See post title.
What were Albertans doing this time four years ago, other than voting for their mayors and city councillors? Well, Premier Jason Kenney (remember that guy?) decided to make everybody vote on two EXTRA ballot questions at the same time. These maps will explain it all.
As a cartographer, I find these 2021 ballot questions especially entertaining because one of them was almost (but not quite) entirely apolitical. Other countries have a strong tradition of holding plebiscites and referendums on unconventional policy questions all the time, but these kinds of elections are quite rare in Canada. We don't often get to see how hundreds of thousands of Canadians collectively react when you ask them questions that few care very strongly about!
Daylight Savings Time
For some reason, Premier Kenney decided to put this issue in the public spotlight. He may have actually sincerely personally cared about abolishing Daylight Savings Time.
In my experience, most Canadians will generally say that they find changing the clocks to be a nuisance, but it's not hard to find hidden reservoirs of support for the time change. Don't ask me: Saskatchewan is the only province to have fully abolished the measure. (I personally love setting up new computers and telling them that I'm on Regina time. It makes me feel like I live in a rogue state.)
Kenney's specific proposal would have permanently placed Alberta on Saskatchewan time, leading to a geographically elegant result where Saskatchewan border communities tended to strongly support the measure. Conversely, the Rocky Mountain border regions would have been 2 hours apart from their British Columbia neighbours for half the year. Because you can see the Rocky Mountains from the province's largest city just by looking out the window, it is possible that a permanent switch to B.C. time would have been more popular.
It is very likely that Kenney's personal unpopularity also contributed to the failure of the DST question. In a country where referendums are not routine and cannot be initiated by regular citizens, any government decision to introduce one (especially on a niche issue attracting little passion) will inevitably be tied to the public's general opinion of the current administration.
Constitutional Change
Isn't it interesting to imagine a world where the hottest political questions of the day are sort of trivial and harmless? Don't worry, Kenney's other referendum question was a real humdinger.
Many Albertans believe that their tax dollars single-handedly subsidize the rest of the country, and are angry about having never been sent even a single bilingual thank-you letter by the collective people of New Brunswick. This ballot question was crafted in a laboratory to entice this large group of aggrieved cranks to show up to vote on municipal election day.
Constitutional lawyers would have you know that this is not actually how the Canadian constitution works, but when was the last time you ever met a constitutional lawyer? Exactly.
The opponents of this measure generally felt that the entire question was illegitimate, leading to a sure-fire victory for the "Yes" side. As far as we know, only the left-ish inner city of Calgary was brave enough to vote against it in any significant numbers. (Interestingly, it also flopped in rural Lamont County, home to Canada's highest concentration of Ukrainian speakers. Your guess is as good as mine.)
To date, this referendum result has had absolutely no impact on the Constitution Act.
Hey, where's Edmonton?
When I made these maps in late 2021, I was unable to find detailed returns for these two ballot questions on Edmonton's open data portal. The city simply did the bare minimum required by law, and sent off the total vote counts to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. It's possible that this was a deliberate snub of Kenney's Conservative government by the city's progressive outgoing mayor - or else I'm just overthinking things.
Best of luck to today's happy voters! Tonight, we can only guess how many candidates will be allowed to complain that they were only 9 votes away from winning.
