According to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who describes herself as a Canadian patriot, she’s enabling a separation referendum out here in Wild Rose Country only to keep a separatist party from becoming as successful as the Bloc Québécois.

“We do not want a permanent feature of Alberta politics to be parties that send representatives to Ottawa whose sole purpose is to break up the country,” Smith said last week in the legislature in response to a question by Opposition leader Christina Gray.

The Canadian Press interpreted this and similar statements the premier made to mean Smith was prepared to roll the dice on a separation referendum “in part to avert the emergence of a political rival.”

As Albertans have come to know, Smith has a casual relationship with the truth, so it’s not always easy to be certain what she has in mind when she blurts out stuff like this. In this case, though, it seems more likely she was trying to frame her party’s legislative effort to make a separation referendum easier for a “citizen” group to get on a ballot as a way to prevent a separation movement from growing in Alberta.