[3] The Act enabled a referendum to be held if an initiative petition received a sufficient number of signatures, which was electors equally ten per cent of the votes polled in the previous general election, and an initiative petition could succeed if endorsed by 20 per cent of the votes polled in the previous election.

[4] The Act afforded a number of protections for the Legislature, noting that any initiative which would create a grant or charge on public revenue, or outside of provincial jurisdiction was invalid.

The scandal split the Liberal Party: Rutherford's Minister of Public Works, William Henry Cushing, resigned from his government and publicly attacked its railway policy, and a large portion of the Liberal caucus voted to defeat the government in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.

James Cornwall, a Liberal backbencher who supported Rutherford, fared somewhat worse: his personal financial involvement in the railway gave rise to "suspicious circumstances", but he too was not proven guilty of any wrongdoing.

He ultimately adopted a similar policy to Rutherford's, and the A&GW was eventually built by private interests using the money raised from provincial loan guarantees.