EDMONTON — Premier Danielle Smith’s government has passed a bill using the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to order 51,000 striking teachers back to work to end the largest walkout in Alberta history.

Members of Smith’s caucus, using their majority in the legislature and passing procedural rules to curtail debate, voted and passed the bill through three debate stages in six and a half hours late last night and into the early hours this morning.

Smith herself was not in the house for the introduction or the passage of the bill, having left earlier in the evening on a trade mission to Saudi Arabia and other destinations in the Middle East.

The Opposition NDP voted against the bill at all three stages, calling the use of the notwithstanding clause an authoritarian abuse of power from a go

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