Populism Against the Law? Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures and Framing Strategies behind the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act


Emily Laxer, York University, Glendon Campus; Jacob McLean, York University

The literature on populism is replete with warnings that it threatens liberal democracy. This threat, many argue, derives from populism’s distrust of pluralist principles of governance, namely minority rights protections and the division of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Many populist movements worldwide portray these principles as representing “elite” interests that threaten the wellbeing of the “people” (Blokker, 2019, 2021; Lacey, 2019; Mudde, 2021). It is no wonder, then, that populist strategies and discourses are being used to circumvent, commandeer, or dismantle constitutions in several democratic societies (Blokker, 2019, 2021; Bugaric and Kuhelj, 2018; Lacey, 2019; Walker, 2019). Canada is no exception to this anti-pluralist dimension of populism. Recently, the country has witnessed a surge in provincial governments’ use of populist frameworks to challenge constitutional obstacles to their policy agendas. In Ontario, Québec, and Saskatchewan, this manifests in governments’ accelerated uses of the Notwithstanding Clause, an exceptional constitutional provision that allows governments to temporarily override certain rights (Laxer and Krakoff, 2023). Populist anti-pluralism also appears to infuse the Alberta government’s recent Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act. Passed by the governing United Conservatives in late 2022, the bill allows the cabinet – by way of a parliamentary resolution – to direct provincial and municipal bodies to defy any Canadian federal laws or legislation deemed “unconstitutional” or “harmful” to Alberta. The bill has drawn widespread criticism, with opponents claiming that its defiance of federal law without court oversight is unconstitutional and that the enhanced powers allotted to the cabinet are undemocratic (McLean and Laxer, 2023). In this paper, we use the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act as an empirical entry point from which to broadly assess populism’s relationship to liberal democracy in Canada. We begin by outlining the key measures undertaken by – and constitutional implications of – the bill, against the backdrop of the literature on populism and liberal democracy. We then aim to discover how the United Conservative Party of Alberta came to adopt the Sovereignty Act, despite evident opposition. Drawing from social movement theory, we propose a multi-faceted argument that foregrounds three sets of factors: (1) the political opportunities to which the Sovereignty Act is a strategic response, including the perceived failure of Jason Kenney’s “Fair Deal” approach to satisfy a resurgent Albertan alienation and separatism, as well as Kenney’s Covid-19 policies ­­– unpopular with the libertarian wing of his party – which culminated in his ouster; (2) the role of the separatist and “freedom” movements, whose mobilizing activities have left imprints on the current government’s policy agenda; and (3) the discursive frames adopted by the government – namely “sovereignty” and “freedom” – to enhance the bill’s resonance with both supportive civil society groups and Alberta’s larger political culture. Our investigation draws on multiple data sources, including newspaper reports, opinion polls, publicly available interviews with – and content published by – influential civil society actors and organizations, and parliamentary debates.

This paper will be presented at the following session: