A fundamental difference between Danielle Smith's Bill of Rights and what's come before
CBC
For a sense of the Alberta government's intended audience for its revised provincial Bill of Rights, let's consider where Albertans first heard of it.
Premier Danielle Smith first revealed it in a series of private, members-only town halls for the United Conservative Party base, months after party members called for these new enshrined rights at a party convention.
The party's activists have called repeatedly for greater protections for the vaccine-resistant and firearms owners and for property rights — all featured in new amendments to Alberta's rights document.
And Smith is fulfilling this summer's pledge to her party members days before this weekend's 2024 UCP convention, where Smith is subject to a leadership review (in which party leaders are historically 0 for 1, thus far).
For her critics, this new piece of legislation is all about avoiding Jason Kenney's fate.
More than 5,600 United Conservatives are registered for the Red Deer gathering, which the party is billing as the "largest political convention ever held in Canada."
Each attendee will reap the protections and effects of this amended rights document, as will a group almost 1,000 times larger than the UCP meeting: all Albertans.
The premier said her government crafted the reforms to "ensure our province remains one of the freest societies" on earth.
"These updates are not only changes that Albertans are asking for, they are changes that ensure that every day, no matter the situation, every one of us can be confident of our rights and freedoms, that they will be protected and supported," she said Tuesday during legislature debate on the bill.
But the Opposition NDP sees it as "virtue signalling" to help boost Smith's leadership review score.
"Although the premier wants us to believe this has something to do with Albertans' rights, no. It's all about this premier, this government's politics," NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir told the assembly.
The partisan environment in which these Bill of Rights revisions land is in striking contrast to how the province's fundamental rights document was first introduced 52 years ago.
It was then-premier Peter Lougheed's first piece of legislation after his Progressive Conservatives took office in 1971. He'd promised a Bill of Rights for Alberta in his election campaign (Smith didn't do so last year), and the rights he introduced were broad-based, for liberty, equality before the law and to guard against discrimination for race, religion, sex or other basic identifiers.
The year Lougheed's rights bill came out coincided with the first year of Hansard transcripts of legislature proceedings, and the Hansard record of the debate over the bill recorded very little fiery speechifying and much agreement about the document the Tory premier had introduced.
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