Canadian prime minister says Alberta ‘essential’ to country as separatists push for independence

Key points

• The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, has said that Alberta is “essential” to the country’s future, hours after the province’s leader moved the oil-rich region closer toward a referendum on independence.
• Separatists in the western province spent months collecting signatures seeking to trigger a binding October vote on seceding from the nation.
• On 4 May, they delivered their petition to provincial officials, insisting they had collected more than enough names to force a vote under Alberta law.
• But an Alberta judge shut down the process, saying the citizens’ initiative was invalid because the separatists had failed to consult with Indigenous groups whose rights could be threatened if the province separated from Canada.
• In an address late on Thursday, Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, called the judge’s decision “erroneous”, charging that it “interferes with the democratic rights of hundreds of thousands of Albertans”.