This story is Part 2 of the Road to the Referendum series. Part 1 can be found here. More on what to expect from the series can be found here.
When driving through Lloydminster, the signs showing pride in being a border city are everywhere.
Saskatchewan and Alberta symbols welcome people as they drive in.
Throughout the community, names highlighting its border city status are on businesses.
There’s also obvious, large red markers of where the border divides the city.
Real estate agent Michael Dewing is all too familiar with how each province works.
“I carry two real estate licenses. One in Alberta and one in Saskatchewan — but luckily in the same country,” Dewing said.
“(The border) affects my business no matter where I show property in the region, because we work in 5,000 square miles around the city on both sides of the border.”
Albertans will head to the polls this upcoming Oct. 19 to vote on 10 referendum questions, one of which will ask residents of they want to remain in Canada or if they want the government of Alberta to commence the legal process to hold a binding separation referendum.
Amidst the conversations about Alberta separation, Dewing is faced with uncertainty and questions about what it would mean for not only business, but his personal life.
“For us as a business, it’ll be completely different regulations and a lot red tape to get through… For a consumer there’s a lot to consider. Like, are we going to need a different passport to go five miles out of town? Does the Canadian money stop here and now it’s a different currency?” Dewing said.
“We’re not really sure what’s going to happen.”
Dewing fears Alberta leaving Canda would create a risky situation for consumers and banks.
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“We might even see things like mortgage financing completely pull back in our region because of it. Just so much uncertainty.”
There is not clear answer on what would happen to Canadian passports, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canada Pension Plan, military or trade — but some experts have their own theories.
It would be extremely complicated to start a new country, University of Alberta law professor Gerard Kennedy said.
“There would have to be a negotiation between Canada and Alberta, to negotiate the terms of departure and issues like that would have be considered,” Kennedy said.
“An independent Alberta would certainly have no right to use the Canadian currency or to have its citizens cross the border without a passport.”
Kennedy said when it comes to trade within Canada, the federal government can facilitate the movement of resources from Alberta to B.C. or further east allowing goods to get to international markets.
“That ability to facilitate will be gone. Now, the independent Alberta would have to negotiate with the province of British Columbia, and the federal government in a separate country. That would be how that would work,” he said.
For policing, he said he would be surprised if the feds were to have the RCMP service an independent state.
Pensions is where it will get really complicated, Kennedy said, and one of the things that would have to be negotiated.
“Alberta has clearly put a disproportionate share of payments into the Canada Pension Plan… You’re going to have to get some actuaries and lawyers to hash that out.
“It won’t be simple.”
Kennedy stressed this is all quite hypothetical.
“This is only going to happen in the case of a clear majority of Albertans, in response to a clear question of wanting to leave,” Kennedy said.
Mitch Sylvestre is spearheading the separatist movement.
He said the Alberta Prosperity Project is planning give a clearer picture on what would happen if the province became its own country.
“I have a very competent group of people that are right now two or three weeks into the process of writing what we call a white paper,” Sylvestre said in an interview with Global News last month.
“We are going to release all of that stuff so people can look at it and feel some kind of comfort in what the steps are going forward.”
As the conversation of separation is discussed across kitchen tables across the province and Canada, the border city is in a unique position.
The 31,000 locals already know what it’s like to live somewhere divided — for people like Dewing, the uncertainty and questions are stressful, not knowing what could become of the line that defines Lloydminster.
“I actually had a phone call from a B.C. buyer that was moving to our region and she was pretty adamant that she wanted to stay somewhere on the Saskatchewan side right now, within an hour of the city for example, but the reason why she absolutely wanted to be on the Saskatchewan side was because of the uncertainty and volatility happening in Alberta,” Dewing said.
“There’s so many unknowns just right here in the city… A lot of farmers have farmland on the Saskatchewan side and the Alberta side, I mean they’re next door to each other. Right now they can manage that, but again, are they going to be able to if it’s a completely separate country across the street from them?
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