Alberta's recent move to expand its "gag law" jolted me with a sharp pang of sorrow.
Now, before getting into my pang problems, I should note "gag law" is what I call legislation which restricts citizens or groups from freely and effectively expressing political opinions.
In my view such laws are an attack on the crucially important democratic right of free speech.
And attacking free speech is exactly what the Alberta NDP government is doing with recently introduced legislation.
Of course, it doesn't call this legislation a "gag law", referring to it instead euphemistically as "Bill 32: An Act to Strengthen and Protect Democracy in Alberta", but for all intents and purposes, what this law actually does is make an already-existing tight gag law, a little bit tighter.
Allow me to explain.
Ever since 2008, Alberta law made it illegal for citizens or groups to spend more than $150,000 province-wide, and more than $3,000 in any one riding, on political advertising during provincial elections.
Yes, that's an assault on free speech, but at least, outside of elections, freedom was still safe.
But that's now changing.
Under Bill 32, the same spending restrictions on citizens and groups in place during elections, will now also be in place three months prior to an election.
So essentially, when it comes to political speech, Alberta is becoming less and less free, and that explains my pang of sorrow.
What especially saddens me is I remember a time when gag laws would never rear their ugly heads in Alberta, because that province's judiciary consistently protected the right of citizens to freely express their opinions.
I know this because I once worked for a group called the National Citizens Coalition which had a history of legally challenging gag laws.
And whenever we needed to battle a gag law in court, we made sure that court was located in Alberta.
For instance, in 1983 we went to the Alberta Court of Queen's bench to challenge Canada's first ever election gag law, a federal law which was imposed by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Trudeau's law made it a crime for citizens or for independent groups to spend any money on ads during federal elections which supported or opposed a political party or candidate.
The NCC argued this law infringed on the right to free speech, which is guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
And the Alberta court agreed with us; in 1984 it issued a ruling which struck down's Trudeau's gag law as unconstitutional.
Then in the early 1990s, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's government implemented its own version of an election gag law, a law similar to Trudeau's.
Once again the NCC went to the Alberta courts, and once again the Alberta courts struck down a gag as unconstitutional.
And if you think these court rulings in any way discouraged politicians from enacting other gag laws, think again.
In fact, in 2000 the Jean Chretien Liberal government passed an election gag law.
As usual, the NCC challenged the law's constitutionality, as usual we fought it in the Alberta courts and as usual the Alberta courts threw the gag law out.
Another victory for freedom.
Mind you, even as we basked in our legal victories, we at the NCC were always worried about what would happen if our battle to defend free speech ever left the pro-freedom confines of Alberta.
Then in 2004, we did find out what would happen — it wasn't good.
In that year, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned all the previous Alberta rulings and declared Chretien's gag to be the law of land.
The moment that terrible decision came down, I knew free election speech in Canada was dead forever.
The way I saw it, if the courts wouldn't defend free speech no one would, certainly not our politicians.
After all, from a politician's point of view, gag laws are an efficient and easy way to silence pesky critics, which is why federal and provincial governments will always have an incentive to keep making them stricter and stricter.
This is what's happening right now in Alberta, where the provincial gag law went from stifling free speech during an election to stifling free speech three months before an election.
Of course, it won't be long until in the name of "Strengthening and Protecting Democracy" a gag law will be passed to stifle free speech in Alberta on a year round basis.
The same thing will almost certainly happen in other provinces as well as federally.
Eventually, gag laws will reign supreme from coast to coast.
And if that doesn't give you a pang of sorrow, then either you don't care about free speech or you need to have your pangs examined.
