Paper 6: The Constitution of New Alberta
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, sets out in the first line:
“Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:”
Yet it feels as though both God and the rule of law are absent in Canada today. The Canadian Charter of Rights is misdrafted because it makes every Charter Right subject to limits a court finds reasonable; courts are corrupted by politics and swayed by popular trends. Albertans cannot fix any of it. Amending the constitution takes seven provinces, and Alberta has one vote. Alberta cannot self-determine within Canada.
Recognizing these failures in the founding of Canada, we are writing a stronger constitution for Alberta.
The government of the New Alberta will derive its power only and purely from the consent of the governed. Alberta will be governed by Alberta, for Alberta. The government will be a servant to the people and have strict limits. The constitution of the New Alberta will name what we value and set the limits on our government, together forming an enduring foundation.
The constitution will be written by founding members of Alberta for Albertans and be based on the following principles that have upheld the west for 2500 years.
Founding Principles
We uphold reason and public debate from Greek philosophy; we uphold law and order from Rome; we uphold the dignity of the individual from Christian faith; and we uphold the foundational values that come from recognizing God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty.
Recognizing God as the source of truth is a part of most foundational documents of the western world, from the Magna Carta (Britain 1210), to the United States Constitution (1787) and the Polish Constitution (1997). It is belief in God that gave women rights, ended slavery, and inspired great works of art. In Alberta we recognize God as the source of truth and respect those not sharing such faith but following those universal values as arising from other sources.
From these values, we define our Unamendable Core
Our sovereignty will not be transferable to any foreign body
No constitutional change will be possible without overwhelming consent from the people of Alberta
All citizens are equal before the law
All citizens have a right to peaceful enjoyment of private property
All citizens have Freedom of Expression
This unamendable core cannot be changed by a new majority government. Nor by legislature or a referendum.
Sovereignty: while standing in its own right, it is pertinent to a critique made by independence skeptics. Pundits think New Alberta will simply be a 51st state, but that is not the case. The sovereignty of Alberta will be protected by design. A government wanting to cede our sovereignty would have to endure the fiasco of publicly breaking the constitution.
Amendments: outside of the core, which can not be changed, any constitutional change will require popular ratification. New Alberta runs by consent of the governed. There will be no mechanism for the sitting government to rewrite clauses it sees unfit. For Albertans, this matters a lot. Within the Canadian constitution Albertan citizens have no direct say. The governments cast the votes. 7 of 10 provinces representing over 50% of the population can make a change with no input from Alberta.
Property: property will be protected against the state. The state will not take property without fair compensation. The state will not regulate property in a way that destroys its value without compensation. Zoning, environmental review, and similar restrictions will remain available, but takings beyond a threshold will trigger compensation.
Freedom of expression: Canada claims to have freedom of expression, but in practice speech is controlled with aggressive laws. 2020 showed us how the Canadian government can limit speech in excessive ways, even beyond talking about one of the many outlawed conversations. In the New Alberta, the state may not punish, license, compel, or chill speech on any subject. There will be no hate speech exception. There will be no misinformation exception. There will be no national security exception beyond operational military secrets during active war. Expression will be protected against the state. The limits to this freedom are consistent with other free countries, namely: incitement to violence, fraud, perjury, and threats against a specific person. Opinion will not ever be a crime in the New Alberta; public discourse is virtuous.
Citizens’ own security will also be protected. The state will not search persons, papers, or communications without a warrant issued by an independent judge on probable cause. No back doors into our private information.
Other Considerations
The constitution will have fiscal budget controls. These will exist outside of the unamendable core and will bind spending to revenue over the business cycle. Switzerland adopted this model in 2001 with 85 percent support from its citizens. Its federal debt currently is 16.1 percent of GDP, and the Swiss government credits the debt brake for it. Compare this to Canada’s 41.2 percent federal debt to GDP ratio and the Swiss mechanism speaks for itself.
Our constitution will be upheld through direct democracy. It will allow citizen initiated referenda, triggered by a petition collecting signatures from a minimum threshold percentage of the voting class. The legislature will not be able to override a referendum result without a supermajority and a sunset clause. This will prevent the political class from drifting away from the people of Alberta.
We, the Independence Writers have outlined the foundational principles for our constitution. Together, with all those interested, we will gather input and draft the New Alberta constitution, the way it has been done many times before by successful nations.
The Constitutional Convention
We will write the constitution together. The constitution will build upon a set of existing constitutional documents including those of the United States, Estonia, Switzerland and Poland; with consideration of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We will aim to keep the constitution short and strive to have it stand the test of time.
The convention will address further details such as: the amendment threshold, how limits on rights are written, the scope of direct democracy, the structure of the legislature, and the full bill of rights beyond the protections named above.
Our constitution of Alberta will provide protection to our rights as individuals in our new nation and put limits on our governing body. It can put fiscal controls in place toward long term prosperity but it cannot forever bind what a currency is worth. Alberta uses a dollar managed in Ottawa, and a country that does not control its money cannot control its budget. Paper 7 takes up the New Alberta Dollar.
