The Hypocrisy of the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act
How a premier who claims to be a champion of freedom tables unprecedented antidemocratic legislation as her first order of business
It’s difficult to overstate the absurdity of Danielle Smith’s Bill 1, the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act. Looking beyond the condescending name, her first piece of legislation allows her provincial government to oppose or change any federal law with which it disagrees, sidestepping normal legislative oversight. It’s an overt power grab and an affront to due democratic process. But before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s start with a bit of background.
Danielle Smith, Alberta’s reigning premier, was not elected by the people of Alberta. The former premier, Jason Kenney, stepped down after an internal challenge to his leadership. Although he won the leadership challenge, he only had 51% support from his own United Conservative Party (UCP). In his estimation, this was not enough support to continue serving as premier, so he stepped down. After a hotly contested leadership race to replace Kenney, Danielle Smith, who ran on her controversial Alberta Sovereignty Act (the “Within a United Canada” was a clumsy add-on to assuage deafening public opposition), was elected by the party membership after six rounds of a ranked ballot process, garnering only 53% party support; a whopping 2% better than Kenney. Despite her less-than-tepid showing, she gleefully took over the premiership to advance a two-pronged agenda: remove any and all sensible regulations to protect Albertans against the ongoing threat of COVID and other emerging respiratory diseases, and to poke a finger in the eye of Justin Trudeau and his evil Liberal government, both of which were designed to appease her angry, vocal, antivaccinationist/separatist base. She was coronated as premier without an elected seat in the Alberta legislature, with fewer than 1.5% of Albertans casting a ballot in the election that effectively handed her a throne. This is hardly enough of a mandate to enact transformative legislation that grants a government unprecedented powers and strips rights and freedoms away from the people of Alberta.
For Smith to sit in the legislature, she needed to win a seat in a by-election. She served as the leader of the far-right Wild Rose Party from 2009 until she crossed the floor and joined the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party in 2014. During that time, she held the seat from Highwood, a riding just south of Calgary, where she’s from. But her Highwood constituents were angered by her floor crossing, and she lost her seat in 2015. Because the voters of Highwood haven’t forgiven her for her self-serving disloyalty, she chose not to run there. A vacant seat was available in Calgary-Elbow. But Smith refused to run for it because she knew she’d lose. She preferred to run in Brooks-Medicine Hat, in what she touted as a “rural riding,” where the prevailing political views more closely aligned with her own. She ultimately won her seat there with 54% of the vote in a by-election with 37% voter turnout, and was sworn in to the Alberta legislature on November 29, 2022—the same day she introduced her signature legislation, Bill 1: The Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act.
Jason Kenney called the bill the “Alberta Suicide Act,” “flagrantly unlawful,” “nuttier than a squirrel’s turd,” and “catastrophically stupid.” Prominent political pundits have called it “incoherent,” “undemocratic,” and “unnecessary.” Before she was coronated premier, her own cabinet ministers acknowledged the absurdity of it. Alberta’s justice minister, Tyler Shandro, said that the bill included excessive authorities that infringed on the rights of Albertans. And yet Shandro, in an embarrassing display of shameless political fealty, stood beside Smith during a press conference and defended it. A backbencher in Kenney’s government, Jason Neudorff, said of the Alberta Sovereignty Act that “no one person should be able to enact regulations without consultation,” which is exactly the sort of power it grants to the premier. After kneeling before the newly coronated Queen premier and kissing her ring, he was rewarded with a plum position as deputy premier. And I am unaware of a fish that flip-flops any better than finance minister Travis Toews—and I’m a fish biologist! As Kenney’s finance minister, he said that the Alberta Sovereignty Act would lead to economic chaos, but now he supports it.
Smith and her faithful ministers defend this nonsensical legislation by saying that it’s designed to clarify jurisdictional boundaries between the provincial and federal governments. They point to Québec as an exemplar. But if the comparator is Québec, then the UCP should be reminded of the serious economic consequences of its own sovereignty project in 1990s, whose persistent afterglow is still being felt today. Faced with political and economic uncertainty, businesses and investors fled Québec for firmer terrain, many of whom never returned. Is this what Smith wants? Is she prepared to gamble Alberta’s political and economic future just for the opportunity to stick it to the Libs?
It also strikes me as profoundly ironic that Smith, who represents a small subset of Albertans who have taken to routinely bellowing Braveheartesque slogans of “Freedom!” chose as her first act as premier to strip democratic rights away from her faithful loyalists. What’s not clear is whether any of them would even notice.
Smith has no mandate to enact any legislation that strips democratic rights away from Albertans or to grant the Alberta government unprecedented and undemocratic powers. She argues that she does have a mandate, because she is the leader of a party that was duly elected by the people of Alberta. What appears to be completely lost on her is that there was no discussion of an Alberta Sovereignty Act when the UCP was elected to form government in 2019. If there was, would they have won a majority government, or any government at all? The only mandate that Smith has is to keep the premier’s seat warm until the next general election in May 2023. If she wants to enact such sweeping legislation, she must be granted a mandate by the people in a general election. If she can’t wait until May, then she should dissolve this government and call a general election immediately.
Although I’ve seen no evidence of it so far, I remain hopeful that there are at least a few sober voices in the UCP cabinet who have stiff enough backbones to resist Smith’s conspiracy-fueled leadership and stand up for the very real issues facing Albertans, like the rising cost of living and securing Alberta’s economic future. That’s what they were elected to do. Albertans deserve better than this, and they should not idly stand by while a rogue, unelected premier in a tinfoil crown dismantles long-standing democratic norms.
Alberta does not need another monarch; it already has one. It needs thoughtful leadership, firmly grounded in reality, and committed to working for all Albertans regardless of their political persuasion. Our current government under Danielle Smith has shown itself to lack the integrity demanded of it by the people of this province. Perhaps they can learn from Jason Kenney’s example. Rather than voting for legislation that he deemed “nuttier than a squirrel’s turd,” he resigned his seat in the Alberta legislature on the same day Smith announced it. Although I’m no supporter of Jason Kenney, I applaud his principled stance against Bill 1, and his willingness to stand by his conviction. We need more of the same from our elected officials.