UCP’s ‘constitutional’ referendum questions push a grab-bag of right-wing policy goals intended to divide and weaken Canada

Through commission and omission, the final four questions we must deal with on Oct. 19 aim to support a provincial march into federal jurisdiction – say no to all nine!

The Court of Appeal of Alberta in Calgary – a key target of the Smith Government’s plan to undermine Canada by weakening federal institutions through deceptive referendum questions that push a grab-bag of dangerous far-right policy goals (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

On Wednesday we considered the five tendentious questions about immigration that Danielle Smith’s Government intends to put on a ballot on Oct. 19, 2026. I recommended in that post that voters say No to all of those questions, which are often deceptively worded and are clearly intended to prepare the ground for an attack on immigrants of non-European descent and non-Christian beliefs.

Today, let’s look at the four “constitutional” questions, which are designed to advance a grab-bag of policy goals pulled straight from the wish list of far-right politicians throughout the nations of the industrialized West. In some cases, like the “immigration” questions previously considered, they too are deceptively worded to sound more reasonable than they are in fact intended to be. In other cases, the deception is achieved through omission, rather than commission.

The Questions on the Canadian Constitution

Each of the remaining four questions begins as follows: “Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to …”

Some Canadian Conservatives have long dreamed of a situation in which there would be enough Conservative majorities in Parliament and provincial legislatures to gut the 1982 Canadian Constitution and remake our country in the image of the United States.

Today, of course, there are some Canadian provinces run by governments with a similar ideology to the UCP’s that would support a provincial march into federal jurisdiction as suggested by the Smith Government’s four “constitutional” questions.

But the purpose – and the likely result – would not be to make Canada stronger. The goal, it is said here, is to make the country ungovernable, and thereby weaker. This would not serve the interests of Canadian citizens, including Albertans, but it might work for some of the groups and people funding the UCP and its separatist campaign in this province, and the Americanization of Canada in every part of the country. Who funds these campaigns is a topic for another day, but it is worth keeping in mind that not all of them are Canadians, or operating from within our country.

Moreover, it might work for neoliberal ideologues who see the democratic nation state as a potential impediment to “economic freedom,” which means economic feudalism for most of us. It is an irony that conservative political parties and advocacy shops that so effectively pilloried former prime minister Justin Trudeau for musing about Canada becoming a “postnational state” are the force striving most mightily to move us into a state of powerless postnationality.

So, keeping in mind the preface above, let’s consider the four “constitutional” questions:

6. Have provincial governments, and not the federal government, select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts?

The UCP has already clearly demonstrated willingness to channel the Trump Administration’s inclination to ignore rule of law and due process. This is a blatant attempt to create the conditions for the UCP to rule in perpetuity, assuming it would be able to do so with the help of a politicized judiciary functioning like the Supreme Court of the United States. As we can see from some of the rulings of the Court of Appeal of Alberta, the provincial judiciary is clearly not entirely made up of “activist judges” determined to thwart the plans of the Alberta Government at every turn. So if the current system ain’t broken, even from a conservative perspective, any attempt to “fix it” engineered by this crowd is likely to make it far worse. The Smith Government knows, of course, that the federal government will never allow provinces to appoint judges to the superior courts, that is, the courts of King’s Bench and Appeal. Not even a Conservative federal government dominated by that party’s Alberta caucus would do that. So a secondary goal of this question is to create the conditions for a constitutional crisis, which authors of the so-called Free Alberta Strategy have openly admitted is one of their goals. Vote No.

7. Abolish the unelected federal Senate?

Like Question 4 in the “immigration” set, this is designed to sound reasonable but to achieve an entirely different goal than its implied purpose. Who doesn’t hate the unelected federal Senate? The problem is, if you abolish it, what do you replace it with? Nothing at all, as the NDP used to say? Ah, but that might result in too much democracy from Alberta’s perspective. That could end up giving those “Eastern Bastards” even more power than they have in the House of Commons! (Note that “Eastern Bastards” is a slur that also includes residents of the British Columbia Coast, who are obviously easterners as seen from the perspective of the True West out here in Wild Rose Country.) No, an innocent Yes vote to this question is intended to create the political conditions to fulfill Preston Manning’s dream of creating a Canadian Senate just like the U.S. Senate, on which it would be modelled. This would impose permanent obstacle to democracy and in particular change of the type nowadays characterized by the term “progressive.” We can all see how well that’s working right now south of the Medicine Line. So, remember, the word “abolish” is misdirection. The Canadian Senate that the UCP and its éminence grise, Mr. Manning, want to work with “other willing provinces” to create is intended to act as a check on democracy, just as the U.S. Senate was and is. Vote No.

8. 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?

This question is transparently designed to deny the federal government the ability to have truly national policies governing health care, education or social services. However, the UCP would still like the cash, thank you very much! A starting goal is to eliminate, or at least freeze in place, such federal policies as national health care standards such as are imposed through the Canada Health Act, as well as programs such as pharmacare, dental care, and childcare. Given Ms. Smith’s obsessions, health care is likely the principal target of this question. However, legislation justified by a Yes vote on Question 8 could and would be used to prevent Ottawa from funding university research in areas opposed for ideological reasons by Alberta’s provincial government – from climate change to gender studies to modern literature, to give examples from the hard sciences, social sciences and arts. At present, the federal government funds significant portions of the cost of post-secondary education. Canadian universities would be impoverished and intellectually weakened by such a policy because, while the federal cash would eventually flow no more, most provinces would resist an investment with no short-term political gain. In Alberta, as the UCP response to the increase in federal funding for the severely disabled illustrates, it would also open the door to wholesale redirection of earmarked federal funds to unintended uses while cutting services within the province. In the end, the likely result would be to end virtually all federal national programs that benefit Canadians. Vote No.

9. 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?

Seriously, this is the worst idea of them all, designed specifically to render the federal government essentially meaningless and replace it with 10, or 13, or whatever, regional satrapies. Canada was founded in 1867. The American Civil War ran from 1861 to 1865. More than a million Americans, soldiers and civilians, died as a result of that terrible conflict. On several occasions the war threatened to spill over into Canadian territory. So the Fathers of Confederation had a powerful example of what a constitution with strong states and a weak centre can lead to. They had very good reasons to construct Canada’s original constitution as they did, with all significant powers given to the central government in Ottawa – money, banking, international and interprovincial trade and all the rest. The result has been one of the most successful democratic states in the history of the world, the ninth largest economy on the planet, and the envy of people everywhere. We have even managed to hold together a country containing two significantly different cultural and language groups and forge something truly special as a result – to paraphrase our founding document, peaceful, ordered and (mostly) well governed. Danielle Smith and the vandals in the Free Alberta Strategy and its often mysteriously funded offshoots want to turn this on its head and make our country weak and ungovernable to advance their own authoritarian ambitions. Hell no! Vote No.

In closing, remember that in 1992, a majority of Canadians recognized this. When Canadians were given the opportunity to vote on the Charlottetown Accord, which included many of the UCP’s current decentralizing constitutional ideas, Canadians voted No. The accord was emphatically rejected by voters in the western provinces.

Things might have been easier from month to month and year to year if Canadians had said yes, but the centrifugal forces the UCP seeks to unleash for its own ends would have continued to pull the country apart.

In 2026, say no to all nine. Here endeth the lesson.