On May 14, Scott Sinclair, MLA for Lesser Slave Lake, spoke in the Alberta Legislature during the question period. He is an independent, having been removed from the UCP caucus this March for speaking out against the budget.
“This premier has done me a great service by removing me from a UCP I no longer recognize,” he said.
Sinclair then spoke against the idea of Alberta separating from Canada.
“I respect democracy and that Americans voted for Donald Trump,” he said, “but the second he mentioned Canada as the 51st state he crossed a line for me. Albertans have been waiting too long for a conservative in this province to say it so I will. I’m conservative, but I love being Canadian. I’m conservative but I respect treaty rights. I’m conservative, but I’ll never join the United States.”
Sinclair called for Alberta to deal with its own problems instead of blaming the federal government for everything.
“A lot of the issues that are hurting our province are self-inflicted and separate from Ottawa’s failures …,” added Sinclair. “We can be angry at the federal government, but still love this country. We need to reestablish a political climate where we can disagree with someone and not hate them.”
That same day, Alberta Justice Minister Mickey Amery issued a statement (it is reprinted in entirety in the Letters to the Editor section) in response to concerns from Indigenous leaders in Alberta to Bill 54.
It starts, “Alberta’s government introduced the [Bill 54] Election Statutes Amendment Act, 2025, to protect democracy, deliver fair and open elections, and restore confidence in every vote cast.”
Later in the statement Minister Amery says, “in response to feedback from First Nations and Indigenous partners and to reassert our commitment to protecting treaty rights, the bill now includes a clause stating that nothing in a referendum under the act is to deviate from existing treaty rights. Alberta’s government will always recognize, protect, and honour treaty rights as recognized by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.”
Since Bill 54 was introduced, First Nations leaders in the Lesser Slave Lake have spoken against it. It lowers the threshold for a citizen-led referendum among other changes.
The Leader reported on several Lesser Slave Lake region chiefs last week. This week’s paper includes another Letter to the Editor from the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council (LSLIRC), which represents four First Nations on the shores of Lesser Slave Lake.
The LSLIRC letter was dated May.
It starts with, “We, the chiefs for the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council (LSLIRC), represent LSLIRC’s member First Nations which include Driftpile Cree Nation, Sawridge First Nation, Sucker Creek First Nation, and Swan River First Nation. We are the original signatories to Treaty 8 – the treaty that is home to much of what you have described in your May 5, 2025 address as the ‘endowment of natural resources that no other country on Earth possesses’ – and we reject the provincial Crown’s imposed Bill 54 for two reasons.
“First, lowering the threshold for a citizen-initiated referendum might show to be a repeated waste of time and money as it may permit the imposition of arbitrary referendums. Second, the Bill 54 process concerning First Nations (or lack thereof) shows that, in some important ways, things are perhaps not so different from the days of residential schools and Indian agents: while we are told we are heading in a better direction, duplicitous efforts continue to attempt ripping our foundations from underneath us.”
Pearl Lorentzen,
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Lakeside Leader
