Thomas Lukaszuk's claim that his petition to keep Alberta in Canada was never about triggering a referendum, but the record says otherwise.
Former Alberta Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Thomas Lukaszuk is now trying to recast his Forever Canada petition as a simple request for MLAs to vote in the legislature.
But the record does not support that tidy new version. His own petition asked Albertans:
“Do you agree that Alberta should remain within Canada?”
That is not the wording of a routine policy motion. That is a provincewide ballot question, and it wasn’t filed as some symbolic open letter either.
Weird. Thomas Lukaszuk @LukaszukAB advocated publicly for a referendum. So why is he changing his mind now? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/KcnBuSjDh2
— NDP Lie Detector (@NDPLieDetector) May 11, 2026
Lukaszuk used Alberta’s formal citizen initiative process, the same mechanism used to trigger provincewide referendum action. His petition gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures and was accepted by Elections Alberta as a successful initiative petition.
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