FIRST READING: Alberta is setting the template on how to defy Ottawa

Premier Danielle Smith speaks during the Rotary Club of Calgary’s annual luncheon at the Fairmont Palliser Hotel in Calgary on Thursday, April 9, 2026. Photo by Darren Makowichuk/Postmedia

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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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TOP STORY

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When taking stock of Canada’s decline over the last 10 years, some of the most conspicuous examples are in the realm of social policy.

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Almost all of these new realities were accelerated or enabled by federal action. As such, a common supposition is that they can only be reversed at a federal level.

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But particularly in the last few months, the Government of Alberta has been pushing the limits of their power on issues generally considered the exclusive domain of the federal government. In many areas, Alberta’s already providing a template of how far a provincial government can go in defying Ottawa.

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Alberta is unilaterally reining in MAID eligibility

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Last month, the Alberta government tabled the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act. Assisted suicide will still be legal in Alberta, but with far tighter restrictions than the MAID regime mandated by Ottawa.

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The restriction would return MAID to its initial federal standard of applying only for terminal illnesses. It would also ban nurses and doctors from unprompted suggestions of MAID to patients, something that is currently encouraged under federal treatment standards.

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Quebec has already experimented with tweaking the rules around MAID, albeit in the opposite direction. In 2024, Quebec unilaterally expanded MAID eligibility to pre-approved patients who were unresponsive — despite the fact that federal law still considers this to be murder. Nevertheless, the CAQ government got around this by ordering prosecutors not to pursue murder charges against anyone euthanizing an unresponsive patient with pre-approval.

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But Alberta’s action represents the first time that a provincial government has attempted to make it harder to access MAID, instead of easier.

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Alberta has singlehandedly rolled back child gender transitions

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In 2024, Alberta first announced a series of amendments to restrict gender transitioning in children. Gender surgeries were banned for anyone under the age of 17, and hormone therapies to block puberty were prohibited for children aged 15 and younger.

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This was followed up with legislation in 2025 to bar males from women’s and girls’ sports, regardless of whether they identified as female.

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Both pieces of legislation represent Canada’s first major pushback against the doctrine of “self-identified” gender. Prior to the 2010s, any Canadian looking to transition their gender faced a process of doctor’s notes, waiting periods and surgery until the change was legally recognized.

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But now, the standard in every province is that a Canadian can change their legal gender by simply declaring as much, and that it is the duty of policymakers to “affirm” the new identity.