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We were very pleased, last month, to join with other citizen groups and high-profile individuals to call for urgent action on Canada's constitution.

Yesterday, we received a response from Alberta Premier, Jason Kenney.

We were very pleased, today, to join with other citizen groups and high-profile individuals to call for urgent action on Canada's constitution.

You can read our open letter here, which was published in a large number of Canadian newspapers here:

Last month the Alberta Government released the eagerly-anticipated Fair Deal Panel report and the government's responses to the report's recommendations.

Here is our analysis of the Panel's recommendations and the government's responses.

The Alberta Government has just released the eagerly-anticipated Fair Deal Panel report.

During and since last year’s federal election, we have been among a large number of Albertans have been discussing the future of our province.

Alberta is in the middle of an economic crisis – the likes of which we have never seen before – caused by a perfect storm of bad public policy, an overbearing federal government, rail blockades, major project cancellations, low oil prices, and a pandemic.

Alberta’s economy has been struggling for years, hundreds of thousands of Albertans are out of work or underemployed, businesses are closing, and capital is fleeing at an astonishing pace.

Instead of helping Alberta address these challenges, Ottawa has taken the opportunity to aggravate the situation and only made things worse.

Barry Cooper is a Senior Fellow with Frontier Centre for Public Policy. In this report, which can be found on the Frontier Centre for Public Policy website, was developed from remarks delivered on November 15, 2019 in Red Deer, Alberta at the 7th Essentials of Freedom Conference hosted by the Economic Education Association.

We have included some excerpts below:

Last night, together with our partners at the Alberta Institute and the Institute for Liberal Studies, we hosted Jason Sorens in Calgary for a completely free talk on "Alberta: Autonomy, Independence, or Separation?"

You can watch video of the event below.

It’s now more than 30 years since Preston Manning became the leader of the nascent Reform Party and began his quest to reform the Canadian confederation.

He and his supporters envisioned a new party that would fight for economic and constitutional reform that would bolster the influence of the western provinces while strengthening national unity.

The Reform Party came to represent the idea that “The West Wants In” at a time when many were questioning whether they actually did.

Manning knew that the centre of political power in Canada has always resided in Ontario and Quebec and that for the West to have any clout, the Canadian Constitution would need to reflect and respect regional interests.

By Ted Morton (Originally published in the Calgary Herald on November 30, 2019, published here with permission of the author)

We are at a pivotal moment in Alberta’s history. Once again, Alberta has no representation, no voice in a newly elected federal Liberal government. We are in in our fifth year of recession and unprecedented unemployment. Premier Jason Kenney has responded by creating the “Fair Deal” panel to consult Albertans on how best to respond to this crisis.

To make informed decisions, it’s time for Albertans to do a policy audit of the past 30 years. Where have we been? Where are we today? The results are not happy.

Alberta is worse off today than it was 30 years ago. Despite the considerable efforts of such exceptional leaders as Peter Lougheed, Preston Manning, Ralph Klein and others, Alberta is more vulnerable to destructive federal policies than we were in the 1980s. Here’s the balance sheet: