Unions threaten general strike, vow to “topple” Smith government over Bill 2

Alberta’s top labour leaders are threatening Smith’s government with a province-wide general strike, recall campaigns, and national mobilization following the passage of the Back to School Act.

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Alberta’s top labour leaders are threatening Premier Danielle Smith’s government with a province-wide general strike, recall campaigns, and national mobilization following the passage of the Back to School Act, which ended the teachers’ strike and invoked the notwithstanding clause to prevent further legal challenges.

Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan told reporters Wednesday that Smith had “awakened a sleeping giant.”

“Danielle Smith has awakened a sleeping giant when she took the unprecedented step of using the notwithstanding clause,” said McGowan. “She has galvanized unions in this province and across the country like never before.”

He said the AFL and its affiliates now share “a common purpose.”

“That purpose is to topple this government,” McGowan said. “If they won’t shrink the size of our classrooms, we will shrink the size of their caucus.”

McGowan announced the launch of a province-wide campaign called Ready to Resist, claiming nearly 30,000 people had already signed up by text. The initiative will survey members to gauge support for a general strike, which McGowan didn’t launch on Wednesday, but said that it would occur if necessary.

“We’re beginning the process of organizing toward a potential general strike,” he said. “Every union, every worker, should be entirely concerned about what has just happened.”

He accused Smith’s government of advancing a “MAGA-style agenda” and said the province’s unions would “throw sand in the gears of this government.”

McGowan also announced plans to “mobilize” around recall campaigns against UCP MLAs and new citizen-initiative petitions targeting independent-school funding.

“We’re going to use the tools that she created against her,” he said, referencing Alberta’s citizen-initiative and recall legislation.

According to Elections Alberta, inducements for recall campaigns are not permitted.

True North previously highlighted critics’ warnings that the petition to strip funding from accredited independent schools would dismantle Alberta’s long-standing school choice model, forcing 55,000 students out of specialized programs and back into overcrowded public classrooms.

McGowan lied about Alberta’s school funding model. He claimed the provincial government was “starving public schools while shovelling public money at private schools.”

That’s not how it works. The province’s system, in place in some form since the 1970s, allows up to 70 per cent of per-student operational funding to follow children to independent schools. Therefore, if students attending independent schools were forced back to public schools, it would cost taxpayers an additional approximate $300 million.

Any discrepancy between public school and independent school funding is due to differences in enrolment growth.

Canadian Labour Congress President Bea Bruske, speaking alongside McGowan, said the labour union held an emergency meeting of national labour leaders who unanimously agreed to coordinate a national response to Alberta’s legislation.

“This is a provocation that will not go unanswered,” said Bruske. “We will fight this assault on working people and democracy itself in the courts, in the streets, on the airwaves, and in every single workplace.”

She accused Smith of “taking a sledgehammer to the Charter rights of Albertan workers” and criticized her for leaving on an international trip as the bill was introduced.

Smith’s government invoked the notwithstanding clause, Section 33, while implementing its back-to-work legislation to force teachers back to school on Wednesday after 740,000 students were away from class for almost a month.

Former premier Jason Kenney previously defended Section 33 as an essential part of Canada’s constitutional compromise, telling True North in September that any attempt to restrict it would be “strange and dangerous.”

“The provinces only signed on to the repatriation of the Constitution, including the Charter of Rights, back in 1982 because they included the Section 33 notwithstanding clause,” Kenney said. “Carney has no democratic mandate to pursue it, and I think it’s going to be very divisive in the federation.”

The AFL’s Common Front coalition represents more than 350,000 workers, including 24 affiliated unions. McGowan said the group is united behind a new “Worker Agenda” to be unveiled next week, focusing on wages, affordability, and public services.

Not all of the unions will be holding taxpayers hostage, as some of them are not publicly funded.

He vowed that every union in the coalition would now work towards toppling the government.

“Every one of the Common Front unions will begin the process of talking to their members about our new priority, which is to protect our rights and our democracy by toppling this government,” he said.

McGowan said his unions won’t behave like the Freedom Convoy, which he called “MAGA-inspired” and “MAGA-funded.”

He also called Smith a bully and said she “is the one who should be afraid.”

McGowan also alleged that Smith was buying off her own caucus.

While Alberta’s unions say they are defending workers’ rights, the UCP has framed Bill 2 as a necessary step to protect students, parents, and taxpayers after close to a month of disrupted classes.