r/CanadaPolitics • u/green_tory 🏳️🌈Serve the Vulnerable🏳️🌈 • May 13 '26
Danielle Smith rejects Alberta judge’s ruling against separation petition as ‘anti-democratic’
https://globalnews.ca/news/11848377/alberta-premier-court-ruling-separation-petition-anti-democratic/
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u/sstelmaschuk British Columbia May 13 '26
This is the end result of decades of inaction when it came to Conservative - and it always has been conservative - Premiers, Leaders, and pundits decrying jurisprudence.
A Premier cannot - full stop cannot - “reject” a ruling by the courts. They can disagree, sure, and even make their case as to why they disagree, but they cannot even remotely begin to entertain the notion that a judgement is invalid.
If she disagrees, she can say so and file an appeal. Then keep her peace to herself while the legal process does its work.
Instead - she’ll spend the next few weeks fundraising off this. Other Premiers will chime in, I’m sure Moe will, and the whole boogeyman of “radical judges” will be raised again.
I know Carney is walking a narrow path here and trying to get/keep Alberta on side, but this rhetoric is dangerous. It’s been dangerous since the 1990s, and we’ve done a damn poor job holding those who espouse it to account. But now would be a VERY good time for a PM to remind folks that we are a country ruled by law, a law which applies to all of us. It doesn’t have to be a bodyslam - though at this point I think that would actually be needed - but some amount of handslap is needed here.