MORGAN: Independence can free Alberta from Trudeau-appointed judges

Justice Shaina Leonard didn’t rule in favour of treaty rights in Alberta. She ruled against democracy, and her absurd yet predictable decision on the challenge only entrenches division within Alberta.The reason I say the ruling was predictable is that Leonard is a Trudeau-appointed judge. The federal government chooses people to elevate to the bench based on their political ideology, and Leonard fit the bill of what Trudeau was seeking. It’s through these appointments that the Liberals maintain solid political control of regions where they can’t garner electoral support. Alberta consistently elects conservative governments, which then must battle the courts to implement conservative policies. Those policies are often quashed by Liberal judges, which has led to the now-common use of the Notwithstanding Clause in order to get anything done. It’s just another example of how the federation is broken.Justice Leonard’s first case regarding provincial legislation was with the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act in 2021. Indigenous protesters supported by unions and environmental activists had been blockading roads and rail lines across the country in protest of the construction of a natural gas line in BC. The protests were getting heated and costly as transportation was being hampered, and counterprotesters were becoming aggressive in light of what they saw as police inaction against these illegal protests.The act offered a commonsense definition of what could be considered essential infrastructure. It included railways, pipelines, utility infrastructure, and oil production sites. This allowed law enforcement to quickly dismantle dangerous blockades on rail lines and roads before they could entrench.The Alberta Union of Federal Employees felt that setting up protest encampments on railway lines was a protected Charter right and challenged the new act in court. The government moved to strike the ridiculous challenge, but unfortunately, it had gone before Justice Shaina Leonard. She ruled in favour of the union, which forced the act to be dragged further through the courts. Leonard’s ruling was tossed out upon appeal in 2022, and the Supreme Court later refused to hear any further challenges on it..We live in a world where hereditary indigenous chiefs are offered similar recognition and standing to elected representatives for people, and where oral history can be allowed to trump reality in the courts. Justice Leonard dwells within this bizarre world, and it only makes sense to her that indigenous people may have a Charter right to set up encampments on top of railway lines, or that a handful of indigenous chiefs have the right to blockade a petition signed by hundreds of thousands of Albertans.Premier Smith has been demanding that the province have a stronger role in choosing federal judges, and the ruling from Justice Leonard illustrates exactly why.Note, Leonard didn’t rule against the ability of the province to hold an independence referendum. She ruled against citizens being able to initiate a referendum through petitioning. If she ruled against the ability to hold a referendum altogether, it would signal that Quebec can’t hold one either. Federal judges are only a little less terrified of upsetting Quebec than they are of indigenous activists.That means the referendum on independence in Alberta will still very likely be held this fall, but it will be initiated by the government of Alberta rather than a grassroots effort on the ground.Premier Smith responded to the ruling, saying, “I would say that it is a single judge who has made a decision, and we have now 700,000 Albertans — whether they’re on the remain side or the leave side — who’ve said that they want to have this public debate.”.To rule against petitions is to rule against the people. Petitions to the government embody the purest form of democracy. They restore sovereignty to the people by requiring governments to respond transparently to thresholds of popular support, without intermediaries filtering or spinning the message for political gain. This, of course, makes authoritarians uncomfortable, and their appointed justices reflect that.The weak basis for rejecting the petitioning work was that the indigenous consultation was inadequate. Indigenous consultation has become a catch-all excuse to hamper everything from resource projects to legislation. Lazy judges need only to invoke those two words while the woke establishment members sagely nod their heads and applaud the brilliant ruling. Let’s face it, there will never be enough indigenous consultation on anything. There will always be a few aggrieved chiefs and activists who will claim they are ignored, and rulings like this will only invite more challenges. Petitioning in itself is a form of consultation. Hundreds of thousands of citizens chose to express themselves on an issue, and a judge tossed that means of expression into the trash. The ultimate form of consultation is a referendum. In that exercise, every single citizen has the chance to debate a concept, then vote upon it. It is pure democracy, and we can’t let activist judges steal that from the citizenry. People have the right to vote on the issue of Alberta’s independence, whether they support it or oppose it. It is the only way the issue will ever be put to rest.When the referendum is held this fall, the ruling by Justice Leonard will offer Alberta citizens one more example of why they must vote “Yes” to independence. It will free Alberta from the clutches of federally appointed Liberal judges who hail from Eastern Canada.

MORGAN: Independence can free Alberta from Trudeau-appointed judges

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