This is where the gloves come off and the idea of “sovereignty” becomes serious. This is where Alberta effectively separates from Canada.
All four questions begin the same way:
Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to ...
The general procedure for amending the Constitution requires the approval of
the House of Commons,
the Senate, and
the governments of at least seven provinces with a total population of at least half of overall population of Canada.
It's a tall order. The questions don't mention the first two conditions, because after all this is a provincial rebellion against the federal government. The goal is clearly to mount such a rebellion by “working with the governments of other willing provinces”, that is, governments on the same lines as the UCP, or governments that might be similarly inclined to break with Canada. Saskatchewan? Ontario? Quebec even? The idea doesn't seem so far fetched if we can think of a few already.
The questions also begin with “Do you support ...?” The referendum is non-binding. The UCP is not seeking instruction on how to proceed, they are asking for support, which they can then use to argue that it's not just a political party seeking to secede, but the people of Alberta, or at least a majority of them.
The first question is about appointing judges:
... to have provincial governments, and not the federal government, select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts?
Recall that for sovereignty to work, according to the Free Alberta Strategy, requires having a friendly police and justice system. If you're going to ignore federal legislation, you need sympathetic judges when the federal government comes after you. And for that, you need to change the Constitution.
The next question is about the Senate:
... to abolish the unelected federal Senate?
Alberta conservatives have been harping about the Senate for decades. They want to be represented there, and more generally to give the provinces more control over the Senate rather than the federal government. I will note that constitutional reform requires approval by the Senate, and after all the point of the whole exercise is to amend the Constitution.
Next question. This one's a doozy:
... allow provinces to opt out of federal programs that intrude on provincial jurisdiction such as health care, education, and social services, without a province losing any of the associated federal funding for use in its social programs?
To understand this, we need to look at how the federal government funds these programs. There are two relevant federal transfers, the Canada Health Transfer to support provincial health care programs, and the Canada Social Transfer to support post-secondary education, social assistance and social services, and early childhood development and early learning and childcare. In both cases payments are made on an equal per capita basis, which makes perfect sense.
But here's the thing: the Health Transfer has conditions to ensure that everyone in Canada has access to the same level of genuinely comprehensive health care wherever they are or if they move within Canada, and that the program is publicly administered. Oh, and no extra billing or user charges. Only if provinces meet these requirements can they receive the full transfer. If the federal government finds that a province has not met these conditions, it can withhold the health transfer funds.
This is what the UCP considers an intrusion on provincial jurisdiction. Because they want to privatize health care. In fact, they are already doing it in a characteristically sneaky way, by creating the “option” to pay for services. You are still free not to pay, but you go to the end of the queue, where you will find a very reduced public service. This allows Danielle Smith to claim to uphold the principles of the Canada Health Act while flagrantly violating them. And if the federal government were to think about withholding funding, she wants you to support her getting the money anyway.
The final constitutional question doubles down on the idea that provinces should be able to ignore federal law:
... to better protect provincial rights from federal interference by giving a province’s laws dealing with provincial or shared areas of constitutional jurisdiction priority over federal laws when the province’s laws and federal laws conflict.
The obvious question is what is the point of having a federal government if the provinces can simply ignore it? What is the point of having a Parliament? What is the point of confederation?
We'll return to this question in the final post.
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