Albertans are closely watching referendum results and so is Edmonton's mayor

Edmonton voters overwhelmingly chose option one for Alberta to remain in Canada. All Edmonton ridings show more than 80% of the vote went to staying in the federation. I'm not surprised. I think the average is actually over 85% now. But if you average out all the Edmonton ridings, which showed that Edmontonians overwhelmingly wanted to stay part of Canada. But when you're actually out engaging people and talking to people about what they care about, what issues they want to see focused on, they were overwhelmingly opposed to separating. They really wanted to see greater emphasis on things, you know, on the provincial side of things around health care and education and supports for those experiencing homelessness. What do you think when you look at the other nine questions, though? Because as I mentioned, they're a little mixed, especially when it comes to immigration control. Based off what I last read is that Edmontonians still voted a majority in favor of no to the nine, all nine. They know that trying to focus on something like immigration or trying to suggest that somehow our neighbor is the reason those things aren't functioning the way they need to is not the right focus point. What sort of ramifications then do you see out of the results from this referendum for the city? Well, I think now we have stability at least on the notion of staying in Canada and so that will help provide investment stability. There were absolutely challenges throughout the referendum of businesses debating whether or not they should invest. This has helped. You've been looking at the results numbers. Edmonton and Calgary, there was a different push than, say, in the rural parts of the province. So what do you make of that difference? And how do you make sure that everyone across Alberta is acknowledged for how they voted? Again, I would come back to, let's make sure we're asking the right questions. Those questions were asked in a way to be divisive, those other nine questions. Let's ask the questions in as unbiased a way as possible. Let's go out and say, hey, I think we need to work on our health care system. How can we do that collectively? What do we think would really help make sure we're delivering the best health care? But those weren't the questions that were asked. So what do we do with what we've got? So I say set aside those questions because those questions aren't getting at the root cause of the challenges before us. Let's go in and ask those questions in a thoughtful way, in a way that generates thoughtful dialogue and discussion, and then use those solutions that come up through those conversations to actually address the problems. That's the way you actually bring together people that might seem divided. I don't think we're, in a lot of cases, as divided as we think. We just have the issue we want to fix, and we don't necessarily know how to address the solution. So let's actually have those conversations.