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Inside the pressure campaign on Danielle Smith to make gun ownership (and more) an Alberta right

Premier Danielle Smith in‐ tends to strengthen the lit‐ tle-known Alberta Bill of Rights this fall to include protection­s for people who refuse to be vaccinated, but she's facing heavy pres‐ sure from United Conserva‐ tive activists to go much farther in her overhaul, CBC News has learned.

A group from the pre‐ mier's riding in Medicine Hat, which calls itself the Black Hat Gang, has met with se‐ nior government officials and proposed a massive new draft of Alberta's rights docu‐ ment. The "gang" wants it to enshrine an array of new rights, including confidenti­al‐ ity of health informatio­n and "informed consent" to med‐ ical care, as well as rights to keep and bear firearms, to use "sufficient force" to de‐ fend one's property, and "freedom from excessive tax‐ ation."

It's not clear how much in‐ fluence Smith's constituen­ts will have on the legislatio­n that her government plans to introduce this fall, right be‐ fore the UCP's annual con‐ vention. But the premier, fac‐ ing a leadership review at that convention, has been heavily promoting her pro‐ posed Bill of Rights to her party's grassroots at multiple members-only gatherings.

What's more, party presi‐ dent Robert Smith told UCP members in a newsletter last month that the updated rights bill will have "95 per cent" of what party members supported at last year's party convention - ideas that Smith's constituen­cy group had initially put forth at that gathering, and then pro‐ posed to the UCP govern‐ ment this year.

Some of the same propos‐ als for new liberties and pro‐ tections were also recom‐ mended last year by the pub‐ lic health emergencie­s review panel, helmed by former politician Preston Manning, a prominent critic of COVID re‐ strictions and vaccine man‐ dates.

Smith's reforms stand to give more teeth to a rights document that's been on the books since 1972, but has been vastly overshadow­ed in court decisions and the pub‐ lic conscience by the Canadi‐ an Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

While the Charter is a con‐ stitutiona­l document and can be used to strike down laws and regulation­s, the Alberta Bill of Rights is only a statute (or law), and it's not as clear that judges can use one statute to trump others, says Eric Adams, a University of

Alberta law professor.

However, both the Black Hat Gang and Manning's panel recommend the Smith government establish its Bill of Rights as part of the province's constituti­on, and therefore a supreme law that courts could use to affect other laws.

Modelled after the British system, there is no written constituti­on of Alberta- or any other province, per se. It consists of a series of other federal and provincial laws that make up the province's supreme governing law. A province has the legal right to pass legislatio­n adding ele‐ ments to its unwritten consti‐ tution, as Alberta did in 1990 to confirm the self-gover‐ nance of Métis in Alberta.

Smith hasn't yet tipped her hand too much about her Bill of Rights overhaul, except for one change she enticed UCP members with at a Calgary event last month.

"The amendments will make it illegal for the govern‐ ment to discrimina­te against any individual for refusing a medical treatment. And it needs to be said, including refusing to take a vaccine you don't want to take," she told the gathering, according to a recording reviewed by CBC News.

This echoes a campaign promise Smith made in 2022 to help secure the UCP lead‐ ership: that she'd add the right to be unvaccinat­ed into the Alberta Human Rights Act, a separate document from the Bill of Rights. Smith ultimately abandoned that idea, and did not propose it or any vaccine-related reform in the provincial election last year.

But the proposal's resur‐ rection in the Bill of Rights could wind up having im‐ pacts beyond the COVID-19 vaccine mandate that so riled the United Conservati­ve base.

A longstandi­ng provincial regulation requires all work‐ ers in health care and at day‐ care facilities be immunized against rubella (also known as German measles). Such a provincial rule could be sub‐ ject to challenge under a new Bill of Rights protection.

A spokespers­on from Smith's office told CBC News that the government is con‐ sidering various other Bill of Rights amendments to "strengthen Albertans' indi‐ vidual and property rights" news that might please the Black Hat Gang.

It's an informal group of UCP members, mostly from southeast Alberta, who have consolidat­ed ideas from the Manning panel, resolution­s from last year's party con‐ vention and other concepts into a greatly expanded Bill of Rights that's been circu‐ lated among government and party officials.

"These Black Hat gentle‐ men, these guys are not wor‐ ld-renowned legal scholars," lawyer Leighton Grey, an ally of the group, said on a webi‐ nar in July. "They're not bil‐ lionaires ... These are every‐ day Albertans like you. And they just decided that they were very concerned about the direction the province is going and they figured out a plan to do something about it."

The self-described "gang" met in April with Red DeerSouth MLA Jason Stephan, the chair of the government's legislativ­e review committee. The premier has tasked him to analyse the Manning pan‐ el's recommenda­tions and potential Bill of Rights refor‐ ms.

"Yesterday included a meeting on improving our laws to strengthen and pro‐ tect our freedoms from harmful interferen­ce," Stephan wrote on social media after the meeting, alongside a picture of him with several people, mostly wearing black cowboy hats.

Grey sported a belt buckle to accompany his cowboy hat and cargo pants in the pic‐ ture. He declined an inter‐ view, but told the webinar he was involved with the Black Hat Gang to help them turn their ideas into more of a "le‐ gal document."

Other key figures with the gang include Mitch Sylvestre, president of the Bonnyville­Cold Lake UCP riding associa‐ tion, who is also active with the grassroots organizers Take Back Alberta. There is also Scott Payne- son of former federal Conservati­ve MP LaVar Payne - who sported an "Alberta rights now" shirt at last year's UCP convention.

Payne, Sylvestre and Grey each declined interview re‐ quests from CBC News. At the UCP provincial board's re‐ treat next week, the directors will "meet with Scott Payne regarding the Alberta Bill of Rights," according to a party newsletter.

In the webinar, co-hosted by pro-Alberta-independen­ce group Alberta Prosperity Pro‐ ject, Grey divulged much of what's in the gang's pro‐ posed Bill of Rights. It adds 22 freedoms to what's cur‐ rently in the bill, more than doubling its current length.

Some overlap with what's in the current bill and the Charter, like freedom of speech and religion.

But they also include some U.S.-inspired freedoms, such as "life, liberty, property and the pursuit of hap‐ piness," as well as the right to remain silent and one pro‐ tecting firearm ownership - a protection that has greatly expanded access to guns south of the border.

"We're very hopeful that the right to keep and bear ar‐ ms will be in the document," Grey said. "It certainly is in the document that we sub‐ mitted to them."

Grey, who has represen‐ ted Albertans in court to challenge COVID public health restrictio­ns, acknowl‐ edged on the webinar that not everything the group drafted for the government will be introduced as amend‐ ments. Referring to the one that mimics the "stand your ground" law that lets some Americans shoot property in‐ truders as self-defence, Grey said: "I don't know if all of these are going to make it in‐ to the final product."

He also said that he and members of the Black Hat Gang have discussed the Bill of Rights with officials in Al‐ berta Justice. Asked about who had met the "gang" members, spokespeop­le for the premier and Justice Min‐

ister Mickey Amery sent iden‐ tical statements which did not answer the question:

"Alberta's government has consulted with various groups and hundreds of indi‐ viduals on potential amend‐ ments to the Alberta Bill of Rights."

On the webinar, Grey touted another proposed ad‐ dition to the rights docu‐ ment: to "democratic­ally elect and recall legislator­s by voting through secret paper ballots to be manually handcounte­d."

This dovetails with a reso‐ lution at last year's UCP con‐ vention to prohibit votecounti­ng machines, and the Smith government's recent law that bans them in munic‐ ipal elections.

"Essentiall­y what it means is the NDP wouldn't be able to cheat using voting ma‐ chines," Grey told his hosts. There is no evidence of any impropriet­ies with mechani‐ cally counted advance ballots in the 2023 provincial elec‐ tion, nor of any formal com‐ plaints anyone filed to Elec‐ tions Alberta.

The Black Hat Gang's lawyer ally also tried tying a beefed-up Bill of Rights to the province's disputes with Ottawa.

"This new Bill of Rights is aimed at providing protec‐ tions for Albertans against federal government over‐ reach," Grey said. "It really is part of the whole sovereignt­y project that Premier Smith is so committed to."

However, the province's Bill of Rights has no power over any federal laws - it only concerns provincial legisla‐ tion and rights, said Adams, the law professor.

But he said there is the potential that the Smith gov‐ ernment could fortify its 52year-old Bill of Rights with constituti­on-like powers to make it a sort of Charter of Rights within provincial juris‐ diction.

"There is the raw legal power to do so," Adams said. But there is a complex politi‐ cal question embedded in that decision, he added.

"Any sitting government in the middle of its time in of‐ fice suggests that it has the mandate to alter the funda‐ mental law of Alberta with‐ out having campaigned on that question, I think, opens itself to the question that something as important as the Alberta constituti­on de‐ serves more and better."