As authoritarianism creeps in through provincial actions, it turns provinces into fiefdoms where there are rights for some but not for others.
By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.
In the early hours of October 28th, as members of the Alberta legislature sat bleary-eyed after a marathon session, Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party rammed through Bill 2, the so-called “Back to School Act.” This draconian piece of legislation didn’t just end a three-week strike by more than 51,000 teachers—the largest walkout in the province’s history—it invoked Section 33 of the Canadian Constitution, the notorious “notwithstanding” clause, to suspend the fundamental rights of those educators to associate, bargain collectively, and strike. Teachers, who had walked out on October 6th demanding better wages, smaller class sizes, and support for students with complex needs, were ordered back to work by Wednesday, October 29th, under threat of $5000 daily fines for individuals and up to $500,000 per day for their union.
The four-year contract that was imposed on the teachers offers a meagre 12% wage increase, the hiring of 3,000 additional teachers and 1,500 educational assistants, without addressing the other issues—a deal that the teachers had rejected by 89.5% in September. Premier Smith, conveniently absent on a trade mission to Saudi Arabia, justified the “nuclear option” of using Section 33 as a moral imperative for student welfare, demanding swift action.
But this was no existential emergency of war or insurrection, the dire scenarios envisioned when the notwithstanding clause was forged in 1982 as a compromise to repatriate the Constitution. It was a calculated political move to strip Charter protections not for reasons of public security, but to crush political dissent and impose a rejected deal. This act cements Danielle Smith’s transformation from libertarian firebrand to anti-democratic fascist, and a threat to democracy in Alberta.
Elected in 2022 by a razor-thin margin within her party—scarcely 1% of Alberta voters—she has since pursued a relentless centralization of authority, eroding the checks and balances that define liberal democracy. The teachers’ strike was merely the latest flash point in a pattern of authoritarian overreach.
But this was no existential emergency of war or insurrection, the dire scenarios envisioned when the notwithstanding clause was forged in 1982 as a compromise to repatriate the Constitution. It was a calculated political move to strip Charter protections not for reasons of public security, but to crush political dissent and impose a rejected deal. This act cements Danielle Smith’s transformation from libertarian firebrand to anti-democratic fascist, and a threat to democracy in Alberta.
Elected in 2022 by a razor-thin margin within her party—scarcely 1% of Alberta voters—she has since pursued a relentless centralization of authority, eroding the checks and balances that define liberal democracy. The teachers’ strike was merely the latest flash point in a pattern of authoritarian overreach.
Recall the “Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act” of 2022, which critics decried as a dictatorial blueprint allowing cabinet to nullify federal laws without legislative scrutiny and bypassing the courts. At the time NDP Deputy Leader Sarah Hoffman warned it handed Smith “dictatorial powers,” a sentiment echoed by constitutional scholars who saw it as an assault on parliamentary sovereignty. Then there was Bill 20 in May 2024, granting cabinet unchecked authority to fire municipal councillors, overturn bylaws, and introduce political parties to local elections—targeting urban strongholds like Edmonton and Calgary while sparing rural UCP bastions. Mayors decried it as “authoritarian,” a “power grab” that would chill free speech and strip voters of their elected representatives. Edmonton’s Amarjeet Sohi called it a degradation of local democracy, while Calgary’s Jyoti Gondek warned it erodes the public’s right to choose their governance.
Smith’s fascism isn’t bombast, it’s real and a danger to democratic norms. She styles herself as a “freedom-loving” premier, yet her policies reveal an oxymoronic “authoritarian libertarianism”—a worldview where individual liberty means obedience to her party’s unmediated truth, where dissent is vilified as villainy, a style very similar to that of Donald Trump. As political scientist Patricia Roberts Miller explains, this ideology thrives on victimhood, justifying coercion against perceived threats. In Alberta, it manifests in political cronyism—patronage appointments to ethics bodies, threats to public servants’ pensions, and hobbling renewable energy to prop up fossil fuels. Her pursuit of an Alberta Pension Plan (APP), despite 63% public opposition to the idea and economists warning that Alberta’s claim to more than 50% of the Canada Pension Plan will never fly, also demonstrates authoritarian leanings. Similarly, her push for a provincial police force—which would have start-up cost of at least $366 million to transition from the RCMP, and annual operating costs of approximately $164 million, opposed by 67% of Albertans—centralizes coercive power, reducing oversight and ignoring the will of an overwhelming majority of Alberta residents.
These aren’t the choices of a self-proclaimed libertarian. They’re the decisions of a fascist manoeuvring to consolidate power, implement unpopular policies through state compulsion, echoing historical strongmen who draped tyranny in freedom’s garb. Bill 2 is the apex of this drift, but it’s not isolated to Alberta. Since 1982, provincial and territorial governments have invoked the notwithstanding clause 26 times—not in response to existential crises, but to advance partisan agendas at the expense of the Charter rights of Canadians. Quebec leads as the “worst offender,” using the clause 17 times over 43 years, including for Bill 21 (2019), which bans religious symbols for public workers, a law that disproportionately targets Muslim women and violates equality and religious freedom rights. The Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the bill in 2024, but not without acknowledging its “cruel and dehumanizing” impact on hijab-wearing teachers. Section 33 was also used for Bill 96 (2022) which violated the equality rights of English speaking Quebecers once again, by further curbing English use in public services.
Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe is another offender who invoked it in 2023 for the “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” violating the rights of transgender youth under the age of 16, endangering their security of the person—a policy Alberta mirrored in 2024 by shielding three anti-trans bills with the clause. Ontario’s Doug Ford wielded it on three occasions since 2018, slashing Toronto wards in 2018 (later stayed), limiting third-party election ads in 2021, and imposing contracts on 55,000 education workers in 2022—a decision which was reversed due to a massive backlash. However, the precedent lingers.
These right-wing premiers—Legault in Quebec, Ford in Ontario, Moe in Saskatchewan, Smith in Alberta—form a quasi-fascist phalanx, normalizing constitutional overrides that eviscerate minority rights under the guise of “parental rights,” “secularism,” or “fiscal prudence.” This proliferation threatens Canadian democracy at its core. The notwithstanding clause, born of a constitutional compromise to appease provincial premiers, was meant for “exceptionally rare circumstances”—not routine rights suspension to push political agendas. Yet its pre-emptive use—before courts can rule on legislation—transforms the Charter from a bulwark to protect human rights to suggestions that can be violated at the whim of a government, making the current situation no different than it was before the Charter of Rights was adopted.
The use of the clause erodes judicial independence and public trust, and allows government to behave no differently than one would find in countries led by authoritarians. As former prime minister Justin Trudeau warned in 2022, Canadians themselves should be extremely worried about the increased willingness of provincial governments using the notwithstanding clause pre-emptively to suspend their fundamental rights and freedoms . . . The Charter of Rights and Freedoms cannot become a suggestion.”
In the above-mentioned provinces, representing 60% of Canadians, the use of Section 33 in all cases targets those with little power to push back against government—trans youth being discriminated against in schools, hijab wearing Muslim women barred from teaching or being public prosecutors, police officers or judges, teachers gagged from bargaining or legally protesting. This isn’t federalism, it’s fragmentation and balkanization. It a series of unsavoury instance where majority governments tyrannize minorities or impose their will on political opponents, thereby creating a patchwork of rights that mocks the concept of a nation where all rights are protected equally.
All Canadians—not just Albertans—should be alarmed. If unchecked, this contagion will invite broader erosions of rights, like in the United States, where voter suppression, ID mandates, academic censorship, grant vetoes for those not toeing the ideological line, or the weaponization of police against anti-government protests which are endangering American democracy.
The federal Liberal government bears a moral, legal, and constitutional duty to counter this fascist tide. Section 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, empowers the Governor General-in-Council to disallow provincial laws, a relic of colonial oversight now a dormant shield for national values. Used 112 times until 1943, the power has atrophied amid cooperative federalism, but it remains viable given that it was retained in the Constitution Act 1982. Disallowing Charter Section 33 overrides of Smiths back to work bill, Saskatchewan’s pronoun law, or Quebec’s “secularism” law would enforce the Charter, declaring human rights non-negotiable in Canada.
Morally, Mark Carney’s Liberals must act. Canada’s hypocrisy—condemning human rights violations in countries like China, Russia, or Iran while ignoring domestic abuses—undermines its global credibility. Legally, invoking the power of disallowance would uphold the Charter’s supremacy. Politically, it would be popular, with recent polls showing that 58% of Canadians are deeply concerned about the use of Section 33, with 55% wanting the clause abolished. If he has the political will, Carney spend some political capital and rally Canadians by wielding Section 90 as a threat to compel first ministers to codify limits on Section 33’s use, and by referring the matter to the Supreme Court for a judicial opinion on those limits. Alternatively, the federal government could incorporate Section 90 into legislation to pre-emptively restrict both federal and provincial governments from invoking the notwithstanding clause except in the most dire emergencies, as originally envisioned.
As authoritarianism creeps in through provincial actions, it turns provinces into fiefdoms where there are rights for some but not for others. The federal government, steward of the Charter, must halt this drift or watch Canadian democracy fracture, not in a coup, but via a constitutional clause invoked casually, with rights denials renewed every five years like leases. All Canadians deserve better than to have their human rights violated on a whim by provincial governments, and it looks like it is up to the federal government to ensure that the Charter rights of Canadians don’t slowly dissolve away, until the Charter is a mere shadow of what it was intended to be, and Canadians are back to where they were in the era before the Charter where rights are no longer guaranteed.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
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