A courtroom packed with lawyers, constitutional experts, and at least one guy wearing a “Sovereignty or Bust” belt buckle convened Wednesday to determine whether Alberta can legally dare the rest of Canada to stop it from becoming its own country.
At issue is a proposed referendum that would ask Albertans whether the province should “become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada,” wording critics say is both unconstitutional and “wildly optimistic about winter.”
Lawyers representing the Alberta Prosperity Project, the chief electoral officer, and five First Nations groups traded barbs as two amicus curiae circled like academic vultures, preparing arguments to prove the whole thing is impossible. Their second task: to independently decide just how impossible.
Observers say the judge’s eventual ruling could reshape Alberta’s future, or at least confirm that drafting break-up papers requires more than a Facebook group and a dream.
