Alberta’s New Democratic Party has refused to allow itself to get sucked into the vortex Government’s effort to fix its unfixable Sovereignty Act.
Nope, “this bill is beyond saving,” NDP Economic Development Critic Deron Bilous told a short and sparsely attended news conference in Edmonton Sunday morning. “It must be revoked.”
Sounding rather like those moderate progressive conservatives who ran Alberta for so many years, Bilous’s news release began with the statement that “Alberta’s NDP stands with investors, job creators and workers against the chaos created by Danielle Smith’s job-killing Sovereignty Act and will not support amendments to the legislation.”
The Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act (ASWAUCA), as Premier Smith’s government has absurdly called its signature first bill, is the United Conservative Party (UCP)’s screw-up. It’s not for the NDP to try to salvage.
Friends of the UCP have been parroting the party talking point that the NDP really ought to be a sport and suggest some amendments to Bill 1. That way the Opposition could own a piece of UCP’s colossal error and get to wear some of the egg that rightly belongs on Ms. Smith’s face.
The NDP was not prepared to bite. “The absolute last thing we need right now is weeks of backtracking and clarifications,” said the Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview MLA who served as minister of economic development and trade during Rachel Notley’s NDP government.
“That just brings more uncertainty,” he continued, noting that the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers have all publicly fretted that the ASWAUCA would drive investors and workers out of Alberta.
“It’s time to restore peace of mind for investors,” said Bilous, who does not plan to seek re-election in the next election. “It’s time to restore confidence in our laws and our economy.”
Therefore, he said, “we will not support undemocratic legislation that is already hurting our province’s economy and reputation.” If the UCP won’t drop it, he added, the NDP will revoke it if it forms government.
Meanwhile, it’s very hard to believe, as Premier Smith claimed on her Corus radio program Saturday, that her government never intended the legislation would give the UCP cabinet unlimited power to change laws without consulting the Legislature.
Nevertheless, Smith assured her radio listeners that the bill’s problems are just a matter of “awkward wording.”
As unlikely as it may seem that a Canadian provincial cabinet could be so egregiously incompetent it wouldn’t have guessed that voters and investors might get wound up about the replacement of the legislative oversight of cabinet decisions, a fundamental change in Canadian government, that’s more likely than the premier’s sloppy wording story.
Premier Smith herself introduced the bill. She had to have been briefed on its contents, even if she didn’t bother to read it. She knew what was in it.
Not only was the bill’s intent clear to anyone who took the trouble to read the draft legislation, Justice Minister Tyler Shandro admitted in Smith’s presence that usurping the role of MLAs by letting cabinet act unilaterally was precisely the plan.
Here’s a clip from a government news conference on the legislation last week:
Reporter: “We had a tech briefing with officials. We asked this question directly. We said that once the motion’s debated in the Legislature and the majority of MLAs vote on it, and then it goes to cabinet, and there’s directives within that motion, then the cabinet ministers have the ability to unilaterally, if they so choose, to change legislation. … We confirmed that over and over with officials. So can you just say yes or no, that’s correct, and if it’s not, explain why it’s not?”
Shandro: “That is correct.”
A slide illustrating the process still on the government website shows the same thing. Its final point reads: “Cabinet, working with the relevant minister, can amend any enactments, including legislation, orders or regulations.” (Emphasis added.)
So there is no question that this was precisely the intention of whoever drafted the legislation, and that elected officials understood it. It defies credulity that Smith and her briefers hadn’t read it.
The assumption must have been either that Albertans wouldn’t notice or that groups that normally line up to support Conservative governments – the business community, for example – would support it.
The UCP has a history of deceptive law-making, University of Alberta political scientist Jared Wesley pointed out, having used similar practices to push their curriculum, coal, and COVID policies.
That said, no one – not even the United Conservative Party MLA from Cow Flop-Gopher Creek – could have imagined that the Opposition would overlook the flaws in the ASWAUCA.
So the simplest and most likely conclusion is that someone persuaded Ms. Smith, or she persuaded herself, that this would actually fly with her supporters.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
