By coincidence, we're releasing this final episode about the way section 33 has been deployed in Western Canada just a few days after Alberta tabled and passed Bill 2, which uses the notwithstanding clause to force striking teachers back to work. This is the first Alberta invocation in 25 years, but it's far from the first time that Western provinces have dabbled with section 33.

In this episode, we tell two stories. The first is about Ralph Klein's government, which engaged with the notwithstanding clause several times in the late 90s and early 00s. To tell this story, we talked to Doug Stollery, co-counsel in the landmark case of Vriend v Alberta, which culminated in a Supreme Court judgment declaring Alberta's failure to legislate against sexuality-based discrimination unconstitutional. This was followed by a week in which the Klein government openly mused about the use of the notwithstanding clause.

The second story that we then tell is more recent. In 2023, the Saskatchewan government, led by Scott Moe, used section 33 to pass the parents' bill of rights, which includes a requirement of parental consent before schools change the preferred names or pronouns of under-16 students. To understand the potential impacts of this law and the controversy surrounding it, we talked to Jack Saddleback, a Saskatchewan-based public speaker and activist, who told us about some of the potential impacts of the law on trans youth and the wider trans community in Saskatchewan.