EDMONTON—After campaigning on a promise not to reopen the abortion debate in Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney said he hadn’t read a controversial conscience rights bill that’s been tabled before his United Conservative government.

Introduced last week by a private member of the legislature, and known as Bill 207, it deals in conscience rights protections for health care workers — something critics have said is a backdoor way for social conservatives to partly restrict access to things like abortion services, health care for LGBTQ folks, and medically assisted dying.

“The answer is, I haven’t read the bill yet,” Kenney told reporters on Friday.

“I guess it deals with freedom of conscience, which is the first fundamental freedom integrated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and freedoms, it’s also integrated in the universal Declaration of Human Rights and virtually in every human rights instrument around the world.”

The UCP MLA for Peace River, Dan Williams, introduced it last week and brought on a wave of criticism around how it restricts access from legal experts, pro-choice activists, and the NDP. But on Friday, he maintained while speaking to reporters that it “in no way categorically limits access to any services.”

Private member’s bills are pieces of proposed legislation that aren’t tabled before the assembly through a government minister. These bills don’t always have the full backing of the government, although some governments have been criticized in the past for using them to pass controversial legislation.

Kenney said he’ll read the bill “in due course,” but highlighted his government’s commitment to allowing free votes on matters of “moral conscience” and private member’s bills. This means MLAs won’t be whipped into voting a certain way on a bill and can, ostensibly, vote how they want.

Asked about his election campaign promise not to reopen the debate on abortion, Kenney responded that he had no plans to do so.

“Our government will not bring forward legislation on that or other contentious legislation,” he said.

Kenney was speaking to media at the Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) convention in Edmonton, where he addressed the controversial conscience rights bill for the first time since its tabling on Nov. 7.

Legal experts who reviewed the bill have said that Bill 207, if passed, would stop patients from being able to complain to their doctors’ or nurses’ regulatory bodies if they are refused care.

Experts also said the bill goes beyond affirming existing rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and would lead to limited access to services for patients seeking abortion, assisted dying, or hormone therapy for LGBTQ people, among other procedures.

However, Williams, who briefly spoke to reporters at the RMA convention on Friday, said he felt there was “some misinformation about what the bill is trying to do and what it does do” and that it doesn’t restrict access to services.

“That is not what the bill does,” he said.

“What this bill does do in its intent is to make sure that we have that Alberta based solution, we have a thoughtful answer, about how to resolve these sorts of questions.”

Williams said the bill was in response to an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling, which found that physicians who object to providing services based on moral concerns must offer their patients an “effective referral” to someone who can.

He said he wanted an “Alberta based solution” to avoid what he sees as a bad situation in Ontario where “we have doctors pitted against their patients.”

When asked about his bill asking regulatory bodies to dismiss complaints from patients who have been affected by a refusal of a health care service from their doctor or nurse, Williams balked.

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“By no way does it restrict people from being able to complain,” he said.

The bill states regulatory bodies “must dismiss” complaints they receive, and provide a notice of dismissal to the complainant.

Margot Young, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, has said she believes Bill 207 is specifically designed to bring abortion legislation through a back door.

“One would be politically naive to think that it isn’t,” she said in a previous interview.

The bill defines referrals to doctors who can perform these types of procedures as a “health care service,” which law experts say means doctors and nurses may not be required to refer their patients to another doctor or to other information in a meaningful way if the bill passes.

The requirement that currently exists under the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta’s Standards of Practice states a physician has to refer someone to another person able to perform a service — or — they have to provide resources for information about available options.

The bill also extends to institutions, meaning publicly-funded Catholic hospitals in Alberta (there are more than 20) would be allowed to deny health care service to patients as a whole without any repercussions.

“It’s already enormously difficult for a patient who is presumably near death to somehow be transported somewhere else,” said Richard Moon, a law professor at the University of Windsor. “It’s obviously going to be more difficult if a hospital has no deeper obligation to assist them in any way.”

All 36 UCP MLAs present for the first reading of the bill voted in favour and all 15 NDP members voted against. It’s since been sent to the Standing Committee on Private Bills for further review.

Kenney was not present during the vote on the bill’s first reading, and its tabling comes after he said in February that a United Conservative caucus will not be legislating on abortion if elected, despite the fact that he himself is anti-abortion.

In February, Kenney said his candidates remain focused on “jobs and the economy and growth in Alberta,” rather than policy changes surrounding abortion. Kenney added “so-called” social conservatives within the party are not talking about policy changes, but rather want a hands-off government “when it comes to certain constitutionally protected freedoms of conscience and religion.”

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