(Photo by Eurasia Group via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0 DEED)
Restricting the public and journalists’ access to government communication records. Overriding an independent commission and giving the government control over the process of redrawing electoral maps for the next provincial election. Suspending constitutionally guaranteed rights to force through controversial legislation. At first glance, these moves could be mistaken for U.S. headlines amid democratic backsliding under Donald Trump. However, these headlines are from Canada.
These anti-democratic moves mirror those occurring in the U.S., both at the state and federal levels. For example, various states have gerrymandered electoral maps to entrench partisan advantage, a practice that has intensified in recent years. The Trump administration has reduced government transparency through various means, including firing inspectors general–who perform oversight over the federal government–leaving 75% of the presidentially-appointed positions vacant.
Compared to its southern neighbour, Canada ranks highly in terms of its democracy, scoring a 97 out of 100 on the Democracy House index in the 2026 report. Meanwhile, the U.S. scored an 81 of 100 in the same report, marking a decline of 12 points in the last 20 years and one of the worst declines among democracies in the same time period.
Nationally, American democracy has been deteriorating for decades, a trend that accelerated significantly since Trump took office again in 2025. Checks and balances on the government have been dismantled with brutal efficiency. However, democracy in Canada is not perfect, with attacks on democratic institutions rising over the past few years. These attacks have manifested themselves through various government actions.
Reducing Government Transparency
In April 2026, the Progressive Conservative (PC) government in Ontario changed the province’s freedom of information (FOI) legislation. Specifically, these changes stop journalists and members of the public from accessing government records held by the premier, government ministers, parliamentary assistants, and their staff. While Premier Doug Ford claims that these changes protect the confidentiality of private communication between constituents and the government, some legal experts noted that existing exemptions already protect constituent communications.
What’s more, these changes were hidden inside Ontario’s annual budget, bypassed the regular committee review stages and were passed in a midnight session of the legislature. The PC government, which holds a majority of seats in Ontario’s legislature, voted to approve these changes despite polls showing a majority of Ontarians opposing them.
Critics argue the changes are anti-democratic and could make it harder to scrutinize government decision-making. Changes to FOI impact citizens’ ability to understand government decisions. For example, Indigenous populations who may already have reduced trust in governments. What’s more, these changes are retroactive, meaning that past FOI requests were blocked as soon as this law came into effect. This change rendered moot nearly a dozen legal challenges that could have forced the PC government to release records related to various government scandals and contentious decisions.
For instance, just a week after the legislative changes came into effect, the Ford government blocked the release of communication records surrounding the Greenbelt scandal. In 2022, the Ford government received significant public backlash after removing land from the Greenbelt, an area surrounding Greater Toronto which was legally protected from development. The move was later found to have been influenced by developers who owned the vast majority of the land that was now available for development.
Overriding Independent Processes
Besides policy changes, threats to democracy extend into provincial elections. In Alberta, elected legislators of the ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) are seeking to reshape the province’s redistricting process. Normally, this process–adjusting riding boundaries to adjust for population changes–is done by an independent electoral boundaries commission. However, during this year’s redistricting, the UCP-controlled legislature rejected the commission’s proposed map.
To account for changing population distributions, the rejected map had cut two seats from rural parts of the province and added seats in the province’s two largest cities, Calgary and Edmonton. To compete with this proposal, UCP-aligned members proposed an alternative map that would likely advantage themselves by splitting urban ridings and combining them with surrounding rural areas.
(Photo by Chris Schwarz via Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED)
The new redistricting process to replace the rejected map will be overseen by a majority UCP committee, in a process without any public input. Both of these decisions run contrary to the regular redistricting process. While Alberta’s new electoral map is not yet finalized, experts as well as opposition leaders have decried the UCP’s move to override the independent commission’s proposal as not “[making] democratic sense,” and “[raising] real questions about fairness.”
Notwithstanding Clause: Ignoring Canadian Rights
Concerningly, provincial governments across Canada have, since 2020, used the so-called “notwithstanding clause” more frequently to override obstacles to their legislative agendas. The notwithstanding clause is a section in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows governments at both the federal and provincial levels to suspend certain Charter protections for up to five years at a time, a timeline that is renewable. Enacting the notwithstanding clause can often protect a law that would otherwise violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms from legal challenges.
Numerous provincial governments have invoked the notwithstanding clause in recent years. In 2019, Quebec pushed through a controversial law banning public servants from wearing religious symbols in the workplace. Ontario, in 2022, used the notwithstanding clause to block an educator strike. In 2023, Saskatchewan invoked the notwithstanding clause to strike down a court decision and uphold a provincial law that required parental consent for students under 16 years old to change their pronouns.
Alberta has used the notwithstanding clause most aggressively recently, invoking it four times in under two months in late 2025. Three of these uses were to maintain anti-trans laws, while the fourth use was to break up a teacher strike.
One common denominator connects all of these uses of the notwithstanding clause: the provincial government used it to protect legislation from being challenged on constitutional grounds. This justification implies that the pieces of legislation in question have a significant risk of violating the rights of Canadians.
For its part, the federal government has spoken out against using the notwithstanding clause to permanently retain unconstitutional laws, efforts that have been strongly opposed by some provincial governments. However, these efforts have been fruitless in stopping the erosion of democracy in these provinces.
What Does This Mean?
Provincial governments have become more willing to attack democratic processes, a trend that should worry all Canadians. These changes threaten the rights of Canadians to know what their government is doing, dilute their votes, and make it easier for governments to weaken rights protections for vulnerable groups, including transgender youths. Within the backdrop of increased democratic backsliding in the U.S., Canadians should be more vigilant regarding attacks on democratic institutions.
Secondly, Canadians should take action against governments that attack democratic processes. Experts have noted that provincial governments were more reluctant to use the notwithstanding clause in the past as they feared backlash from voters. However, this reluctance has been broken.
Notably, all provincial governments that have used the notwithstanding clause have been re-elected (Quebec in 2022, Saskatchewan in 2024, and Ontario in 2025). Polling numbers for the ruling UCP in Alberta have improved since the last election, despite ongoing attacks on democracy. Governments have not seen consequences for their attacks on democracy. This lack of reaction from the public may encourage these provincial governments to continue their authoritarian actions.
Voters may want to consider these issues at the ballot box if these governments weaken provincial democratic institutions. Public scrutiny and civic engagement can shape whether governments pay a price for these moves. In Alberta, legislators who voted in favour of using the notwithstanding clause to force legislation on transgender students and blocking teacher strikes are facing citizen-led recall petitions. The Ford government in Ontario also faced province-wide protests over changes to FOI legislation, among other issues.
Democracy in the U.S., Canada’s southern neighbour, has declined significantly recently. We must not replicate that in the north.
Edited by Atena Abbaspourbenis
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