700,000 Albertans signed petitions demanding a referendum on separation.

Premier Danielle Smith's office said roughly 700,000 Albertans signed petitions asking for a referendum. That headline combined two separate citizen initiativecitizen initiative drives with different goals, different legal pathways, and different verification standards. Elections Alberta later verified 404,293 signatures on the Alberta Forever Canada petition, which asked whether Alberta should remain in Canada and sought a legislative or policy response, not a separatist referendum. It verified 222,597 signatures on the Stay Free Alberta independence petition. Those verified totals add to 626,890 signature sheets, not 700,000, and they do not establish 700,000 unique Albertans because the same person could potentially have signed both petitions. Smith's statement was made when the Stay Free count still rested on the group's submitted estimate rather than Elections Alberta's verification. Treating the combined figure as a single, uniform demand for a separation referendum overstates what the numbers show.