Why this article is proposed
Religious freedom is already strongly protected in Canadian and Alberta law: the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms s.2(a), the Alberta Human Rights Act, and a body of case law from the Supreme Court of Canada. The article would entrench these protections in a provincial constitution and add explicit protection for institutional autonomy and conscience.
What it would change
Section 1 restates the Charter freedom of conscience and religion in Alberta-specific language. Section 2 protects religious gatherings and symbols, subject to reasonable limits. Section 3 entrenches anti-discrimination protections on religious or conscience grounds with a direct-harm threshold for compelled conduct. Section 4 entrenches the institutional autonomy of faith-based organizations. Section 5 protects parental and medical conscience, with a court-order exception for imminent and serious harm.
The legal basis
Most of the article is within Alberta's jurisdiction through Constitution Act, 1867 s.92(13) (property and civil rights), s.92(7) (provincial hospitals and charitable institutions), s.93 (education), and s.92(16) (matters of a merely local or private nature). Constitution Act, 1982 s.45 lets Alberta entrench these protections. The article does not displace the Canadian Charter, which continues to apply, nor federal jurisdiction over criminal law.
Open questions
Two questions for Albertans: whether to entrench religious institutional autonomy more strongly than the courts have already done, given that internal governance is largely insulated from court review under Wall; and how to balance Section 5's medical-conscience protection with existing professional-conduct rules for health-care providers and with the existing duty-to-refer framework for ethically contested services.