Depending on who you ask, the fall sitting of the Alberta legislature was either a welcome expansion of citizens’ rights or a cynical erosion of rights to cement the premier’s favour with United Conservative Party members.
The fall sitting began in late October with amendments to expand the Alberta Bill of Rights to prevent public employers from requiring employees to be vaccinated.
The government “has been laser focused on protecting and promoting Alberta’s rights and freedoms, which are the cornerstones of living in a free and democratic society,” government house leader and Tourism and Sport Minister Joseph Schow told reporters on Thursday.
Concluding its business late Wednesday night, the legislature adjourned for the year after passing a trio of contentious bills that restrict transgender youths’ access to gender-affirming health care, bar trans athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams and will make Alberta the only Canadian jurisdiction where parents must opt students into lessons about human sexuality, gender identity and sexual orientation.
“[Premier] Danielle Smith’s agenda this session was all about helping Danielle Smith,” Opposition leader Christina Gray said Thursday, pointing to Smith’s party leadership review in November.
2SLGBTQ+ advocacy groups Egale Canada and Skipping Stone Foundation are preparing to launch a legal challenge of all three new laws, alleging they are discriminatory and violate human rights.
Schow said the Fairness in Safety and Sport Act is a “one-of-its-kind piece of legislation in Canada that protects the fairness and safety of Alberta’s amateur competitive sports system.”
He said parents, educators and school trustees frequently tell him their athlete daughters are grateful for the legislation.
“I know of examples already in Alberta where we have seen athletes who have been hurt playing against transgender athletes,” Schow said. “Who have lost their opportunities.”
Just how schools, post-secondary institutions and amateur sport organizations are going to manage the new law will be spelled out in regulations that have yet to be written. Schow didn’t have details Thursday about the process or timeline for creating those regulations, but the new rules are supposed to take effect in September 2025.
Students can’t take back a name-change request
Also to come will be regulations on how schools respond when a child asks staff to address them with names or pronouns of a different gender.
The new law says schools shall inform a student’s parents when they make the request.
NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi told reporters on Thursday Alberta’s law differs from rules in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick because students cannot rescind their request when they find out staff must tell their parents.
Although the NDP proposed an amendment to the bill that would allow for this, government members rejected it.
“The most dangerous thing about this legislation is that it outs kids against their will, and there are, sadly, some number of kids who do not come from supportive families,” Nenshi said.
In a statement, the education minister said students can see a counsellor before staff tell their families.
Government house leader Schow said the legislation was drafted with intention, “and that is to make sure that parents know what is going on with their kids in school.”
Alberta Teachers’ Association president Jason Schilling said in a Thursday interview the law will place a chill on teachers’ relationships with students, once new rules take effect next September.
Some teachers have said they will not talk to parents without the students’ consent, which would be counter to the law.
“Teachers didn’t become teachers to put students in harm, right?” Schilling said. “Schools are supposed to be safe, caring places for every kid who comes into that building.”
That could open teachers up to becoming the subjects of complaints before their professional regulator.
These changes were among the 13 bills legislators passed in the fall sitting, along with a motion under the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act:
Resisting an emissions cap on oil and gas
The Alberta government’s second use of a Sovereignty Act motion, passed on Dec. 2, presents it with options to frustrate the federal government’s oil and gas emissions cap.
The government could tell oil and gas companies to report emissions data to the province, not directly to the federal government; bar federal employees from entering oil and gas facilities; and collect oil and gas in lieu of non-renewable resource royalties to potentially sell to other countries. Experts have questioned whether any of these steps are workable.
Restructured privacy laws
The government also split freedom of information and privacy protection law into two new laws. While the new privacy law requires public bodies to adopt more safeguards to protect personal information, advocates of government transparency have critiqued the new access to information law.
Encouraging all-season resorts
Schow also tabled a bill to make it easier for developers to propose building all-season resorts with overnight accommodation on provincial Crown land. The province can now create a regulator for such resorts.
B.C. has 13 such destinations with overnight lodging, and Schow says they’re a boon to the neighbouring province’s economy.
The NDP raised concerns about the bill’s lack of requirements for Indigenous consultation before the resorts are constructed. Schow said the Opposition was “wildly overstating the case,” and that Indigenous and environmental engagement standards are in place.
Indexed tax brackets pared back
After much fanfare about re-indexing both income tax brackets and government benefits to inflation as costs ballooned, the United Conservative Party government has now put a default limit on those increases.
Tax brackets and benefits will now automatically increase by two per cent per year, or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower.
The Opposition pushed back, arguing it also gives government the option to keep benefit payments to vulnerable Albertans flat while the cost of living escalates.
The same finance bill also introduced a $200 registration fee for electric vehicles starting in 2025. And it enables provincially regulated financial institutions, such as credit unions, to offer halal mortgages that use rent-to-own arrangements rather than interest payments.
Budget coming Feb. 27
Other newly passed laws will add two seats to the Alberta legislature during the next provincial election, increase oversight of child-care operations and increase the penalties for people slaughtering or selling meat without suitable inspections.
Outside of the chamber, the government announced upcoming changes to how auto insurance will be offered in Alberta and stricter limits on photo radar use, which take effect in April.
The finance minister said Alberta is on track to turn a $4.6-billion surplus in 2024-25, while warning that slumping oil prices will lead to lower revenues next year.
Schow said Finance Minister Nate Horner will table the budget on Feb. 27. He did not know what date the legislature will resume sitting come February.