[Newsbot]

Title: Alberta’s lieutenant governor will get legal advice before signing UCP bills aimed at ignoring federal law and court rulings | Globalnews.ca
Category: Provincial Politics
Posted By: Scape
Date: 2022-09-01 17:42:57
Canadian

[DrCaleb]

AKA: "Her Job."

[DrCaleb]

https://twitter.com/ABDanielleSmith/sta ... vBUYi5tQ5Q

[Thanos]

Well, it's not like anyone was really expecting her to react like a calm & responsible adult, considering that sort of non-belligerent personality long ago went extinct in conservative circles. The Rebel "News" types who Smith gladly associates with were all frothing at the mouth on Twitter all day yesterday after the LGG told them to cool their jets. It was quite funny, a very refreshing display of people who can't even manage their daily meds haughtily screaming out loud that a lieutenant governor general of a Canadian province has no idea what the constitution does or doesn't allow.

[llama66]

Ironic that Danielle calls the LtG unelected, when she is too.

[Thanos]

And that she's going to become premier not in a provincial election but because sixty or seventy thousand anti-vaxxers, freedumb truckers, conspiracy kooks, rednecks in MAGA caps, and various other elements of the fringe deplorable segment went out and bought UCP memberships to vote in the leadership race for her. The general population here has no say at all in any of this, it's strictly restricted to UCP members. Not too democratic at all, that the odious bitch won't even have a seat in the Legislature but will have all the power of the premier's office at her leisure to wield any way she sees fit. But I'm sure that if this small niggle is mentioned to them that the UCP and other types of that sort will all chime in with something like "oh, well, it's the system we've got and you're not allowed to change it just because you don't like it". Hypocritical of them, or merely depressingly ironic?

[DrCaleb]

Little column A, little column B.

[Thanos]

Thinking about buying a shotgun. I have the feeling that within the next two years it might be needed, and not because of the local low-grade creeps & hoodlums either. I will NOT live in some fucked up pseudo-libertarian theocracy that the right-wing bastards are going to pull out of their asses and impose on everyone else. "DON'T TREAD ON ME"? It's a two-way street, you bible-punching motherfuckers.

[DrCaleb]

You don't need a firearm. All you have to do is tell them there are minorities on the next block, and they will leave you alone.

[JaredMilne]

To be fair, this isn't without precedent in Alberta. When he was Lieutenant Goveror in the 1930s, John C. Bowen refused to sign several bills passed by Premier Bill Aberhart until the courts could rule on whether they were constitutional.

Here's what analyst Dale Smith has to say on the matter. His article is behind a paywall, but since I already paid for it you won't have to:

$1:

The constitutional situation in Alberta has just gone from bad to worse as the province’s Lieutenant Governor, Salma Lakhansi, mused aloud on Thursday that she may refuse to grant royal assent to Danielle Smith’s proposed “Sovereignty Act” should she become premier in October, but she was going to use the upcoming vice-regal meeting next month to consult with her colleagues to determine what steps she may be able to take. I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea this is, in a leadership race that is already full of bad ideas, and this is going to cause a serious rupture in the exercise of Responsible Government—and worst of all, I suspect that this is precisely the kind of thing that Smith wants to happen.

“This is where we keep checks and balances,” Lakhansi told reporters. “I’m what I would call a constitutional fire extinguisher. We don’t have to use it a lot, but sometimes we do have to use it.”

There are so many things wrong with that statement that I barely know where to begin. Ours is not a system of checks and balances—you’re thinking of the United States and their terrible constitutional arrangement. Ours is a system geared toward accountability, and it is not the Lieutenant Governor’s job to provide it. The role of constitutional fire-extinguisher is not about bad legislation. It’s about instances where you have something like a leader who refuses to relinquish power after they lost an election and have no way of maintaining the confidence of the Chamber, but are attempting to exercise power regardless. Think Charles Tupper trying to make appointments to government positions after he lost the election and had no hope of governing. The Governor General at the time, Lord Aberdeen refused to accept his advice, forcing Tupper to resign. That’s the kind of thing that “constitutional fire extinguisher” refers to.

Acting on advice is the absolute definition of Lakhansi’s job. That’s how a constitutional monarchy works—the Queen and her representatives act on the advice of the minister who commands the confidence of the Chamber. She could always advise or warn her premier behind closed doors that such a bill is unconstitutional and that it will be challenged in the courts and create huge problems for the province (seriously—investment is going to absolutely flee because no business wants any part of this kind of nonsense), but that has to be behind closed doors and not to the media. She really does not have discretion to refuse royal assent for a bill that the legislature passed legitimately (though there is a very real possibility that this could cause a caucus revolt in the UCP, which is a whole other kettle of fish).

But what about reserving the bill to the Governor General, or disallowance? Are these not constitutional? Well, yes and no. Reserving the bill to the GG, who would have one year to proclaim the bill (on the advice of the federal government) would still create a constitutional crisis because the LG is acting on her own accord, which breaks Responsible Government. Disallowance, meanwhile, is a constitutional dead letter, both because it was largely a relic of a time when the Governor General reported to the colonial office in London, but also because the Supreme Court of Canada has adopted a reference system in order to adjudicate jurisdictional disputes between provinces and the federal government.

To that end, the moment this would-be bill gets royal assent (because unless Lakhani is being poorly advised, she will sign it because that’s her job), it will be referred to the Supreme Court of Canada so fast that your head will spin, and its effects likely stayed until the hearing (which is generally around six months later, but they could make an exception to expedite it based on the severity of the issue). I wouldn’t be surprised if the Court ruled from the bench that this is most unconstitutional statute they’ve seen since the 1930s, and maybe tell them to behave like adults.

The other reason why Lakhani musing out loud like this is dangerous is because it gives Smith ammunition. She can (correctly) point out that the LG is a Trudeau appointee, and spin this as an instance of Ottawa trying to keep the province down, or from trying to assert its rights. She has less of a chance being able to do that with the Supreme Court of Canada, because its reputation is far more unimpeachable (than say, its American cousin), and because two of the nine members of that Court are from Alberta, so it can’t be dismissed as just a bunch of eastern elites. While Smith’s poorly-educated followers will lap up any narratives she weaves about the LG (and supplement them with a bunch of ugly racist and xenophobic ones), she will have an uphill battle trying that same tactic against the Supreme Court of Canada.

This having been said, the fact that so much of the UCP leadership has been centred around blatantly unconstitutional ideas and schemes, whether it’s Smith’s risible “Sovereignty Act” or Travis Toews’ similarly unconstitutional idea to impose tariffs on goods coming from provinces who are mean to Alberta, is a symptom that Alberta’s politics have become further corrupted by years of sustained rage-farming that was intended to deflect attention away from the shortcomings of the ruling conservatives. Kenney thought he could keep this particular tactic up indefinitely, until the very “crazies” that he brought into the party in order to shortcut his way to victory over the NDP (as opposed to having things like ideas or rational policies) and lo, it blew up in his face. His would-be successors have not learned that lesson, however, and continue to try and find an exterior enemy to blame everything on—Ottawa, Quebec, and now the World Economic Forum—because they are so allergic to looking in the mirror and seeing their own problems. Smith is taking this to the extremes, and is looking to provoke a constitutional crisis in order to serve these aims. Lakhani shouldn’t give her the opportunity.

Compare this to the federal prorogration crisis of 2008, when Michaelle Jean kept everything behind closed doors while she got advice from a number of political scientists and constitutional experts. I can't remember where I read it, but I also understand that she deliberately kept Stephen Harper waiting for a few hours to make him sweat and show how displeased she was with his games in trying to kneecap the Opposition parties.

[Thanos]

This is an unprecedent situation though so it makes it more understandable that the LGG felt compelled to publicly speak over the issue. Never before in Alberta history, or even in all of Canadian history AFAIK, has a political candidate said they'd put into provincial law something that would allow them to disobey federal law. Maybe something like that has been said by some flake running for a pissant party like the Christian Heritage or some anarchist garbage activists on the left. But it's being said openly by the person, as of today if the polls are accurate, most likely to become the next premier of Alberta.

This is Trumpism come to our country. Canada in general and Alberta in specific. The boss has no obligation to obey the law if they simply don't want to or if it pleases the maniacs & idiots & rage-oholics who support them. This CANNOT be tolerated, period. There's been too many examples in all of history of sheer disaster resulting after-the-fact simply because the guardians of the system refused to act pre-emptively against dangerous radicals who subsequently managed to later take the power of government into their hands. Smith is openly stating that if elected she'll push some sort of dingus hee-haw version of an Enabling Act that removes her & the UCP from the path of any negative consequences their platform would create. The LGG and Jason Kenney aren't wrong on any of this. Every single responsible person in high office should be speaking out on this before it goes too far. That includes the prime minister, the senate, all the other provincial premiers, the governor-general and the supreme court.

Silence is not an option. Not in the face of radicalism that has the potential to outright wreck the country. They slammed the brakes hard on Quebec separatism by bringing in laws that didn't just state how much support they'd need to achieve sovereignty but also on how the question of sovereignty had to be worded just to keep the separatists from pulling a stunt like wording a question so obscurely that no one knew the difference between yes or no. The same thing has to happen ASAP to put a stop to Smith & the hard right media scumbags & the coalition of conspiracy kooks and "freeman on the land" types that are agitating for this insanity.

Do something now and take the black eye of intellectual tut-tutting over how "it wasn't proper". Or do nothing and potentially lose everything later. Less than 25% of Albertans even want sovereignty or separatism, and an even small amount want to leave Canada and join the US. That doesn't matter because all the ones who do want this, that disgusting minority of malcontents and ingrates, are now in control of the main provincial conservative party. And they're using every stupid & dirty tactic quite effectively & using each and every mechanism that previous conservative parties in Alberta put into place in order to ensure their perpetual rule.

Smith and what she's pushing is as dangerous as it gets. This will put Canada on the same knife-edge as it was in 1995 during the last peak of popularity for the Quebec separatists. What's happening in Alberta now is just as bad as what happened in Quebec thirty years ago. Shoot it right between the eyes and stop it dead in it's tracks now before it's too late. Just because separatists have always lost in the past doesn't mean that they'll always lose forever. Remember, all they need is just one win and then it's game-over for this country as a united entity.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

What's happening in Alberta now is just as bad as what happened in Quebec thirty years ago.

That's exactly why she does it. They think that Quebec gets special consideration because of the threats to leave confederation. It's a dog whistle.

What she isn't considering is all the head offices and businesses that Quebec has lost because of their lack of certainty. And that Calgary got many of those head offices because of our stability.

[Thanos]

Which just proves that today's stunt-booking Trump-clone conservatives care as much about a good economy as they do about law & order, i.e. that it's just insincere bullshit that they've been peddling for decades. Their co-called "conservative" values that they've been shoving in everyone else's face since fucking forever are a fucking illusion and always have been. And those non-existent values are just something that they're all more than willing to jettison in the blink of an eye for another vote, another seat, or another like on social media. In 20015 the weathervane pointed in a different direction, this time towards an open sewer, and all the sel-proclaimed "values" politicians merrily ran off to where it told them to go. Smith, Levant, Poilievre, and their friends at Angry Anti-Vaxx Rural Doofus Inc literally don't give a shit about anything except for what suits them at any given moment in time.

[JaredMilne]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

That's exactly why she does it. They think that Quebec gets special consideration because of the threats to leave confederation. It's a dog whistle.

What she isn't considering is all the head offices and businesses that Quebec has lost because of their lack of certainty. And that Calgary got many of those head offices because of our stability.

Not exactly. Quebec gets what many of the rest of us call "special consideration" because of its unique language and legal situation, being a French-majority province with a legal code based on the French civil law rather than the English common law the rest of us use. There are multiple examples even throughout the BNA Act going back to 1867.

More to the point, as Thanos alluded to Smith and many of her supporters seem determined to blow off any concerns about investors running for the hills (we already lost the Teck Frontier mine in large part due to our carbon tax opposition, and the president of Teck Frontier openly said as much in his letter!), more and more places trying to phase out or reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, and the fact that so many of us just plain don't want this. You can bet the NDP's communications staff are salivating at the chance to use all these talking points in next year's election, especially to try and spook some of the business community into not supporting the UCP.

A lot of the anger right now comes from people frustrated at everything from the energy industry supposedly being blocked to equalization. Never mind that Environment Canada has said the fertilizer thing would be voluntary and could even lead to higher crop yields (although the point that Ottawa might not pursue something that would hit Ontario and Quebec's industrial heartlands so vigorously is a fair one), the current equalization formula was put in place by a Conservative Prime Minister from Alberta or that, with energy prices being what they are and one of our biggest energy customers turning into one of our competitors in the U.S. becoming an energy exporter, we'd be getting fucked over by the free market even if Stephen Harper were still in office.