Fortis et Liber: Alberta’s Future in the Canadian Federation

From the C2C Journal

By Barry Cooper, professor of political science, University of Calgary

Canada’s western lands, wrote one prominent academic, became provinces “in the Roman sense” – acquired possessions that, once vanquished, were there to be exploited. Laurentian Canada regarded the hinterlands as existing primarily to serve the interests of the heartland. And the current holders of office in Ottawa often behave as if the Constitution’s federal-provincial distribution of powers is at best advisory, if it needs to be acknowledged at all. Reviewing this history, Barry Cooper places Alberta’s widely criticized Sovereignty Act in the context of the Prairie provinces’ long struggle for due constitutional recognition and the political equality of their citizens. Canada is a federation, notes Cooper. Provinces do have rights. Constitutions do mean something. And when they are no longer working, they can be changed.

Mahatma Ghandhi was once allegedly asked what he thought of Western civilization. “I think it would be a good idea,” he is said to have replied. One could answer the same about Canadian federalism: it would be a good idea.

Not too long ago I was interviewed by a CBC journalist from Toronto regarding the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act, which upon its introduction by Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP government in November 2022 was attacked as needlessly provocative, deeply unconstitutional, legally unsustainable and shamelessly populist. “What is your vision of Canada?” the CBC reporter wanted to know. I told her the following: that Canada might be a federation. The implication was obvious: Canada is not a federation at present and, arguably, never has been. Many Canadians would find such a remark not arguable but outrageous. So here is my argument. My focus is on the Prairie West, not Laurentian Canada, the Maritimes, Newfoundland or B.C., each of which retains the story of its connection to Canada.

For 200 years Rupert’s Land (its flag shown on top left) along with the Northwest and Northeast Territories were the exclusive commercial domain of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), granted by the British Crown; Great Britian officially transferred these vast lands to the Crown in Right of Canada in 1870. (Source of map: Golbez, licensed under CC BY 2.5)

Before Canada became a country in 1867, the vast tracts administered by the Hudson’s Bay Company – Rupert’s Land and the Northwest and Northeast Territories, including what became Labrador – were governed from London under Imperial orders and statutes. In law, Rupert’s Land was a plantation – a cold-weather plantation, to be sure, but a plantation nevertheless. The transfer of Company lands from the Imperial Crown to the Crown in Right of Canada took place by means of an Imperial Order-in-Council (passed under appropriate statutory authority) on July 15, 1870.

This all-but-forgotten history is important for understanding our present discontents. Not only was Rupert’s Land a territory politically distinct from the colony of Canada, but the manner of its acquisition by Canada underlined its distinctiveness. In 1868, a year after Confederation, the British Parliament passed the Rupert’s Land Act, specifying that the Hudson’s Bay Company would surrender its “lands, rights, privileges, liberties, franchises, powers and authorities” under certain terms and conditions to be negotiated by the Company, the Colonial Office and the Canadian government.

The negotiations were protracted and the specification of the terms and conditions took years of haggling among all the parties, some of which erupted into lawsuits. In the background there remained the unacknowledged claims of the inhabitants of the Red River Settlement (in what later became the Province of Manitoba), who were decidedly cool about the prospect of being incorporated into Canada. Neither they – whether of British, French, Métis, “country-born” or Indian stock – nor the other natives of Rupert’s Land were consulted about their new status.

Obscure but legally important: Canada is often said to have “purchased” Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company, but Canada did not actually pay for the land, only for the company’s capital improvements such as Lower Fort Garry in the Rural Municipality of St. Andrews (aka the Stone Fort, top), Fort Edmonton (middle), depicted here after construction of Alberta’s Legislative Assembly building, and the Hudson’s Bay Brigade Trail (bottom). (Sources of images: (top) Gordon Goldsborough, 2014-0038; (middle) Peel’s Prairie Provinces)

Rupert’s Land was not, therefore, on the market the way Alaska had been in the 1860s, when it was purchased from Czarist Russia by the United States for US$7.2 million (or 2 cents per acre), a transaction that took place in March 1867 through a signed treaty. True, many Hudson’s Bay Company stockholders similarly wished to sell Rupert’s Land to the highest bidder and hoped to begin the auction with an offer from China. Russia and the United States were also expected to join the bidding, along with Canada.

Some Canadian politicians spoke of the subsequent Canadian “purchase” of Rupert’s Land; some Canadian historians still do. But the transfer of Company lands to Canada was not a real estate deal. The Imperial Crown simply transferred its authority to the Crown in Right of Canada. Canada “indemnified” – i.e., bought off – the Hudson’s Bay Company not for the territory of Rupert’s Land but for the several capital improvements made during the previous 230 years. These included such structures as the Stone Fort at Red River and the timber fort at Edmonton, but also far-flung portage trails and the like.

Looked at from the perspective of Laurentian Canadian history, Rupert’s Land was a gift to the new Confederation from the Imperial Crown, the missing link between Canada and the colony of British Columbia that inspired the empire-builders of the Macdonald-Cartier coalition to extend the new eastern political entity to the Pacific Ocean, to build the Canadian Pacific Railway and to incorporate the province of B.C. within Canada. As for the Company lands to the east of Hudson Bay, very little commercial viability was expected. This was fur territory peopled by Indigenous trappers and barbaric traders as it had been for centuries. Canada later gave Ontario and Quebec additional territory carved from those former Company lands.

Canada expanded in a mode quite different from the United States. Unlike the generally well-planned and logical formation of new states from territories – a process meant to reflect an area’s maturation from thinly populated, intermittently governed and often lawless frontier to incipient civilization – there was nothing in Canada akin to the American Northwest Ordinance or to its successor laws. A key difference was that a newly formed U.S. state gained the same rights and privileges as other states, an important element of real federalism.

The second policy area where Canada’s expansion westward differed profoundly from America’s was the absence of consultation with the inhabitants of the newly acquired Canadian territories. In the U.S. this always entailed serious two-way discussions.

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Here one should note that there are two elements essential to any federation. The first is a constitutionally defined division of responsibility between the central government and the constituent sub-national jurisdictions – provinces in Canada, states in the U.S. In a well-run federation each order of government stays in its constitutionally defined lane. The second element is that representation in the federal government combines numerical equality or “representation by population” with equal constitutional standing and privileges for all component jurisdictions.

“Enter the Union on an equal basis with existing states”: In contrast to Canada, the U.S. Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided a formal and transparent mechanism by which newly settled territories could graduate to statehood if they met certain conditions – gaining the same rights and privileges as the original 13 states.

This second element is why the Americans combined in Congress a House of Representatives based on the principle of one person, one vote, with a Senate where each state – whatever its population – would send two senators to Washington, D.C. Because Canada does not provide equal provincial representation in the Canadian Senate (and for a few additional reasons) it has been called by political scientists a “quasi-federal state”. This particular anomaly (or defect) lay behind the attempt starting in the 1970s to establish a Senate that would have an equal number of Senators from each province, who would be elected and whose resulting legitimacy would allow the Senate to become effective in defending the rights of the provinces – the “Triple-E” Senate.

The second policy area where Canada’s expansion westward differed profoundly from America’s was the absence of consultation with the inhabitants of the newly acquired Canadian territories. In the U.S. this always entailed serious two-way discussions; ambitious pioneers would sometimes move out to a territory with the intention of taking part in its development and participating in its graduation to statehood.

In Canada, it was precisely the neglect and lack of communication that eventually led future rebel leader Louis Riel and his compatriot John Bruce to argue that the Western inhabitants of the Hudson’s Bay Company lands had been “abandoned” by the Imperial Crown. The Red River Settlement existed after the 1870 transfer, as they described it, in something akin to a Hobbesian state of nature. Consequently, they declared, the inhabitants of all the former western Company lands “refuse to recognise the authority of Canada,” which was seeking to coerce these subjects of the British Empire by imposing “a despotic form of government” on them.

“Our lives our fortunes and our sacred honour”: Métis leaders Louis Riel (top left) and John Bruce (top right) saw the 1870 transfer of Rubert’s Land to Canada as an act of “abandonment” by the British Crown; to protect the interests of the Red River Settlement (bottom), they “refus[ed] to recognise the authority of Canada.” (Sources: (top left photo) Library and Archives Canada, C-018082; (top right photo) Manitoba Historical Society Archives; (bottom map) Manitoba’s Red River Settlement, by Douglas Sprague and Ronald Frye)

Much like the British subjects a century earlier who became signatories of the then-colonial Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Red River authors declared “to the world” and to Canada in particular that they had established a Provisional Government and, closely following the final paragraph of U.S. Founding Father and future President Thomas Jefferson’s text, “mutually pledge ourselves on oath our lives our fortunes and our sacred honour to each other.” (Original non-punctuation)

Although this statement might sound hopelessly grandiloquent to modern-day ears, their claims were not without a political basis. As my friend and U of C colleague Tom Flanagan pointed out in his 1978 essay “Political Theory of the Red River Resistance: The Declaration of December 8, 1869”, the Declaration of the People of Rupert’s Land and the North West certainly rested on highly questionable legal grounds. To begin with, as noted, the land transfer was an intra-Imperial action. It was not the act of a sovereign power called the Hudson’s Bay Company abandoning the inhabitants of “its” territory and turning them over to another and alien sovereign power, Canada. The Company was not at all sovereign, and Canada was not fully sovereign.

The legal issue was of secondary importance, however, to the political significance of the Red River inhabitants’ response to the actions of Canada, starting with the Declaration and including not one but two open rebellions, the second of which was a serious armed conflict in which Canada’s control hung in the balance. In that second one, in 1885, Laurentian Canada mobilized and commanded Imperial military assets to impose its law on the rebellious Northwest. To the inhabitants, these actions, even if by then they themselves opposed Riel, looked like a continuation of the style of rule from London they had previously endured by way of the Company. That is, rule of the Northwest by “imperial” Canada was of a piece with British Imperial rule prior to 1870.

Between the Red River resistance and the truckers’ Freedom Convoy, over 150 years apart, came Prime Minister Macdonald’s grossly misnamed ‘National Policy’, which subordinated the economic vitality of Prairie agriculture to Laurentian industrial commerce. The National Policy amounted to simple exploitation of the West.

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This was why James Mallory, a distinguished 20^th century McGill University political scientist, in his 1954 book Social Credit and the Federal Power in Canada referred to the Prairie provinces as “provinces in the Roman sense”. Whatever did he mean? A Roman provincia was distinguished by two major attributes. First it was a locale where imperium, administrative rule, was exercised by Rome or an agent of Rome. Second, unlike the inhabitants of Italy, “provinces” paid tribute to the capital. Moreover, the etymology pro-vincere (Latin for something that was defeated or vanquished) suggests the provinciae were conquered territories. Aside from their military and geopolitical significance, Roman provinces were there to be taxed and to enrich their Roman rulers.

The analogies to 19^th and 20^th century Canada are clear. Ottawa – as pitiful a town as it was – acted as a new Rome on the Rideau. The territories (and soon-to-be second-class provinces) were acquired additions; they existed to strengthen and benefit Laurentian Canada by analogy with Roman Italy, and to enrich its leading citizens. And the provincials were expected to behave themselves. To this day, the embarrassment of 1885 has not been forgotten by Laurentian administrators. Of course, the Canadian punishment for rebellion was not Roman in its ferocity, although the result for Riel was equally final.

“Provinces in the Roman sense”: According to political scientist James Mallory, Canada’s Prairie provinces were akin to “provinciae” in ancient Rome – conquered lands whose inhabitants were not citizens and who existed to serve the interests of the Imperial Capital and the Italian heartland. Shown, the fall of Macedonia in 168 BC depicted in The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus by Carle Vernet, 1789. (Source of painting: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Northrop Frye once remarked that if history is a narrative of what happened, myth tells the story of what happens all the time. In that sense, myth is a major constituent of what we now call political culture. The Red River resistance, however comic and ineffectual it appeared to later Laurentian historians, became part of a Western myth, the most recent manifestation of which was the Freedom Convoy of 2022. And, incidentally, Laurentian historians were a self-described “school” centred at the University of Toronto. The most famous of them was the first modern biographer of Sir John A. Macdonald, Donald Creighton. His thesis, The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, published by Yale University Press in 1937, effectively founded the Laurentian school. The second edition, published by the U of T Press, bore a franker title: The Empire of the St. Lawrence. That is the origin of the term “Laurentian Canada”.

Between the Red River resistance and the truckers’ convoy, over 150 years apart, came Prime Minister Macdonald’s grossly misnamed “National Policy”, which subordinated the economic vitality of Prairie agriculture to Laurentian industrial commerce. (To oversimplify somewhat, high import tariffs protected eastern industries while making imported goods critical to the Prairies’ economic development needlessly expensive, in turn making export-dependent Prairie farmers less economically competitive; the National Policy amounted to simple exploitation of the West.) When Alberta and Saskatchewan became Roman-style provinces in 1905, the Dominion Lands Policy saw to it that the major source of revenue from land sales and fees remained reserved “for the purposes of the Dominion”, not them.

The Western political response continued to reverberate for more than a century. Several political parties and social movements formed in opposition to Laurentian policies: the Progressives, Social Credit, the Social Gospel, the CCF, and later the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance. The fact is, Westerners have typically wanted to make Canada work as a genuine federation. They were neither revolutionaries nor separatists. Like their cousins in the American West, they sought equal rights as citizens and equal representation for Western, especially Prairie, provinces.

In 1905 the Dominion of Canada carved the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan out of portions of the Northwest Territories; the newcomers were treated as distinctly second-class in comparison to the original provinces, among other things only gaining full control over their lands and natural resources in 1930. (Sources of photos (clockwise, starting top-left): Calgary Herald Archives; Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan R-A4110-2; Glenbow Archives, na-1496-2; Western Development Museum)

And while all of these movements mounted often-spirited resistance to Laurentian political and economic controls, they also seemed to accept the political institutions of imperial Canada. Remember the slogan of the Reform Party in 1987? “The West wants in.” Why? To increase the likelihood of self-government, the very desire for which was dismissed by Laurentians as unintelligible: were these pesky Westerners not already citizens of an already self-governing country? They must be alienated, poor things, and in need of the ministrations of an alienist.

David A. Smith, another distinguished political scientist, who taught for many years at the University of Saskatchewan, provided a less condescending answer than the conventional dismissal by Laurentians in his 1969 essay “A Comparison of Prairie Political Movements in Saskatchewan and Alberta”. Westerners, Smith wrote, had tried working within the dominant political parties, then through so-called “third parties” that attempted to persuade the dominant parties, then through balance-of-power strategies. “No other area of the country,” Smith said, “has experimented with so many partisan alternatives and had so little apparent satisfaction from the results.”

A third distinguished political scientist, Alan Cairns, once asked: why were the Social Credit and the NDP called “third parties?” In B.C where Cairns taught, these parties were the government, the major players in a vibrant two-party system. The “third parties” were the Liberals and Conservatives. One might say the same thing about Social Credit and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (the future NDP) on the Prairies. That is, the political articulation of the Western provinces is distinct from that of Laurentian Canada.

The Prairie provinces continued to be subjected to destructive Laurentian policies throughout the 20th century, such as prolongation of the Canadian Wheat Board, official bilingualism and the National Energy Program, implemented by Pierre Trudeau in 1981 (shown on bottom left, to the right of Alberta premier Peter Lougheed in the centre). Depicted on bottom right, oil sands facility at Mildred Lake. (Sources of photos: (top left) Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau/Library and Archives Canada/C-064834; (bottom left) The Canadian Press/Dave Buston; (bottom right) The Canadian Press)

After Canada’s first half-century or so, after the Prairie provinces finally in 1930 gained control over their natural resources (as Canada’s “founding” provinces had had from the start), there followed in the post-Second World War era further nonsensical Laurentian policies: the needless prolongation of the Canadian Wheat Board (whose command-and-control methods evoked the late Roman Emperor Diocletian’s ludicrous economic decrees), the definition of Canada as a bilingual country (the major consequence of which was to ensure that most Westerners did not find a professional career in Ottawa attractive), and of course the unforgettable National Energy Program, seen by many Albertans as the 20^th century successor to the National Policy.

Then, the 1982 Constitution Act gave the Supreme Court of Canada effective control of legal aspects of the Constitution. And, like the first Supreme Court of Canada, it has acted largely as a centralizing creature of Laurentian Canada. One must be remarkably naïve not to think that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had something like this in mind when he began campaigning to “patriate” the Constitution nearly two generations ago. In any event, a major consequence of the 1982 Act was to undermine the institutions of federalism, particularly provincial responsibility for natural resources and the environment, which had been sustained by the jurisprudence of Britain’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in earlier times and largely respected after 1949 when judicial appeals to the Law Lords were abolished.

For Livingston, ‘Legal answers are of value only in the solution of legal problems.’ In contrast, he argued, ‘Federalism is a function not of constitutions but of societies.’ Consequently, federalism is concerned with economic, historical, social, political and cultural realities, which is a great deal more than law.

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Today almost all the malign aspects of Canada’s Constitution are encapsulated in the federal equalization program. As Rob Anderson, Derek From and I point out in the Free Alberta Strategy (there’s also good material in this C2C essay), the Government of Canada has for decades expropriated vast amounts of fungible wealth from the taxpayers of the Prairie West and especially from Albertans – amounting to literally hundreds of billions of dollars. Moreover, the latest assault by the Justin Trudeau government has combined this traditional wealth removal with a novel attack on the source of provincial prosperity, the oil and natural gas industry in general and the oil sands in particular. For many Albertans, Ottawa has definitively breached the principles of the federal Constitution.

Now what?

First, recall the historical importance of federalism. In those remote days prior to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the focus of Canadian constitutional politics was on the balances struck over the years between responsibilities under s. 92 of what was then known as the British North America (BNA) Act that belonged chiefly to the provinces – such as transportation, regulation of businesses and professions, creation and oversight of municipalities, education, courts of law, health care and natural resources – and those given to the Dominion government under s. 91 – such as national defence, foreign relations, the criminal law, relations with Indians and international trade.

Of all the theorists of federalism to whom I was introduced as an undergraduate, William S. Livingston has remained my favourite. His Federalism and Constitutional Change was published by Oxford in 1956. It was preceded by an article, “A Note on the Nature of Federalism”, that established his main arguments. In my opinion they have not been superseded though they may have been forgotten.

“It’s not like Ottawa is a national government”: The Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act, passed in late 2022 by the UCP government of Premier Danielle Smith, pictured, aims to strengthen the province’s ability to limit unconstitutional intrusions of federal policy and law into areas of provincial jurisdiction, thereby reaffirming that Canada is a federal state. (Source of photo: The Canadian Press/Jason Franson)

This is the context within which Premier Smith’s remark is to be understood when she said on third reading of Bill 1, later the Sovereignty Act, “It’s not like Ottawa is a national government.” (Emphasis added)

Social and political realities change: formerly poor jurisdictions such as Alberta grow wealthy; formerly rich jurisdictions such as the Maritimes grow poor. Political institutions eventually display the characteristic of serving purposes for which they were not initially designed. Just as federal societies change, federal institutions are required to change as well in response to new realities. If federal institutions are incapable of responding to changes in federal societies, the result is political dissolution, which is to say, independence of a former constituent jurisdiction. That was the prospect posed by Quebec in the 1970s after its “Quiet Revolution”. Quebec separatism spooked Canada sufficiently to change the effective federal Constitution to reflect the new configuration of the federal society.

This is not to say that legal federalism, which defines the primary areas of jurisdiction of Ottawa and the provinces, is unimportant. Sections 91 and 92 of the BNA Act are still in force and effect. Moreover, reasserting and defending the constitutional validity of the division of powers is the primary purpose behind Alberta’s Sovereignty Act.

Although attacked by critics, Alberta’s Sovereignty Act has received strong popular support for challenging the Justin Trudeau government’s constant intrusions into areas of provincial constitutional jurisdiction; the author points out that the Constitution does not require provinces to enforce federal laws, and that the Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed this. Shown, supporters of the Sovereignty Act outside the Alberta legislature, December 2022. (Source of photo: CityNews/Laura Krause)

Its central provision regarding federalism enables the provincial government to refuse to enforce federal laws. The decision not to do so would be based on the judgment of the legislature that the federal law in question was illegal, unconstitutional, harmful to Albertans or contrary to Alberta’s interests, based primarily on the text of ss. 91 and 92 and how those provisions were put into practice over Canada’s first century – but which recent federal governments have successively and, in the Justin Trudeau government’s case, systematically undermined or overridden as if they weren’t even there.

What is novel about this provision is that it would require Canada to take Alberta to court and there to prove its case, not the other way around as is the current practice. Nowadays when Ottawa first intrudes upon or overrides provincial jurisdiction and puts its unconstitutional policy or law into practice, it forces one or more provinces to try to stop it – even as the damage is already being done and the new policy threatens to become institutionalized through force of habit.

Equally important, there is no provision in the Constitution requiring any province to administer or enforce federal law. (Please see also this article and this article for supporting evidence of that contention.) The reason is obvious: Canada remains in law and reality a federation, not a unitary regime where provinces are simply agents of Ottawa the way Alberta municipalities are creatures of the provincial government. One reason for the political support that the Sovereignty Act has received are the objections to the arrogant default assumption of the Trudeau government that it is (except for Quebec) a “national government” – precisely what Danielle Smith denied. That is why it was originally and for a long time thereafter referred to as the Dominion government and today is called the federal government, which implies a government with limited and clearly enumerated constitutional scope and powers.

The political distance dividing Alberta’s Sovereignty Act from Ottawa’s Clarity Act is huge. The one contemplates a restoration of federalism, the other an end to it. If Alberta is to remain strong and free – fortis et liber – Laurentians will have to change their attitude and their political culture.

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Another way of indicating the issue of connecting the reality of a federal society to a federal constitution is found in a remark of the late U.S. conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart, who famously observed that “politics is downstream from culture.” This is a snappy version of Frye’s remark regarding myth or what Livingston meant by the primacy of society. But what is downstream from politics? The answer is simple: the law of the Constitution.

Ask yourself: where did the BNA Act come from back in 1867? Or the 1982 Constitution Act? They came from political negotiations and political deal-making in response to political ideas and demands generated by the changing realities of a federal Canadian society. In that context, the 1982 Constitution Act looks like a legal response to the social changes of the “Quiet Revolution”. That is also where Alberta’s Sovereignty Act came from. Indeed, it can be seen as the current expression of a not-so-quiet Alberta revolution initiated by Ralph Klein, premier of Alberta from 1992 to 2006.

Those who say the Constitution is set in stone and can never be re-opened are legal fundamentalists and they are wrong. All constitutional documents, so revered by lawyers, especially the ermine-clad lawyers on the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada, were all downstream from political deals that reflected changing social, economic, cultural, etc. realities. Of course the Constitution can be re-opened! That is one of the long-range purposes of the Sovereignty Act.

“Clear majority on a clear question”: Two years after the 1998 Quebec Secession Reference case before the Supreme Court of Canada, the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien (on bottom, leaning forward) introduced the Clarity Act, establishing the conditions under which Canadian provinces may be allowed to begin the process of secession. The author considers this another act violating the concept of federalism, with Ottawa unilaterally calling the shots and placing provinces in a subordinate position. (Sources of photos: (top) @Law Scribes/X; (bottom) CP Photo/Fred Chartrand)

If Laurentian Canadians and lawyers nearly everywhere say that the Sovereignty Act is unconstitutional, I agree but with the following qualification: legal unconstitutionality is simply another way of saying it’s time to change the law of the Constitution. That is what Bruce and Riel had in mind so many years ago. The law of the Constitution may work well even today for Laurentians and for Ottawa bureaucrats, but they have become what English historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee called a “dominant” rather than a “creative” minority. More to the point, if the law of the Constitution does not work for Albertans and for others in the Prairie West, why should it be respected? All the strategies listed by David Smith have not made a dent in the adamantine attitudes of Laurentian Canada. In their collective imperial mind, in their political culture, the Prairie West remains a colony. The Sovereignty Act aims to bring an end to a very unpleasant history.

And then there is the Clarity Act to consider. In the 1998 Quebec Secession Reference case brought by the Government of Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada required that any provincial referendum on secession receive a clear majority on a clear question in order to be valid and so to trigger mandatory negotiations. The Court did not define what either a clear majority or a clear question might be.

Two years later the Jean Chrétien government (under great pressure from the Reform Party) introduced what became the Clarity Act, according to which the Parliament of Canada would determine before any provincial referendum on potential secession whether the question was clear enough and, after the vote, whether the degree of support was sufficient to require negotiation on the terms of secession. If a referendum met those two criteria (according to Parliament), then a constitutional amendment requiring the consent of Parliament and the provinces would also have to be passed.

A few years later, former Parti Quebecois leader and Premier Jacques Parizeau told CTV News that the Clarity Act “meant nothing.” One reason for his remark was not just that Parliament had stacked the deck but that Quebec had passed its own law, one which emphasized the right of Quebec citizens to self-determination. Now, if push came to shove, one might expect Alberta to do the same.

The political distance dividing Alberta’s Sovereignty Act from Ottawa’s Clarity Act is huge. The one contemplates a restoration of federalism, the other an end to it. If Alberta is to remain strong and free, fortis et liber, as indicated on its coat of arms, Laurentians will have to change their attitude and their political culture. That is the challenge of political federalism today. Acknowledging that reality is the condition for making Canada a genuine federation in law. If not, it will take the more desperate remedy outlined in the Clarity Act to induce some sobriety into Laurentian consciousness.

Barry Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. His latest books are Paleolithic Politics (2020) and, with Marco Navarro-Génie, COVID-19: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2020).

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National Crisis Approaching Due To The Carney Government’s Centrally Planned Green Economy

Published on November 22, 2025

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From Energy Now

By Ron Wallace

Welcome to the Age of Ottawa’s centrally planned green economy.

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On November 13, 2025, the Carney government announced yet another round of projects to be referred to the newly created Major Projects Office (MPO) established under the authority of the Building Canada Act (2025). That Office, designed to coordinate and streamline federal approvals for infrastructure projects deemed by Cabinet to be in the “national interest”. The announcement made scant reference to the fact that most of the referred projects had already received the regulatory permits required for construction or are, in several cases, already well under way.

Meanwhile, the aspirations of Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith were not realized with a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) signed with the Carney government before the 112^th Grey Cup in Winnipeg. It remains to be seen if Canada and Alberta can in fact “create the circumstances whereby the oil and gas emissions cap would no longer be required” and if these negotiations will result in a “grand bargain” with the federal government. For its part, Alberta has signaled a willingness to change its industrial carbon tax program to encourage corporations to invest in emissions reduction projects while Alberta’s major energy producers have signalled that they are willing to consider carbon capture and methane reduction within an agreed industrial carbon pricing scheme. Notwithstanding concerns about its financial and technical viability, the Pathways Alliance Project appears to have become a cornerstone of Alberta’s negotiations with the federal government.

In early 2025 Premier Smith issued a list of nine demands accompanied by a six month ultimatum demanding the federal government roll back key elements of its climate policy. Designed to re-assert Alberta’s autonomy over natural resources, Smith’s core issues centered on the repeal of Bill C-69 (the “no new pipelines act) and Bill C-48 (the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act) scrapping the proposed Clean Electricity Regulations and abandonment of the net-zero automobile mandate. In face of a possible refusal by Ottawa to deal with these outstanding issues, Premier Smith launched a “Next Steps” panel as a province-wide consultation to “strengthen provincial sovereignty within Canada” – a process that could possibly lead to a referendum on Alberta’s future within Confederation.

Subsequently, in early October, Premier Smith also announced that her government, in collaboration with three pipeline industry partners, would advance an application to the Major Projects Office for a new oil pipeline from Alberta to a marine terminal on the northwest coast of British Columbia. The intent of the application is to have this new pipeline designated as a ‘project in the national interest’ to receive an accelerated review and approval timeline. Alberta is planning to submit that application in May 2026 to address the five criteria set by Ottawa for national interest determinations. Notably, the removal of what Premier Smith has termed ‘bad laws’ would be a prerequisite to construction of this proposed project.

As the Carney government continues its complex dance around these issues it remains to be seen how, or if, Smith’s demands for Canada to roll back federal legislation will be met. While Premier Smith staunchly advocated for the removal of what she termed to be the ‘bad laws’ standing in the way of the “ultimate approval” of a pipeline to the B.C. coast it remains to be seen if the Carney government will to accede to most, or even any, of these demands in ways that could clear the way for a new oil export pipeline from Alberta. At a time when the Carney government appears to be doubling down on its priority to reduce Canadian emissions it remains to be seen if Alberta can in fact increase oil production without increasing emissions.

Liberal MP Corey Hogan, who serves as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources the Honourable Tim Hodgson, noted that: “So as long as we can get to common understandings of what all of those mean, there’s not really a need for an emissions cap.” This ‘common understanding’ may signal a willingness by Ottawa to set aside the Trudeau government’s signature proposed oil and gas emissions cap in exchange for major carbon capture and storage projects in Alberta that would be combined with strong carbon pricing and methane regulations.

While this ‘common understanding’ may yet lead to a ‘grand bargain’ it would nevertheless effectively create two different classes of oil in Canada, each operating under different sets of regulations and different cost structures. Western Canada’s crude oil producers would be forced to shoulder costly and technically challenging decarbonization requirements in face of a federal veto over any new oil projects that weren’t ‘decarbonized.’ Canadian-produced oil would be faced with entering international export markets at a significant, if not ruinous, competitive disadvantage risking not only profitability but market share. Meanwhile, this hypocritical policy would allow eastern Canadian oil refiners to import ‘carbonized’ oil from countries with significantly looser environmental standards.

Carney’s November 2025 “Canada Strong” federal budget sets out $141.4 billion in new spending over five years with a projected $78.3 billion deficit for 2025–26. As Jack Mintz points out, while that budget claims to be “spending less to invest more”, annual capital spending will double from $30 billion a year to $60 billion a year over five years:

“… as federal program spending, which excludes interest on debt, is forecast to rise by 16 per cent from $490 billion this fiscal year to $568 billion in 2029-30. During the current year alone, the spending increase is a remarkable seven per cent. Public debt charges will soar by 43 per cent from $53 billion to $76 billion due to growing indebtedness and higher interest rates. No surprise there. Deficits — $78 billion this year alone — accumulate by a whopping $320 billion over five years.”

Since 2015 Canada has experienced a flight of investment capital approaching CAD$650 billion due to lost, or deferred, resource projects – particularly in the energy sector. While many economists recognize that Canada’s fiscal status may be worse than it appears, the Carney government is asking Canadians to ignore these figures while they implement industrial policies that, for all intents and purposes, represent a significant regression into central planning. The ‘modernization’ of the National Energy Board that began early in the Trudeau government’s mandate appears now to have been but a first step in the progressive centralization of control by the federal government. Gone are the days when an independent expert energy regulator made national interest determinations based upon cross-examined evidence presented in a public forum. Instead, a cabinet cloaked in confidentiality that is clearly inclined toward emissions reduction as its paramount consideration, will now determine and select projects.

This process of centralized decision-making represents a dilemma that confronts not just Premier Smith but the entire Canadian energy sector. The emerging financial debacle in the Canadian EV battery and vehicular manufacturing market is but one example of how centrally planned criteria designed to achieve a Net Zero economy will almost invariably lead to unanticipated, if not economically disastrous, results.

In short, the “green economy” is not working. The Fraser Institute noted that while Federal spending on the green economy surged from $600 million in 2014/15 to $23 billion in 2024/25, a nearly 40-fold increase, the green economy’s share of GDP rose only marginally from 3.1% in 2014 to 3.6% in 2023. Moreover, promised “green jobs” have not materialized at scale while traditional energy sectors vital to Alberta’s and the Canadian GDP have been actively constrained.

This economic reality has apparently not yet dawned in Ottawa. As Gwyn Morgan points out, Prime Minister Carney who, in 2021 with Michael Bloomberg, launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), has not changed his determination to hike Canadian carbon taxes, proposing to increase the industrial levy from $80 to $170/ton by 2030. GFANZ was created to align global financial institutions with net-zero emissions targets bringing together sector-specific alliances like the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) and the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM). However, early in 2025 GFANZ faced significant challenges as major U.S. banks exited the NZBA followed by the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) that disbanded entirely in 2024 after a wave of member withdrawals. GFANZ was forced to undergo a strategic restructuring in January 2025 to shift from a coalition-of-alliances to a more open, standalone platform focused on mobilizing capital for the low-carbon transition through pragmatic climate financing. ‘Pragmatic’ indeed.

While Carney’s GFANZ has effectively imploded, his government ignores developing new realities in climate policy by continuing to implement the Trudeau government’s green agenda with programs like the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. That program contains a plethora of ‘green economy’ measures designed to reduce carbon emissions in parallel with the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan that commits Canada to reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) to achieve net-zero by 2050.

These policies ignore the recent change of mind by thought-leaders like Bill Gates who acknowledges that “climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems we should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.” This aligns his thinking with that of Bjorn Lomborg who states:

“Climate change demands action, but not at the expense of poverty reduction. Rich governments should invest in long-overdue R&D for breakthrough green technologies — affordable, reliable alternatives that everyone, rich and poor alike, will adopt. That is how we can solve climate without sacrificing the vulnerable. More countries, including Canada, need to get on board with the mission of returning the World Bank to focusing on poverty. Raiding development funds for climate initiatives isn’t just misguided. It’s an affront to human suffering.”

Philip Cross also expressed hope that 2025 may yet represent a “turning point in a return to sanity in public policy:”

“Nowhere is the change more evident than in attitudes to green energy policies, once the rallying cry for left-wing parties in North America. Support has collapsed for three pillars of green energy advocacy: building electric vehicles to eliminate our need for oil pipelines and refineries; using the financial clout of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance to force firms to eliminate carbon emissions; and legally mandating the shift from fossil fuels to green energy.”

Nonetheless, Prime Minister Carney appears resolute in the belief that Canadian policies for Net Zero are not hobbling investment in the energy sector while choosing to ignore alternative regulatory and investment tools that could make a material difference for the economy. Carney also appears to ignore major Canadian firms like TC Energy that have re-directed investments of $8.5 billion into the U.S. as they cite significant concerns about the Canadian regulatory structure. Similarly, Enbridge has advocated for “significant energy policy changes” in Canada while focussing attention not on new export pipelines but instead to incrementally upgrade capacity within its existing Mainline system network.

Canada’s destiny as a ‘decarbonized energy superpower’ will be largely determined by the serious economic consequences that will result from a sustained ideological push into ‘clean energy’. That said, will this be accomplished by a chaotic, ever-more centralized process of decision making, masquerading as a coherent national energy policy?

Conclusion

As Gwyn Morgan has succinctly written, it remains to be seen if the Carney government will be willing to make a “climate climbdown” in face of the reality that net zero goals are being broadly abandoned globally or will they continue to sacrifice the Canadian economy to single-minded, unrealistic or unattainable, goals for emissions reduction?

To date none of the projects referred by the Carney government to the Major Projects Office has been designated as ‘being in the national interest’. Moreover, the Alberta bitumen pipeline advocated by Premier Smith has not yet appeared on any list. Nonetheless, she apparently remains resolute in maintaining negotiations with Ottawa stating: “Currently, we are working on an agreement with the federal government that includes the removal, carve out or overhaul of several damaging laws chasing away private investment in our energy sector, and an agreement to work towards ultimate approval of a bitumen pipeline to Asian markets.”

As Alberta’s ultimatums and deadlines to Ottawa pass, it would be reasonable to question whether Premier Smith is, in fact, being confronted with the illusory freedom of a Hobson’s choice: Either Alberta must accept, at unprecedented cost, Ottawa’s determination to realize Net Zero or it will get nothing at all. While she may be seeking federal support to enable, or accelerate, construction of new pipelines, all Ottawa may be willing to concede is a promise to do better with an MoU that would ultimately impose massive costs for ‘decarbonization’ on Alberta while eastern Canada imports oil from other, less constrained, jurisdictions. Is this a “Grand Bargain?”

Budget 2025 has introduced a Climate Competitiveness Strategy for nuclear, hydro, wind and grid modernization that projects over CAD$1 trillion in spending over five years. It also reaffirms a commitment to increase carbon taxes by $80-$170/tonne for CO₂-equivalent emissions by 2030. Since it appears committed to maintaining, or even expanding, Trudeau-era green legislation, some might question any commitments from the Carney government to enter into an even-handed debate on Canadian energy policies that are so critical to Alberta’s energy sector? As the Fraser Institute points out:

“The Canadian case shows an even greater mismatch between Ottawa’s COP commitments and its actual results. Despite billions spent by the federal government on the low-carbon economy (electric vehicle subsidies, tax credits to corporations, etc.), fossil fuel consumption increased 23 per cent between 1995 and 2024. Over the same period, the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy consumption rose from 62.0 to 66.3 per cent.”

While the creation of the MPO may give the appearance of accelerating projects deemed to be in the national interest it nonetheless requires a circumvention of an existing legislative base. This approach further enhances a centrally-planned economy and presupposes that more, not less, bureaucracy will somehow make Canada an “energy superpower”.

Canada continues to overlook rising economic challenges while pursuing climate goals with inconsistent policies. As such, it risks becoming an outlier in energy policy at a time when the world is beginning to recognize the immense costs and implausibility of implementing policies for Net Zero.

Premier Danielle Smith may yet face a pivotal moment in Alberta’s, and possibly Canadian, history. If Ottawa’s past performance is but a prologue, predictions of a happy outcome may require a significant dose of optimism.

Ron Wallace is a former Member of the National Energy Board.

Alberta

Alberta bill would protect freedom of expression for doctors, nurses, other professionals

Published on November 22, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

‘Peterson’s law,’ named for Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, was introduced by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

Alberta’s Conservative government introduced a new law that will set “clear expectations” for professional regulatory bodies to respect freedom of speech on social media and online for doctors, nurses, engineers, and other professionals.

The new law, named “Peterson’s law” after Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, who was canceled by his regulatory body, was introduced Thursday by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

“Professionals should never fear losing their license or career because of a social media post, an interview, or a personal opinion expressed on their own time,” Smith said in a press release sent to media and LifeSiteNews.

“Alberta’s government is restoring fairness and neutrality so regulators focus on competence and ethics, not policing beliefs. Every Albertan has the right to speak freely without ideological enforcement or intimidation, and this legislation makes that protection real.”

The law, known as Bill 13, the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act, will “set clear expectations for professional regulatory bodies to ensure professionals’ right to free expression is protected.”

According to the government, the new law will “Limit professional regulatory bodies from disciplining professionals for expressive off-duty conduct, except in specific circumstances such as threats of physical violence or a criminal conviction.”

It will also restrict mandatory training “unrelated to competence or ethics, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion training.”

Bill 13, once it becomes law, which is all but guaranteed as Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) holds a majority, will also “create principles of neutrality that prohibit professional regulatory bodies from assigning value, blame or different treatment to individuals based on personally held views or political beliefs.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Peterson has been embattled with the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO) after it mandated he undergo social media “training” to keep his license following posts he made on X, formerly Twitter, criticizing Trudeau and LGBT activists.

Early this year, LifeSiteNews reported that the CPO had selected Peterson’s “re-education coach” for having publicly opposed the LGBT agenda.

The Alberta government directly referenced Peterson’s (who is from Alberta originally) plight with the CPO, noting “the disciplinary proceedings against Dr. Jordan Peterson by the College of Psychologists of Ontario, demonstrate how regulatory bodies can extend their reach into personal expression rather than professional competence.”

“Similar cases involving nurses, engineers and other professionals revealed a growing pattern: individuals facing investigations, penalties or compulsory ideological training for off-duty expressive conduct. These incidents became a catalyst, confirming the need for clear legislative boundaries that protect free expression while preserving professional standards.”

Alberta Minister of Justice and Attorney General Mickey Amery said regarding Bill 13 that the new law makes that protection of professionals “real and holds professional regulatory bodies to a clear standard.”

Last year, Peterson formally announced his departure from Canada in favor of moving to the United States, saying his birth nation has become a “totalitarian hell hole.” 