Alberta's Attack on the Idea of Canada

Democracy dies with a shrug, not a coup

There are moments in a nation’s life when the truth arrives uninvited, demanding to be spoken plainly. This is one of them. Canada is entering an age of disruption, a time when the institutions we have relied on for stability, fairness, and democratic accountability are being tested in ways we have not seen in generations. We are not immune to the forces that hollowed out American democracy. We are not insulated from the authoritarian libertarians masquerading as “freedom fighters.” And we are not guaranteed a future that resembles the Canada we inherited.

In A Call to (Political) War in Defence of Democracy, I argued that the United States has become a “zombie democracy,” a political order that still walks and talks like a democracy, but has lost the animating spirit. The institutions that once protected pluralism, upheld rights, and constrained leaders are being hollowed out with steam shovels by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

Elections still happen, but they no longer guarantee meaningful accountability. The courts exist, but their independence is under constant pressure. The civil service functions, but only when it is not being purged or captured. Democracy, in other words, is now a costume worn by authoritarian populists to cloak their ambitions.

Canada is not there yet. But it would be foolish — dangerously foolish — to think we are safely distant from the same fate. The contagion is not only political; it is cultural, psychological, and ideological. And like all contagions, it spreads not with dramatic flourishes, but through imitation, normalization, and the slow corrosion of the habits that sustain democratic life.

Alberta is the Authoritarian Stalking Horse

The most vivid example in Canada today is Alberta, where Premier Danielle Smith has built a political architecture that mirrors the authoritarian-libertarian populism now dominant in the United States. Smith is not just an outlier. She is the leading edge of a movement that believes the modern state must be dismantled, that checks and balances are obstacles to political will, and that power should flow upward to a self-selected elite while everyone else fights for their place in a rigid hierarchy.

This ideology pretends to celebrate freedom, but it is the freedom of the strong to dominate the weak. It pretends to empower individuals, but only in the way a lottery empowers gamblers: by selling hope while delivering loss. It speaks the language of merit, but the deck is stacked so the already-powerful remain at the top. It is, at its core, a politics of hierarchy: vertical, unaccountable, and fundamentally incompatible with the democratic culture Canada has spent 150 years building.

Energi Talks podcast Episode #327: Danielle Smith’s ‘authoritarian libertarianism’ explained

The Idea of Canada Still Shines

To understand the danger, we must first understand the alternative: the Canadian idea itself.

Canada is, by design and by instinct, a flat society. Not flat in the sense that everyone is identical or interchangeable, but flat in the sense that every citizen begins as an equal. Forty million equals. A country where political power radiates horizontally before it flows upward, where leaders are not rulers but stewards, and where the phrase “first among equals” captures the essence of democratic authority.

Leadership here is not a reward; it is a responsibility. It does not entitle one to privilege or deference, but to service: the work of lifting others higher, expanding opportunities, and strengthening the bonds of community.

This is the Canadian genius: the messy balance between individual autonomy and collective duty, between personal freedom and shared responsibility. Ours is a political culture that refuses the extremes: neither fiercely individualistic nor suffocatingly communal. Instead, we occupy the productive tension between them, constantly renegotiating our obligations to one another and to the state. This is why Canada remained stable during global shocks, why we built public healthcare, why we embraced multiculturalism, and why we have long served as a model of a humane liberal democracy.

That equilibrium is now under threat.

The authoritarian-libertarian project seeks to replace our flat, community-centred culture with a vertical hierarchy, justified by a myth of natural order. It tells ordinary people that their position in society is determined by merit, but the reality is that power, wealth, and privilege determine merit, not the other way around. It invites those who feel marginalized or overlooked to attach themselves to the powerful, promising that loyalty may one day be rewarded. It feeds resentment, sells grievance, weaponizes fear, and cultivates contempt for institutions that stand in the way.

Authoritarian libertarians are NOT conservatives

This is not conservatism. It is something darker. A politics that sees the state not as a guardian of fairness but as an obstacle to dominance. A politics that dismantles oversight, weakens courts, defunds watchdogs, and undermines experts. A politics that would rather emulate a collapsing American empire than build a resilient Canadian future.

Alberta demonstrates how quickly these ideas can root themselves in fertile ground. The Sovereignty Act is not a harmless gesture; it is an attempt to erode federal authority and weaken constitutional guardrails. The growing willingness to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause reveals a willingness to sidestep fundamental rights for political convenience. The procedural theatre of “Alberta Next” is not democratic engagement; it is a stage-managed performance designed to legitimate executive power. The assaults on universities, civil servants, and independent regulators are not reforms; they are attempts to control or silence dissent.

None of these actions alone marks a democratic collapse. But together, they form the architecture of zombie democracy: a system that looks legitimate enough to command obedience, but hollow enough to concentrate power in the hands of the few.

Isolate Alberta Before It Infects Other Provinces

And here is the hard truth: Alberta is not an isolated case. It is a prototype. A proof of concept. A signal that the forces disrupting democracies around the world have found a beachhead in Canada.

If we fail to confront this danger now, we risk losing the Canada we know — gradually, quietly, and long before we fully realize it is gone.

Democracy rarely dies with a coup. It dies by a thousand cuts: a weakened court here, a politicized civil service there, a premier who treats dissent as disloyalty, a party that mistakes obedience for unity. It dies when rights become optional, when institutions lose legitimacy, when citizens stop believing their participation matters. It dies when the powerful decide the rules are inconvenient. When the public shrugs.

Canada’s Inflection Point

Canada must choose to remain a democracy before the choice is taken away.

This requires more than vigilance. It requires conviction. The conviction to defend institutions even when they are inconvenient, to protect the vulnerable even when they are unpopular, to name authoritarianism even when doing so invites backlash. It requires citizens to act, not because they are partisan, but because they understand that democracy is bigger than any party or leader. It requires leadership grounded in service, not ambition; accountability, not entitlement; community, not hierarchy.

And it requires us to tell the truth: the energy transition is inseparable from the democratic transition. Electrification, clean power, and industrial transformation demand coordination, planning, and a capable state — the very things authoritarian-libertarians want to dismantle. A fossil-fuel economy, concentrated in the hands of a few, rewards hierarchy. A clean-energy economy, distributed across regions and technologies, rewards democracy.

This is why the energy transition is not only an economic project; it is a political one. And it is one reason why the authoritarian-libertarian movement fights it with such ferocity.

Young Canadians sense this. They see the contradictions in our politics, the failures of our institutions, the promises broken by a system that once guaranteed stability but now offers precarity. Their disillusionment is not apathy; it is diagnosis. A society that cannot deliver housing, opportunity, or a livable planet cannot expect loyalty. If we want them to defend democracy, we must make democracy deliver again.

Making Democracy Deliver Again

That is the task. That is the work ahead. To rebuild faith in a system strained by polarization and battered by misinformation, to restore the promise of adulthood, to rekindle the belief that Canada is a project worth fighting for. Because the alternative — a descent into hierarchical authoritarian libertarianism — would be a betrayal of everything this country stands for.

The Age of Disruption is upon us. The question is not whether Canada will be tested. The question is whether we will rise to meet the test. Whether we will defend the flat society that has served us so well. Whether we will reject the seductive cruelty of hierarchy. Whether we will choose community over grievance, fairness over resentment, democracy over domination.

This is the moment. This is the choice. And the window is closing.

If we want a Canada worth inheriting, we must defend it. Now, not later.