On Nov. 18, Alberta invoked the notwithstanding clause for the second time in under a month — a retaliatory move in the face of pushback from the judiciary that threatens the rights of trans youth and young women across the province.
Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) tabled Bill 9, the Protecting Alberta’s Children Statutes Amendment Act. This legislation invokes the notwithstanding clause to shield three earlier pieces of legislation from further legal challenges.
In practice, Bill 9 bans gender affirming care for youth, requires parental consent for students under 16 to use preferred names or pronouns at school and restricts women’s amateur youth sports to athletes whose sex was recorded female at birth.
This is the second time during the 2025 fall sitting of the Alberta legislature that the UCP government has invoked the notwithstanding clause. Alberta previously invoked the clause on Oct. 27 to end a three-week teachers’ strike, forcing educators back to work and imposing a settlement. The speed and frequency of this government’s reliance on the clause marks a significant shift in how Alberta’s elected officials wield constitutional power.
Bill 9 ratifies the controversial Bill 26 (the Health Statutes Amendment Act), 27 (the Education Amendment Act) and 29 (the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act), each of which received royal assent in 2024, protecting them from legal challenges.
Bill 26 aimed to preserve choice for minors identifying as transgender while refocusing healthcare. In reality, it prohibits gender affirming top surgeries for minors and bans puberty blockers and hormone therapy for youth with gender dysphoria — a first in Canada. No province nor the federal government in Canada has ever legislated a full prohibition of gender affirming care and an override of medical judgement in this way.
Eagle Canada — one of the country’s leading organizations focused on 2SLGBTQI+ rights — argues that the Bill violates sections 7, 12 and 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Respectively, these sections refer to the rights to life, liberty and security of person; freedom from cruel and unusual punishment; as well as equal protection without discrimination based on gender identity. Eagle Canada has maintained that decisions surrounding gender care belong between families and medical professionals, not governments.
Alongside Skipping Stone — an Alberta-based charity focused on connecting trans and gender-diverse youth, adults and families with comprehensive, low-barrier support —Eagle Canada and five gender diverse youth challenged Bill 26. On June 27, the bill was granted an injunction on the basis of evidence. That injunction is now rendered meaningless under Bill 9.
Bill 27 — the Education Amendment Act — sees significant changes made to education on sexual health and identity in Alberta. For trans youth, Bill 27 imposes sweeping restrictions on name and pronoun use in schools.
Students under the age of 16 will require parental assent to use a different name or pronoun. For those aged 16 to 18, parental notification is mandatory. This effectively forces teachers to out students to their parents, regardless of home safety, community support or individual readiness.
Eagle Canada and Skipping Stone jointly filed legal action against Bill 27 on Sept. 2, however, under Bill 9, the case will be null and void.
Bill 29 — the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act — requires parents of girls aged 12 and older to submit a government form disclosing the sex recorded at the time of their child’s birth. The act operates on a complaint-based system: if someone questions an athlete’s eligibility, the athlete must present a birth registration document confirming their gender assigned at birth.
Teams who fail to comply can be barred from games, tournaments and practices. The policy singularly targets girls’ sports. Eagle Canada called it a “grotesque violation of their privacy and dignity” and one that exposes both girls and young women to invasive scrutiny of their bodies. As of Bill 9’s tabling, no legal challenge has yet been launched against Bill 29.
Considering Bill 26 was already struck down earlier this summer, Bill 27 faces active legal opposition while Bill 29 has sparked significant public backlash. The decision to invoke the notwithstanding clause appears strategic — a strike that is both retaliatory and pre-emptive on the courts.
The notwithstanding clause allows both provincial and federal governments to override sections of the charter to shield a law from judicial overreach. The clause was engineered with the goal of leaving power with elected officials accountable to voters. At the time of drafting the charter, former Alberta Premier Peter Longheed insisted that the constitution would not have passed without it.
The UCP government’s recent trend of utilizing the notwithstanding clause raises questions about the clause’s original intended use. The clause was never intended to be a casual political tool nor a default response to losing in court. For Bill 9, the use of the clause shields the legislation from constitutional scrutiny for up to five years — long enough to outlast an election cycle, placing responsibility on voters to judge the government’s actions.
By invoking the notwithstanding clause, the government eliminates all court-based challenges to Bill 26, 27 and 29. Premier Danielle Smith justified the move as a way to avoid “years and years” of court delays, claiming that the stakes for children “could not be higher.”
But the “stakes” remain undefined. If the concern is preventing harm to children, the evidence simply doesn’t support it. The injunction against Bill 26 indicates that the courts found the risks of denying gender affirming care to youth greater than any of the unsubstantiated risks, such as infertility and high regret rates.
The consequences of Bill 27 are similarly profound. In 2022, Alberta Health Services reported that 2SLGBTQI+ youth faced disproportionately higher rates of poor mental health and suicide risk — 14 times higher than their peers. Moreover, 77 per cent of transgender respondents had considered suicide and 45 per cent had attempted it. These numbers predate Bills 27 and 9. Outing students to parents or forcing them to hide their identity will only intensify the mental health risks already proven to exist.
Schools frequently serve as a safe affirming place where youth can explore identity and find trusted adults. Bill 27, reinforced by Bill 9, dismantles that trust. The Bill mandates parental involvement, even when it may be unsafe, placing vulnerable youth in direct harm.
Debates around trans participation in girls’ sports have circulated widely but rest heavily on misinformation driven by anti-2SLGBTQI+ groups and far-right narratives. The Human Rights Commission noted that “trans youth participation in sports has been a non-issue, many states, athletic organizations, and governing bodies successfully, balance fairness, inclusion, and access to play without any problem.” The province has presented no evidence demonstrating an actual problem in Alberta, nor have they advised that Albertans broadly demanded this legislation.
Bill 9 not only blocks access to life saving, gender affirming healthcare but also complicates youths’ ability to use preferred names and pronouns in schools while stigmatizing trans youth in sports. The rushed and repeated use of the notwithstanding clause and the lack of evidence behind these policies raises questions about whether the goal is truly child protection, or if the government is leveraging vulnerable groups for political gain.
Ultimately, the Protecting Alberta’s Children Statutes Amendment Act will harm far more youth than it seeks to protect. It entrenches discrimination within the Alberta legislature, elevates fringe voices hostile to 2SLGBTQI+ rights and sets a dangerous precedent for provincial governments: with unchecked power, they might be willing to override constitutional rights and put the lives of children at risk to pursue ideological goals and re-election.
**A full list of 2SLGBTQI+ resources available to Brock students can be found here.**