country, then it would just be a pawn for the United States,” she says.

Image source, BBC/Eloise Alanna

Quinn, 19, voted the opposite way. He’s not necessarily pro-independence, he says, but wants Alberta to have more say within Canada.

“If we’re able to threaten separation in order to get more power from Canada, I think that would benefit Albertans and potentially even many other Western Canadians,” he tells me.

Nadine Yousif
Reporting from Edmonton, Alberta

Image source, Reuters/Getty Images

Even if the majority vote to separate, Alberta won’t get a spot in the UN or its own FIFA World Cup team any time soon.

A successful ‘yes’ vote would only kick-start a lengthy, and likely costly, legal battle for sovereignty.

Those who want independence see the vote as a chance to rethink Alberta’s place within Canada.

Even if the referendum fails, the amount of support that it gets could sow divisions and dictate much of Alberta’s and Canada’s political future.

Eloise Alanna
Reporting from Edmonton, Alberta

Even with the polling numbers on their side, it’s clear from speaking to pro-Canada Albertans that they’re nervous about the voter turnout today and what could come next.

"You look at the polls and you’ll see 70/30 support for staying in Canada," says Corey Hogan, a Liberal MP in Calgary. "But I think we’re all very worried that Alberta’s politics could be consumed by this forever."

Hogan tells me how this "trend towards separatism" - even if it's ultimately unsuccessful - still has a negative impact on the province, and wider country.

"We have important things to do as a country, and we’re dealing with this," he says. "And that’s heartbreaking."

Eloise Alanna
Reporting from Alberta

Many Albertans have long voted conservative and in recent years there’s been a growing sense that the successive Liberal governments in Ottawa have put environmental policies over the province’s oil and gas industry.

Jeffrey Rath is a Calgary lawyer and one of the lead organisers of Alberta’s independence movement.

His reasons for wanting an independent Alberta, as you can watch below, include that he thinks Albertans are underrepresented within Canada.

Rath, like many of those advocating for separation, say they feel alienated from Eastern Canadian hubs - like Ottawa and Toronto - where they believe that the business and political elites don’t share the same Albertan values of small government, hard work and enterprise.

That disconnect is reinforced by the reality that Alberta’s smaller population means it has less political sway than Ontario and Quebec.

Nadine Yousif
Reporting from Alberta

Image source, Getty Images

The Brexit parallel is one that Prime Minister Mark Carney has also made in his push for Canadian unity.

“I saw first hand, what gets sold in these referenda," said the prime minister, who served from 2013 to 2020 as the governor of the Bank of England, leading its responses to Brexit.

"And you’ve seen what’s happened in the United Kingdom,” he quipped.

But supporters of separate Alberta say fears of turmoil are unfounded.

To them, independence means more wealth, more prosperity and the freedom to chart their own path.

Nadine Yousif
Reporting from Edmonton, Alberta

Ask any Albertan — regardless of which side they are on — about today's referendum, and they will tell you it has been a long time coming.

For decades, some in this traditionally Conservative, oil-rich province have felt that Alberta is little more than a resource colony for politicians in Ottawa, and that their votes count for little in Canada.

But talk of separation remained largely on the fringes.

That began to change after Justin Trudeau, a Liberal, won re-election for a third time in 2019.

Town halls advocating separation began popping up in small Alberta towns.

The gatherings were sparsely attended. One I covered in early January 2020 drew roughly 40 people, though they were determined to show up despite bone-chilling temperatures.

The movement started to gain momentum as some Albertans grew frustrated with Trudeau’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccine mandates, viewing them as yet another example of government overreach.

Separatist voices began to dominate Alberta politics, and the movement gained a foothold in Premier Danielle Smith’s governing United Conservative Party.

In the last year, Smith has made it easier for Albertans to trigger citizen-initiated referendums, and allowed a question on separation to go ahead despite opposition from many Albertans and First Nations, and despite being pro-unity herself.

After decades of debate over separation, Albertans will soon learn for the first time just how many of them actually support it.

Image source, Reuters

The people of Alberta are not directly voting on whether to leave Canada today.

Instead, this vote is a referendum on holding another referendum. It gives Albertans the option to either remain a part of Canada, or to commence the legal process to hold another vote, which would be binding, on separation.

Essentially, Albertans are voting for or against holding another ‘official’ vote on separation.

There are also nine other questions that have been put to voters, though they have been overshadowed by the one on independence - which is question 10.

On question 10, they will also have the option of checking two boxes, which look like this:

• Option A - remain in Canada
• Option B - to commence the legal process to hold a binding separation referendum

Nadine Yousif
Reporting from Edmonton, Alberta

Polls are set to open in Alberta shortly, where voters in Canada's wealthiest province are being asked to give their response to the question:

Should Alberta remain a part of Canada, or should it start the process for separating from the country?

Separatists have been campaigning for independence ahead of today's vote. It’s a movement fuelled by growing frustration with politicians in Ottawa and a belief that Alberta would be better off going it alone.

Opponents, however, say it’s vital to keep the country united, especially in the face of threats from US President Donald Trump.

What was once a fringe movement has grown quite significantly in recent years, enough to put a formal question of separation on the ballot today.

Voting starts at 09:00 local time (16:00 BST) and closes at 20:00 (03:00 BST), but we’ll be right here to take you through till everything’s tallied.