The Alberta Sovereignty Act: A Pas a Deux With Danielle Smith and Stephen Harper

I’m not going to use the full title of that act - partly because it’s ridiculously long, and like many things out of the UCP, utterly devoid of real meaning. 

But, I do want to make some speculative comments.  Others have already pointed out that within the context of Canada, the fundamental assumption of the law is simply wrong-headed.  We already have mechanisms in place for examining whether a given Federal law is “overreach” or not - it’s called the courts, and those cases get very high priority in the first place. Smith, is of course playing on the fact that every case Alberta has brought in the last decade has ultimately failed at the SCC.

Is this law merely sour grapes?  The act of a populist legislator who wants to continue to feed on the simmering grievances of Alberta’s often civically illiterate population?  Pandering to those who prefer simplistic bromides about how things should work instead of the subtle complexities of actual law and politics of compromise that underpin confederation? I do not think it is so simple. 

Ever since Smith first uttered her promise of an “Alberta Sovereignty Act” during her campaign for the UCP leadership, there has been a steady stream of provincial conservatives adopting variations on the same line.  This is not a coincidence. 

Back in 2015 when the conservatives botched their campaign so monumentally, and Stephen Harper all but rage quit elected politics, I figured he was going to resurface with a different game plan.  If he couldn’t make conservatives “The Natural Governing Party” of Canada (especially with himself at the helm), then I figured that he was going to attempt to blow up Canada instead. 

I don’t think I was wrong in that speculation.  Bear with me while I spend a few minutes walking through the post-2015 timeline. 

Two major events occurred in 2015 that are important to this discussion:  

The first was Stephen Harper’s CPC losing the federal election.  The second was Rachel Notley’s NDP winning in Alberta - long considered “Fortress Alberta” by conservatives because of a decades-long dominance of that province’s politics both provincial and federal. 

That provoked one of the biggest “rage campaigns” that I’ve ever seen in my life. From 2015 onwards, the politics in Alberta were a constant barrage of attacks on Trudeau, and attacks on Notley.  Death threats became normal for Notley, and similar attitudes were often expressed towards Trudeau. 

By the end of 2015, Jason Kenney had stepped out of his job as MP in Ottawa, and began campaigning in Alberta to weld the PCAA and WRP together.  Kenney spent much of his time campaigning slagging Notley, and associating Notley with Trudeau by talking about the “Notley-Trudeau Alliance”.  Also, Kenney spent a lot of time whipping up “separatist sentiment” in Alberta - and while in power, he continued to foster so-called “western alienation”.  Whatever you say about Kenney, he’s a tireless campaigner - he clearly loves it when he’s got a room paying attention to what he says. 

Behind the scenes, Kenney and Harper were meeting with considerable regularity.  It’s no secret that both men were “old friends”, but I suspect Harper was playing a significant role in helping Kenney strategize the formation of the UCP.

The UCP represented a new brand of conservatism in Alberta. It was much more rooted in the individualist populism (“pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”) that were central to Western Canada Concept (WCC), Reform, and Wildrose Party politics than the Lougheed-era PCs. Add to that a significant portion of the party has strong connections to rural religiosity (which tends to be very fundamentalist), and you have much less negotiable form of politics. To put it mildly, the Kenney-led UCP spent a great deal of political capital playing the cities as the great rival to rural interests, and likewise also spent much of its time trying to drive a wedge between Alberta and confederation with constant attacks on Trudeau.  

Why the attacks on Trudeau?  Didn’t he rescue the TMX project when it was on the verge of collapse, and KXL remained very much up in the air?  Yes, he did.  You cannot underestimate the depth of the long fostered hatred for the Trudeau name that conservatives in Albertas have fostered. Since the 1980s they have continually banged on that drum to Alberta voters.  The spectre of Pierre Trudeau rising from the grave to implement another NEP had become standard fare whenever the people of Alberta might have started to talk even remotely favourably about Ottawa.  In fact, conservatives in Alberta have long equated the name Trudeau, and the NEP, with the identity of “Ottawa” as the capital of Canada. It’s a political tool for them. 

To put it mildly, anyone who was steeped in Alberta conservative politics for any length of time utterly loathes the fact that Canada has another Trudeau for a Prime Minister.  That’s why there is this constant stream of invective aimed at him from this province.  Harper’s dislike of Justin Trudeau is no surprise. Perhaps even more so than Kenney, Harper seems to view Justin Trudeau with a particular disdain. 

Elsewhere in Canada, we have seen a wave of increasingly “libertarian-right” conservative Premiers - Scott Moe in Saskatchewan, Brian Pallister in Manitoba, Doug Ford in Ontario, Tim Houston in Nova Scotia, and so on.  

Scott Moe in particular is interesting to this discussion.  About a year after he was elected, his government signed a contract with Harper and Associates for consulting services.  That contract appears to be the turning point. Up to there, Moe was a relatively quiet Premier on the federal stage, and while I disagree with much of his policies, he wasn’t actively working to undermine the federal government.  Once this contract with Harper and Associates appeared, he started working in concert with Jason Kenney, Doug Ford and so on - often copying Kenney’s lead, and more recently borrowing from Danielle Smith’s “sovereignty act”.  

If that isn’t enough to make you go “hmm”, it should be.  It ties together key facets of the picture, and connects things back to Harper.  Harper may not be in elected office any more, but that doesn’t mean he is less influential within conservative circles.  He remains a formidable force, and arguably has as much to do with why party leadership has been as shaky as it has these past few years - everybody is looking over their shoulders to see what Harper is up to. 

I'm fairly certain that after his 2015 defeat (to Justin Trudeau, no less), Harper decided that if he couldn't rule over Canada, he was going to find a way to blow it up.  Feeding Alberta's simmering separatist movement was an easy starting point, and frankly the COVID Pandemic proved a very fruitful opportunity to shove disinformation and foment anger in Alberta.  The fact that he had access to several other conservative premiers who would follow Jason Kenney's lead in undermining the Federal Government's attempts to manage the situation. 

Which brings us to Danielle Smith.  I'm not certain how close Smith and Harper are, but Smith's actions continue to be consistent with a larger overall push to isolate "conservative Canada" from the "rest of Canada".  There's no question that the "Sovereignty Act" is clearly designed to be divisive, and it contains a veritable wish list of asserted powers that sounds an awful lot like those demanded in the infamous "Firewall Letter" of so many years ago. 

That isn't to say that Harper is controlling the whole show - I think he's directing it though.  His goal has always been to eradicate the Liberals, and failing doing that successfully after a decade as Prime Minister clearly stings.  I think he's now decided that failing that, he's going to isolate the Prairies politically, and he's now pushing to break Canada by undermining the institutions of government.  It won't hurt his feelings to do so - again, partisan conservatives in Canada have long chafed at the 1983 Constitution not only because it is the work of a Trudeau, but because the way it is written is basically antithetical to how they look at power and governance. 

The Alberta Sovereignty Act - First Thoughts

 Yesterday, Danielle Smith tabled the “Alberta Sovereignty Act”.  

I haven’t read through it all yet, but like the rest of you, I’ve seen the commentary in the news, and to be kind, it’s terrifying. 

In essence, it pushes the processes of legislating laws into the hands of the Governor in Council (AKA Cabinet).  Smith is granting herself the powers that a monarch used to hold - back before the Magna Carta was a thing.  

If that doesn’t terrify you, perhaps it should. This isn’t a bill designed to “fight back against overreach from Ottawa”, it’s a bill designed to strip the citizens of Alberta of a democratic system of government. At first glance, there is very little in the form of checks and balances once the legislature “passes a motion” putting a particular issue in the hands of cabinet.  Cabinet can then go off and change laws as it sees fit, and there’s no visibility, no accountability, not even so much as a pro forma vote in the legislature afterwards. 

The ability to change legislation from within cabinet expands the powers held under “Order in Council (OIC)” enormously. Nominally, OIC is reserved so that cabinet can make spending decisions, or respond to emergencies without recalling the legislature. Now Smith is granting herself the power to change laws outside of the legislature. 

Even if I were to make the naive assumption that Smith is a “good faith actor” in this case, that level of power with no effective check on it remains intrinsically dangerous. It is far too easy to sway one or two people - or even a group the size of our current cabinet that a particular change is needed to a law.  I’ve sat in enough boardroom meetings to understand how one manipulative person with a nasty agenda can turn a room to exactly the wrong decision. 

How long do you think it will be before the various factions that make up the UCP start pushing for motions to forward their various agendas.  For example,  they could decide that legalizing gay marriage was an “infringement” on Alberta somehow, and then demanding that the cabinet amend Alberta laws to prevent the issuance of marriage licenses to LGBTQ+ couples.  

Or perhaps, someone decides that it’s a “bridge too far” that S15 of the Charter guarantees equality for women, and convinces cabinet that women’s rights should be restricted - and only women who are married should be allowed to vote. I wish I was just kidding, but I’ve actually seen arguments from some corners for exactly this.  

Any and all manner of legislative chicanery can be done when you turn the legislative process into something that only takes place behind closed doors.  

If you’re not scared yet, let me draw your attention to legislation that the UCP has already passed, or tried to pass, and let you sit with that: 

1. The Administrative Penalties Act - basically this law strips you of recourse to the courts if you get a ticket for something you think is unjust. It makes police, peace officers, and other officials who can issue tickets “judge, jury, and executioner” - this law is problematic enough on its own. 

2. Conscience Rights - Although this one was eventually defeated, it was designed in such a way as to make it much harder for women and LGBTQ+ people to access healthcare - especially in rural centres where options are already limited. 

Sit with that and consider just how much more dangerous things could become when the Governor in Council can legislate without any kind of discussion in the Legislative Assembly. 

WhereIn Andrew Coyne MisCharacterizes Re-Shoring

I have always had an on-again/off-again relationship with Mr. Coyne’s writings. When he sits down and thinks an issue through its logical consequences, he can be incredibly insightful and make some really good points. Then there are the times when he misses the point of what something is because it conflicts with either his suppositions or personal interests. 

His recent commentary on “Re-Shoring” over at The Hub is an example of the latter. Largely, he’s arguing that “Re-Shoring” runs contrary to the principles of “Free Trade”, and the market fundamentalism that says money flows to where it’s cheapest to do certain things. He blithely dismisses the concerns around how countries like China have weaponized their control over certain areas of manufacturing against geopolitical rivals - saying that perhaps we should have “stockpiled more”.

The problem with Mr. Coyne’s arguments is that he is ignoring that modern manufacturing has become increasingly siloed, and runs very much on a “zero inventory” approach to parts.  Part of this is the adoption of so-called “just-in-time” models, where factories order just enough of a sub component for a given day’s production so they don’t have to allocate storage space for spares. (Remember that making its way into automotive manufacturing back in the 1980s?). Further, it’s very rare for any one product to be made solely by one manufacturing facility. The creation of an IOT device like a Raspberry Pi depends on bringing together the output from multiple factories for final assembly in another.  

Advocates of Re-Shoring aren’t saying “we need to make things at home so they are made at home” - far from it. What they are really advocating for is a system where the production of goods and provision of services does not become concentrated in the hands of one or two nations whose geopolitical interests may not align well with our own. Chrystia Freeland has referred to this concept as “Friend Shoring”. 

There are other reasons that having a reasonable base of manufacturing and services provision “at home” makes good sense.  As we have seen in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, unbalanced trading dependencies (e.g. Europe’s dependency on Russian natural gas) can quickly become weapons in times of conflict.  If Europe had a more diversified approach to energy over the last 40 years, the odds of Putin being able to weaponize its energy trade with Europe are considerably reduced. Likewise, when we look to China, their chokehold on the production of a lot of computer products creates an enormous danger for both businesses and society elsewhere in the world, and makes it much more difficult to address an increasingly bullish government in Beijing.  

Offshoring took hold in a big way in the 1990s, with so-called “free trade deals” being negotiated all over the place, often between parties who have significant ideological differences. The results of that experiment are clear today, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China once again actively threatening invasion to annex Taiwan.  

These are not coincidental, or incidental to the doctrine of Free Trade.  They are in fact the logical consequences of assuming that deep trade ties would be a moderating influence on the behaviour of all parties.  This is seldom the case.  Even in the world of North America, where “Free Trade” took hold with agreements struck by Reagan and Mulroney, it is hard to argue that Free Trade agreements have stayed the hand of American politicians when it comes to disputes with Canada or Mexico.  Instead, old “grievances” keep being brought up and punitive actions are taken by the larger partner against the smaller (economically speaking) partner.

We also need to acknowledge that allowing goods and services to arbitrarily be “off-shored” also results in a class of workers who are left behind.  The experience of the so-called “Rust Belt” shows us that we have thought very little about how the movement of manufacturing and services affects real people. It’s easy for a business to look and say “well, your job is redundant now, good luck to you”.  Governments need to look at the societal impact of those decisions.  This isn’t to say that occupations don’t come and go, but rather that when we allow wholesale off-shoring of entire industries, we also do our own citizenry a disservice.  Not everybody is suited to the kinds of jobs that remain, nor are they necessarily given access to the kind of counselling and retraining opportunities that will help make a successful career change. As it stands today, the rise of demagoguery and fringe politics is an indicator of how many people feel abandoned by the shifts going on around them.  The rise of those people in our politics is also a very real threat to the stability of democratic government, as Canada learned with the Convoy protests of 2022. 

The point that Mr. Coyne’s argument misses is that recent events have shown quite clearly that Free Trade as it has been practiced to date results not in a moderation of all parties, but rather a concentration of trade (and thus geopolitical power) in the hands of those willing to take advantage of the assumptions of Free Trade.  Re-Shoring, or even Friend-Shoring, seeks to address the geopolitical imbalances that have been created. In essence it is a move towards a sense of justice in our economies and geopolitical realities. 

On The Public Order Emergency Commission

Public testimony of the commission initiated in the wake of the February 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act (EA) has concluded this week.

Frankly, there were few surprises in the course of testimony. Members of the Convoy swore up and down that they were just peaceful protestors, policing agencies demonstrated that they were woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the situation, the conservative-led provincial governments failed entirely to actively engage until forced, and eventually the Federal Government decided that the overall impact required direct action. 

Perhaps the most interesting little piece of testimony came from the head of CSIS who stated that both that he had advised the government to use the EA, and that the situation did not fulfil the requirements of an emergency under the CSIS Act. I thought that was a particularly interesting, and important, piece of information. It reveals that the legislation we have today is a few years out of date in terms of identifying the potential threats.  

However, while the EA and CSIS legislation share the same wording, we can’t say that the threshold is “the same” in part because the “who” of decision making is quite different. The leadership of CSIS is part of the bureaucracy, and makes decisions based on the legislation that guides it, but there are additional safeguards through the political offices that oversee CSIS.  The Emergencies Act empowers the Governor in Council (Cabinet) to make the decisions, with the subtle little clause in it of “on reasonable grounds”.  

You can quibble over whether or not CSIS thought it met their definition of “Public Order Emergency” or not, but we have to recognize that the decision making of the bureaucracy is not the same as that of the elected politicians, and the authority vested in politicians is much different than that of the bureaucrats.

I also think that the testimony at the commission focused solely on the immediate events of the occupation of Ottawa and the various border blockades to the detriment of understanding root causes. This is reasonable given the mandate of the commission as set out in the EA. 

I think there’s a second level of investigation needed regarding these demonstrations. In particular the unwillingness of Premier Ford to testify is profoundly telling. Just as we have Candice Bergen’s desire to make the convoy “Trudeau’s Problem”,  Ford’s unwillingness to testify, combined with his inaction on the Ambassador Bridge blockade indicates to me that there was more going on at the political level that warrants investigation. I suspect that this will be that much clearer when some of the criminal proceedings start to unfold in court. Nobody wants to be hung with the full responsibility when they are facing prison time. 

I fully expect that when we get to the level of following email trails, text messages, and so on, the picture is going to start unfolding that the Convoy protest itself was nurtured and fed from within conservative political organizing circles. If it was “just” about vaccine mandates or masks, I would not have expected the focused anger directed at Trudeau. 

Yet, the protests themselves were covered with anti-Trudeau slogans. Hating Trudeau is an old sacred cow in conservative circles dating back to the 1980s. In today’s conservative circles, you aren’t even seen as conservative unless you become irrationally a angry about Trudeau.  

The protests likely as not are a case of using propaganda to “whip up a mob”, and the real goal was to undermine the elected government to such a degree that it would make it easy for the opposition to vote against a minority government in the wake of what was obviously going to be Poilievre’s coronation after O’Toole’s ouster. Yes, I know full well that O’Toole was still leader at the time, but it would be naive to think that the knives weren’t already out for him after the election.

Crashing Crypto

The latest crash in the crypto markets has unveiled yet another multi-billion dollar scam, and another overnight billionaire has just taken investors for literally billions in now stranded / lost assets. 

 Now, I’m not writing this as a “see I told you so” piece. I’ve already documented my reasons for being skeptical of cryptocurrency. It’s trivial, almost lazy to write an “I told you so” every time Crypto takes another nosedive. Over the last year, BitCoin has shed 75% of its market price. Any company that sheds 75% of its market value is already at death’s door.  

No, today we’re going to talk about something a little different. There’s a reason Crypto keeps crashing, and it’s really little different than what happened in the lead-up to what came to be known as “Black Thursday”.

Markets have “ups and downs” all the time.  These massive swings are not “ups and downs” - these are the result of “markets” which don’t have meaningful boundaries. The so-called “free market” that capitalism relies on actually exists within the greater context of society, or as Rousseau would have referred to it, “The Social Contract”.

Cryptocurrency, in particular, is alienated from the social contract. Aside from its proponents - who are largely strongly libertarian, and inclined toward some fairly radical interpretations of how the world should work - few people understand cryptocurrencies well enough to even begin to consider how those currencies play in society and what boundaries need to exist on that market. 

Think about it for a minute.  Back in the early days of “Town Markets”, there were boundaries. Merchants would hawk their wares in the town square, and people would buy them after haggling over the price, quality, etc.  Back then, what we would call a scammer today, would have to “get out of town in the dead of night” if they were selling dodgy product, or risk facing the wrath of the people or the town watch. 

Cryptocurrency exchanges, hedge funds, etc. are all operating in the relative shadows. There are no real boundaries on what they do once you turn some cash over to them in exchange for a few cryptocurrency bits. In theory, you should be able to reverse the transaction later, but the blunt reality is that these exchanges frequently haven’t got the “cash on hand” to enable you to exchange bits for actual currency you can use. 

The collapse of FTX is very revealing. Cash goes in via FTX, and your account is “credited” with however many units of cryptocurrency you bought.  BUT … after that, it disappears into a labyrinthine maze of “in-house” cryptocurrency tokens, and other holdings that are held by a hedge fund.  In short, the exchange itself is barely a shell - a front if you will. 

Most of us are basically honest people, and will be shocked by that. We think - quite rightly - that the exchange should have bought BitCoin, Ethereum, or whatever else we wanted on our behalf and be holding it in reserve for us.  Or, perhaps operating a bit like banks do, and investing it while holding enough “cash on hand” to deal with normal cash transactions.

Clearly that isn’t what’s going on. 

For years, we’ve heard from the so-called “Free Market Fundamentalists” that less regulation of markets will allow for greater growth, and will be a “good thing” for everybody. The cryptocurrency markets are about as utterly “free” as you can get. You are literally buying and selling “bits”  awarded from solving mathematical puzzles. They are not connected to any real world entity, and the value is utterly arbitrary (like seriously, how is 1 bitcoin worth $16,000USD???)

Herein lies the problem. Cryptocurrency markets are fundamentally not bounded. There is limited transparency at best, and it is rife with “fly by night” scammers as a result. Overnight billionaires spring up, and in the warped bubble of Silicon Valley think, they’re amazingly successful geniuses … at least until the bubble pops and their scam is revealed for what it is. Don’t feel too bad for Sam Bankman-Fried - I’m quite sure that he’s skimmed off enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life, even if he has to spend some of it fending off civil and criminal actions. 

We’ve been down this path before.  Whether it was with the development of currency, or the evolution of the stock markets, or more recently junk bonds and derivatives.  In every single case, they have been incredibly volatile until the government steps in and starts to impose some degree of regulation on the “market”. Usually that is in the form of laws requiring a certain level of transparency and disclosure, limits on the creation and trading of the “security” - be that cash or other forms of, and a number of other things ultimately designed to ensure that dubious schemes don’t get too far. 

Markets have limits, and they work best when they are bounded - and the boundaries have to be established collectively by people. Money and automation are intrinsically divorced from the concepts of morality and ethics - those are human constructs that we must impose on our use of them. 

About That ‘Cross Dressing Teacher’ In Ontario

I’ve been thinking about the shop teacher who was photographed wearing what is obviously a fetish oriented set of artificial breasts. 

What we don’t know is pretty much anything about the teacher beyond the very attention-grabbing act of wearing what they did to the workplace.  A vague assertion about the person has been made that they are “transgender”, but without that person coming forward with some part of their story, we are left with very little to confirm or deny this.  

Now, there are a number of things about this entire scenario that make me very uneasy. Not the least of which is the fact that most transgender people who consider transitioning tend to avoid using prosthetics that are so obviously radically extreme when they are beginning to present in public. 

There are many reasons for this, but for the vast majority of transgender people who choose to transition publicly, the goal is very much to blend into the fabric of society so they can do routine things like grocery shopping without being stared at. To put it kindly, that outfit was anything but about “blending in”. 

I have had a few experiences where people have started to present as if they are intending to transition but they are just “trying it on for size”. Most of those people do a few outings cross-dressed and decide that transition isn’t where they need to go.  But, such excursions are also usually carefully chosen to be (relatively) safe spaces, and it would be very unusual for it to include one’s workplace. 

In short, there are a number of things about this that simply don’t add up to a normal trajectory for someone in their 30s or 40s transitioning.  To be clear, it certainly is possible that it is the case, but it seems more than a little odd.  

However, there are other framings of this that are possible. Going back to the 2000s, when a few Republican states were introducing the first wave of so-called “Bathroom Bills”, the trope of the “sexual predator in the bathroom” was used heavily to justify the legislation. Anti-LGBTQ activists spent considerable time and energy trying to find, or create, a court case or two they could point to as justification for their legislative games. In general, these efforts weren’t successful for a variety of reasons - mostly the simple fact that the transgender women they accused simply weren’t doing what they claimed. 

Somewhere around 2012 or so, rumblings started to come out of the anti-LGBTQ movement that if they couldn’t find a predator case to hold up, they were going to “start dressing up as women and entering bathrooms, change rooms, etc”.  Obviously the intent would be to make as big a scene as possible to grab headlines and create outrage.  

There’s no question that the dust-up around this teacher has certainly done that, and they chose quite the combination of factors to get the outrage too - a school environment (“Won’t Somebody Think of the Children!!!”), a presentation that was clearly going to provoke a reaction, and apparently had taken enough steps that the employer knew (or believed) that the person was “transitioning” at work. The latter has effectively drawn a curtain across the particulars of who, and why.

The outrage has been picked up by the usual suspects - Rebel Media and LifeSite in particular, and hangers-on to the Freedumb Convoy movement, and they continue to whip it up. The point here is that the media with a vested interest in supporting the extreme right has picked up the story and is running with it. 

It is conceivable that this is a coordinated false flag incident. The organization around it is consistent with what I have come to expect out of the far right, and it skirts along the edges in terms of legality - it looks bad to the public, but it’s not actually serious enough to draw criminal charges. The presentation chosen is arguably somewhat cartoonish - as if this is someone’s idea of what “being trans looks like writ large” (ironically pushing into the space more often associated with drag).  

What I’m describing here could be completely incorrect, but we have plenty of evidence of people on the far right engaging in some pretty creepy behaviour to make political points. A few years ago, Bill Whatcott and a few of his followers joined the Toronto Pride parade using a fake group alias so they could pass out anti-gay flyers. Similarly, Peter LaBarbera is infamous for sneaking into gay leather fetish events “for research purposes” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) - usually writing breathless columns afterwards about all the immoral things he saw while he was “undercover”.  

At this point in time, we don’t really have anything conclusive here. There are basically 3 possibilities: 

1. This teacher is actually attempting to transition, and one of their first outings basically resulted in them stepping on a land mine. 
2. The teacher is one of the “trying it on for size” types that usually backs away after a while, and they also stepped on a landmine in the process. 
3. The teacher decided they were going to create the spectacle that could be used to justify legislative restrictions on transgender people - importing legislation currently being pushed in a large number of US States. 

In the absence of concrete proof, this is all speculative, of course. In the public sphere, all we really have is a handful of pictures and a couple of news articles.  We should not be blind to the possibilities here. 

What Is The Goal of the Alberta Sovereignty Act?

Since Danielle Smith first started advocating for the so-called "Alberta Sovereignty Act", much digital ink has been spilled over how it's unconstitutional, if not downright illegal under Canada's laws today. 

In general I agree with this perspective, but I also do not think the intent is "to play within the rules" here. After the CPC lost the 2015 election, and Harper effectively "rage quit" elected politics, I suspected that we had not seen the last of his shadow in Canada's politics. 

To be sure, he has remained a controlling influence in the CPC, and I'm fairly certain that his machinations led ultimately to the hamstringing and downfall of both Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole. When Poilievre stepped back from running to replace Andrew Scheer, I wondered what was up.  There was no question in my mind that he had more than a good chance of defeating the rest of the field of candidates - I concluded at the time that Poilievre's sudden "step back" was coordinated by someone close to Harper who rightly figured that the odds of defeating Trudeau were slim, a matter of "keeping one's powder dry" so to speak. 

In 2015, I commented to a sibling that now that voters have made it clear that Harper wasn't going to "rule over them for life", that conservative backrooms were now trying to figure out how to "blow Canada up" politically.  

Since then, we have been bombarded by a series of initiatives. That has been everything from the formation of the UCP (Harper was heavily involved in organizing this) in Alberta, to increasing the coordination across conservative Premiers (it's been fascinating to watch them all start singing from the same song sheet during the COVID pandemic), to a series of political pseudo-separatist initiatives like the so-called "Buffalo Declaration" and the "Free Alberta Strategy". 

The intent is basically to drive division in Canada.  Play up old grievances from the Prairies - which are nursed and fed in Alberta to this day, claim that Ottawa is out to screw Alberta over, and so on. The underlying goal all stems back to Harper's anger over being defeated in 2015 - he was angry at that, and as one might expect, there's a certain amount of "If I can't have Canada, nobody can" thinking going on. 

This looks a lot like the classic domestic abuse strategem - isolate the victims, and convince them that only their abuser actually "understands" them.