Sovereignty Act

Friday December 2, 2022

December 2, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 2, 2022

‘We’ve never seen anything like this’: Is Alberta’s new Sovereignty Act actually legal?

At long last, Danielle Smith’s Alberta government has revealed its long-awaited bill to push back against Ottawa — and grant the provincial cabinet sweeping new powers in the process — but so far, there are arguably more questions than answers.

October 14, 2022

Top of the list: Is this legal?

So far, what has been known as the Sovereignty Act seems to have sparked general confusion.

Smith had made a law — intended to hit back against the federal government on behalf of what she argues is an unfairly treated Alberta — a flagship promise of her leadership campaign, which saw her replace Jason Kenney as the leader of the United Conservative Party and become Alberta premier in October.

“We are finally telling the federal government ‘no more,’” Smith said Tuesday, as the bill was unveiled at the beginning of a new legislative session.

Thursday December 1, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday December 1, 2022

Danielle Smith declares war on the rule of law

When it comes to Alberta politics, always bet on chaos. That’s been the lesson of the last decade, and it’s clearly going to be the overriding theme of Danielle Smith’s tenure as premier. After winning the leadership of the United Conservative Party on the back of a promise to assert Alberta’s “sovereignty” more aggressively, many people (myself included) expected Smith to add water to her wine to win over more moderate urban voters. Instead, with the Orwellian-sounding “Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act” she tabled yesterday as her government’s Bill 1, she opted for some arsenic. The question now is which will die first: her government or the rule of law in Alberta.

March 21, 2014

“We need the power to reset the relationship with Ottawa,” Smith said during the press conference explaining the proposed legislation. “That’s what this is all about. We’ve tried different things in the past, and it hasn’t worked. So we’ve got to try something new.” That “something new” is actually something quite old: a so-called “Henry VIII clause” that allows cabinet to amend existing legislation without the consent or approval of the legislature. As constitutional scholar Eric Adams wrote, “the cabinet may bypass the legislative process entirely to temporarily amend — for years at a time it would seem — any other provincial law, presumably to further provide measures to resist the application of federal law.”