The “Forever Canada” initiative was officially registered through Alberta’s citizen initiative process to force a provincewide referendum asking Albertans whether Alberta should remain in Canada.

Facebook / Thomas A. Lukaszuk

Former Alberta deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk is now asking for financial support for his “Forever Canada” campaign from people outside Alberta. 

In a post on X, Lukaszuk openly solicited donations “from across Canada” for his anti-independence citizen initiative campaign.

That matters because Lukaszuk and his allies have repeatedly framed Alberta’s independence movement as somehow tainted by “outside influence” or foreign-backed activism while presenting their own campaign as a purely Alberta-led response.

But by Lukaszuk’s own public fundraising appeal, his campaign is seeking money and organizational support nationally.

His “Forever Canada” initiative was officially registered through Alberta’s citizen initiative process to force a provincewide referendum asking Albertans whether Alberta should remain in Canada.

That directly contradicts later attempts by Lukaszuk and some media allies to characterize the petition as merely symbolic or simply intended to prompt a legislative discussion.

Lukaszuk cannot simultaneously condemn alleged “outside influence” in Alberta’s independence debate while actively soliciting financial and political support from outside Alberta for his own campaign.

And despite later attempts to downplay the legal effect of the petition, the “Forever Canada” initiative was always designed to trigger Alberta’s referendum process under the province’s citizen initiative legislation.