Article XII · Revision 1 · 2026-05-20 rights

Property and Economic Liberty

Full Text

Summary

Background

Revisions

Discussion

Right to Acquire, Own, and Use Property

Because the Canadian Charter does not protect property, this section would constitutionally entrench every person's right to acquire, own, use, develop, and transfer property. It also guarantees fair compensation before anyone can be deprived of property, a protection that would sit above ordinary legislation.

Protection Against Arbitrary Regulation or Seizure

This section bans arbitrary, punitive, or confiscatory government regulations on property, and extends the right to compensation to situations where a regulation (not just a direct seizure) substantially strips away an owner's practical use or value of their property. That goes further than current Canadian common law, which generally requires compensation only for direct expropriation.

Economic Liberty and the Right to Earn a Living

No constitutional right to earn a living currently exists in Canada; this section would create one for Alberta, and would limit government licensing or permitting requirements to situations where they are genuinely needed to protect public health, safety, or integrity.

Protection of Contract and Commerce

This section protects the right to form and enforce private contracts, and prevents any government act (legislative, executive, or judicial) from weakening a lawfully made contract unless there is a compelling public purpose and the action is fair and proportionate. This is a stronger guarantee than current provincial contract law provides.

Rural, Agricultural, and Resource Rights

Farmers, ranchers, and resource developers would have a constitutional right to access, steward, and benefit from land and resources they lawfully hold. The Legislature could not disproportionately burden rural livelihoods or traditional land uses without broad public consultation and a clear public justification.

Constitutional right to acquire, own, and use property within the province
Compensation requirement for expropriation and regulatory takings
Right to engage in lawful work, trade, and enterprise
Protection of contract against retroactive impairment
Recognition of rural, agricultural, and resource interests

Why this article is proposed

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not protect property. Property and civil rights in the province are exclusively provincial under Constitution Act, 1867 s.92(13). The article would entrench property rights, economic liberty, contract protection, and rural and resource interests in a provincial constitution, where they would be harder to roll back by ordinary legislation.

What it would change

Section 1 entrenches a right to acquire, own, use, develop, and transfer property, with compensation required for any deprivation. Section 2 broadens the regulatory-takings doctrine beyond current Canadian common law. Section 3 creates a right to engage in lawful work, with licensing restricted to public-health, public-safety, and integrity grounds. Section 4 protects contracts against legislative, executive, and judicial impairment, subject to a compelling-public-purpose standard. Section 5 entrenches rural, agricultural, and resource interests against disproportionate burden.

The legal basis

Property and civil rights in the province are squarely within Alberta's jurisdiction. Constitution Act, 1982 s.45 lets Alberta entrench these protections. Several federal heads of power overlap: trade and commerce (s.91(2)), banking (s.91(15)), bills of exchange (s.91(18)), bankruptcy (s.91(21)), and criminal law (s.91(27), including theft and fraud). The provincial constitution cannot displace federal jurisdiction over those subjects. The interprovincial trade rule in s.121 also continues to apply.

Open questions

Three questions for Albertans: whether to entrench the broader regulatory-takings standard in Section 2, knowing that it will generate litigation about what counts as a substantial deprivation; whether to entrench economic liberty as a stand-alone right, given how widely it could be invoked against routine occupational regulation; and how to phrase the rural and resource protections in Section 5 so that they respect Indigenous rights under Constitution Act, 1982 s.35 and environmental obligations under federal law.

Question 9 on the October 2026 referendum ballot asks whether provincial laws should have priority over federal laws in areas of provincial or shared jurisdiction. That question is about paramountcy and is addressed in Article IV s6.

Revision 1 2026-05-20

major

Initial draft of Article XII from the v2 draft constitution, with per-section classification, current-law context, and editorial notes.

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