Proposed changes to Alberta Bill of Rights are futile: experts

It won’t be long until Premier Danielle Smith tables her recently amended Alberta Bill of Rights, which will likely include provisions surrounding personal vaccination choice and firearm rights.

MRU political science professor Lori Williams calls the move “purely symbolic” and a means to butter up provincial United Conservative Party activists ahead of the premier’s leadership review.

She explains propose changes to the bill reflect many issues that are popular south of the border that cater to powerful UCP activists like Take Back Alberta and the Black Hat Gang from Medicine Hat.

“She’s clearly playing to that base in the hopes that they will not call her leadership into question in the leadership review at the beginning of November.

Both Williams and her MRU colleague, Keith Brownsey, say it won’t actually do anything.

Alberta’s current Bill of Rights from 1972 includes an Individual Right Protection Act.

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The big difference between the two is the old law stays within provincial jurisdiction, while the new one doesn’t. According to Brownsey, it some way challenges federal authority.

“It will say simply that you don’t have to get a vaccine if you don’t want to during some sort of pandemic. That’s all warm and good but the federal government could still prevent you from getting on a train, leaving the country even coming back into the country without going into quarantine,” he said. “So, it changes very, very little.”

Williams, says these proposed changes have little to do with the protection of Albertans’ rights, and are more of an attempt by Smith to prevent herself from meeting the same fate as Jason Kenney in 2022.

“Of course, Danielle Smith is keenly aware of the fact that Conservative premiers tend to be replaced while in office, and not by the general electorate, but by groups like this who are very powerful and active within the processes that exist within the United Conservative Party,” she explained.

The bill’s ineffectiveness is proven by the fact that it aims to make amendments that the province doesn’t have authority over, such as firearms laws, which Brownsey says is actually quite dangerous.

“A lot of people are going to walk away from this thinking, ‘Hey, I can go out and buy a gun today and the federal government can say nothing about it. That’s simply not true,” he said. “That’s disinformation and there could be some confusion which gets some people into a lot of trouble.”

The fall legislature sitting is slated to return on Oct. 28.