With Sovereignty Act, Danielle Smith serves as judge, jury and power company executive

There. Boom. After repeatedly warning she would, the premier has wielded the Sovereignty Act, designed to keep Ottawa from encroaching on the province's right to produce its oil and gas resources, or in the case of the electricity sector, burning them to keep the lights on.

The Alberta premier who demands Ottawa stay in its legislative lane is playing the role of a court justice.

It's typically a judge's role to reach an opinion about whether a federal measure is or isn't unconstitutional — and sure, a politician is free to rhetorically insist that is so before any court rules.

But Premier Danielle Smith is now having the Alberta MLAs declare that the provincial legislature is of the opinion that Ottawa's green power rules are unconstitutional.

It's uncharted territory, of course, but that was always the first provocative thing Smith's Sovereignty Act would do, if ever actually invoked.

As for what that actually means on the ground, how Alberta would create some sort of jurisdictional force-field to defy a meddlesome Ottawa? That's the other part of what a Sovereignty Act invocation is supposed to do.

So let's inspect the pointy end of the UCP government's stick.

Smith's proposed action plan against this alleged unconstitutionality is basically twofold.

First, Alberta would decree that the government or any provincial agency would, "to the extent legally permissible, refrain from recognizing the constitutional validity of the federal initiative," or from helping implement or enforce it in any way possible.

The qualifier about limiting action (or inaction) to what is "legally permissible" suggests there would be no brazen refusal by any provincial official to refuse to carry out their legal duties or roles, but do what they'd be legally allowed to do even if the Sovereignty Act wasn't wielded.

It's worth keeping in mind the nature of Ottawa's draft electricity emissions regs, which aim to decarbonize all provincial grids in 2035. They're still in draft form, likely to be finalized sometime next year, so there's nothing for provincial officials to implement now or any time soon; and there would also be nothing to enforce until that 2035 date when Clean Electricity Regulations are supposed to take effect.

But a provincial order to regard the regulations as invalid could mean provincial agencies are barred from preparing for the major changes Ottawa's limits on natural gas power generation would bring, energy economist Andrew Leach notes. Somebody would need to do that planning work to help Alberta companies figure out how to comply with federal policy, because no Sovereignty Act or any other provincial declaration will shield the power producers from that responsibility.

This leads to the other measure Smith unfurled as part of Monday's expression of impatience with Ottawa's power strategy, one that would surprise Albertans who thought they elected as premier an avowed libertarian, or who knew she had a Sumerian symbol for "liberty" tattooed on her arm.

Smith announced her UCP government will consider creating a new provincial agency that would be  in the business of building new natural gas plants or buying existing ones from private companies, in the name of keeping Alberta electricity abundant and affordable. She'd create a Crown corporation to bolster the juice that privately owned (or in Calgary-based Enmax's case, city-owned) plants generate.