Alberta Rejects Separation, Bend School Shooting Tragedy

Sam There's a referendum result out of Canada that's got people calling it historic, and I want to know why — what exactly did Alberta vote on, and what did they decide?

Maya Voters went to the polls on October 19th on ten questions, but the big one asked whether the province should stay in Canada or have its government start the legal process toward a future binding vote on separation. It wasn't independence itself on the ballot — a "yes" would have just set that longer path in motion.

Sam So it's a vote about whether to hold the real vote, in a way. I'd guess given how it's being covered that the answer came back lopsided rather than close.

Maya It did. With most of the count in, about 75 percent voted to remain in Canada and about 25 percent backed starting the separation process. CTV's early returns had it at 76.4 to 23.6, and the official result is due later this month.

Sam That's a wide enough gap that it doesn't sound like a province on the edge of leaving. What makes this particular vote historic, though, rather than just one province saying no to an idea?

Maya Reuters pointed out this is the first time a vote on separating from the rest of Canada has happened in a province outside Quebec, where that kind of movement has a long history. Alberta doing this at all, regardless of the result, breaks new ground.

Sam Votes like this often get described as a huge turnout, so I'm curious whether people actually showed up or if that part got overstated.

Maya They showed up well beyond past elections. Elections Alberta reported 1,356,873 advance and special ballots cast between October 13th and 17th, compared with 809,988 at the same point in the 2023 provincial election. Out of about 3.15 million eligible voters, 43 percent cast ballots in advance, versus 27.5 percent in 2023.

Sam So roughly two-thirds more people voted early than in 2023, before election day even arrived. I take it the other nine questions on the ballot didn't produce anything close to that same landslide.

Maya They didn't. Those covered things like immigration and constitutional powers, and the results were much tighter. About 59 percent supported giving the province more control to limit immigration, 57 percent backed restricting certain programs to citizens and permanent residents, and 63 percent wanted proof of citizenship to vote.

Sam Those numbers sound more like a divided electorate than the near-consensus on staying in Canada. Were any of the other questions actually close to a coin flip?

Maya Two were. A question on letting the province choose its own judges passed with just 50.7 percent support, and a question on opting out of federal programs saw about 52 percent opposed. So separation drew by far the clearest answer, while two of the other questions came close to an even split.

Sam Given how lopsided that final vote was, I'm wondering how this whole thing even ended up on the ballot in the first place. Whose idea was separation as a question?

Maya It traces back to spring of 2025, when Premier Danielle Smith announced a panel on Alberta's future in Canada. She said her government wouldn't put separation on a ballot itself, but would honour a successful citizen petition calling for one.

Sam So she didn't start it herself, she agreed to put it to voters if separatists could gather enough names on a petition. Is that how it actually played out?

Maya Except she didn't stay hands-off. Smith ended up adding the separation question herself in May of this year, citing legal uncertainty around a court decision on the separatist petition. There was also a rival "Forever Canadian" petition, launched the following month by former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk, pushing the opposite position — that the province stays in Canada.

Sam And underneath all the procedural back-and-forth, what's driving people toward wanting out? I'd guess it's not just abstract identity politics.

Maya It's economic. Reuters describes grievances tied to energy — Alberta sends roughly 90 percent of its crude oil exports to the United States, and separatists argue federal climate policy is squeezing that wealth. Some advocates, including Jeffrey Rath of the Alberta Prosperity Project, have taken the campaign directly to Washington, meeting State Department officials multiple times.

Sam So separatists took their case to another country's government. Did Prime Minister Mark Carney weigh in at all before people voted?

Maya Directly. At a Calgary rally days before the vote he said the referendum "comes at the worst possible time," warning that "the world has become more dangerous and divided" and that "some outside our borders are working to break us so they can own us." He also acknowledged Alberta's resentments, saying growing up, Ottawa made Albertans feel "like our resources weren't our own."

Sam And Premier Smith, who put this question on the ballot herself, has she said whether she would ever hold another vote like it?

Maya She had already answered that before the vote. On October 9th she told CBC's Adrienne Arsenault there would be no second referendum "not as long as I'm premier," and said some separatists may see her as public enemy number one for wanting the province to stay. After the result, in a televised address, she said it was time to move forward as a strong and free Alberta within a united Canada.

Sam So the result settles the referendum question for now. How did the separatist leaders themselves read it?

Maya They split. Cory Morgan of Pathway to Independence admitted on CBC Radio that pushing ahead would be "pretty stupid when 75 percent of the province said they don't want to go that route." Rath, by contrast, questioned whether Smith could keep leading the party given how many of its own members backed separation. Reuters also noted the movement is likely to outlast this particular defeat, since the underlying grievances haven't gone anywhere.

Sam Our second story is a much harder one. Last Thursday, October 15th, there was a shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon. What happened that afternoon?

Maya A 16-year-old former student shot and killed three children and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School, firing inside a single special-needs classroom, before being shot and killed himself by an armed bystander who'd followed him into the building.

Sam Walk me through how it started, from the first moment anyone noticed something was wrong. Was there a 911 call before he reached the building?

Maya Just before 1 p.m., a pickup truck driver called police saying he'd confronted the gunman in the school parking lot and been fired at repeatedly — his Toyota Tacoma was hit by gunfire at least six times. The gunman then threw his shotgun over the school fence, climbed over himself, and shot his way through the glass doors to get inside.

Sam So he was already shooting at a civilian in the parking lot before he even reached the building. How long between that first call and police arriving on scene?

Maya The school was told to lock down at 1:01, and officers arrived at 1:02 — one minute later. But the shooting was already over by then, because the bystander, a carpenter named Kaylub Giamanco whose own daughters attend the school, had already gone in after hearing the gunfire and seeing a teacher struggling with the shooter.

Sam So the whole attack was over within a few minutes. What have police said about the people who were killed, beyond the teacher you already mentioned?

Maya Police named the children killed as five-year-old Rhoam Summer and two others aged eight and eleven. The teacher killed was 25-year-old Megan Lambert, and two others were wounded — a 54-year-old teacher, Becky Drury, and a seven-year-old, Saylor Graham — both taken to hospital in critical condition.

Sam Children as young as five, in a classroom built to look after them, is a hard thing to sit with. Do investigators have any sense yet of why this particular student came back to attack his old school?

Maya Not publicly. Police confirmed the gunman was a former special-needs student at Silver Rail who wasn't currently enrolled there, but four days after the attack officials were still saying they were investigating what led him to return and open fire — no motive has been released.

Sam So the families are still waiting on the one answer they most want. If someone only remembers one thing from each of these two stories, what should it be?

Maya From Alberta: about three in four voters chose to stay in Canada, though the grievances behind the separation vote have not gone away. From Bend: three children and a teacher were killed, two people are in critical condition, and their families are still waiting to learn why it happened.

Sam Thank you for walking through both of these so carefully with me today, and our thoughts are with everyone in Bend.

Maya This show is AI-generated, with synthetic voices, and everything you heard was drawn from the source reporting named in the closing credits, whose authors have no connection to this show. Everything today came from reporting by CBC, CTV News, Reuters, CNN, NBC News, KATU News, KPTV and Wikipedia's compiled coverage.

Sam We'll be back tomorrow with a brand new episode covering whatever's trending next, so make sure you come find us then.