PHOTOS: Federal Conservative leadership candidate and Bradsplainer Brad Trost shows he’s hip to the jive with this newfangled technology stuff. (Photo from BradTrost.ca.) Below: Brad Wall, another well-known Bradsplainer, Bradsplaining, and blogger word-coiner Dave Cournoyer, kitted out to observe one of Rebel Media’s rallies.

Uh-oh! We’re about to be “Bradsplained”!

Bradsplaining, a useful coinage by my colleague and fellow blogger Dave Cournoyer, happens “when a Saskatchewan politician named Brad tries to tell Albertans what’s good for them.”

Usually the Bradsplainer is Brad Wall, the climate-change-denying premier of the province next door, the one with the 5 per cent sales tax plus a current deficit that according to the Royal Bank of Canada’s federal and provincial fiscal tables is exactly the same size as Alberta’s as a percentage of GDP. Just sayin’.

Lately, though, it’s been Brad Trost, the social conservative Saskatchewan MP who spends a lot of time fretting about trans-gender washrooms and other provinces’ sex-education curricula.

Nowadays, Mr. Trost is also a candidate to replace Stephen Harper as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, so his opinions get a lot more attention from both mainstream media and denizens of the blogosphere than they deserve. Lately, as a result, he’s been able to Bradsplain about how it’s entirely proper for a mobs of far-right Albertans to chant “lock her up” at the mention of Premier Rachel Notley’s name.

Mr. Trost took particular issue with his leader in the House of Commons, Alberta MP Rona Ambrose, for telling media she thought the chanting amounted to “people acting like idiots.”

“@RonaAmbrose should apologize for being out o touch & calling those grass roots Albertans ‘idiots,’” he Bradsplained in a Tweet.

Now Mr. Trost is going to come to Alberta to Bradsplain to us some more at one of “journalist” Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media rallies, this one scheduled to take place on 2 p.m. Sunday in Calgary.

Given the repudiation by mainstream conservative politicians of what the mob did at last Saturday’s Rebel Media hoedown in front of the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton, it’s apparently harder now for Mr. Levant to line up guests for these events. Leastways, Rebel Media’s announcement of the rally in an expensive downtown Calgary hotel ballroom so far includes only two political guests: Mr. Trost and Wildrose finance critic Derek Fildebrandt, doubtless there in defiance of his leader’s wishes.

Well, perhaps as Brian Jean did at the Legislature on Saturday, Mr. Fildebrandt will leave the venue before the crowd breaks into demi-fascist chanting. If so, Mr. Trost will be there to egg them on and contribute more Bradsplaining about what’s good for Albertans.

If Mr. Trost continues his mission to the Albertans, or if any more Brads from Saskatchewan join the chorus, this will require an additional new coinage: Bradspreading.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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7 Comments

  1. From The Rebel online announcement about the December 11 Calgary rally, would be attendees are told, “We have a no profanity rule for speeches and placards and the emcee will open with comments about chants.”

    Will Mr. Levant outlaw placards equating a carbon tax with sodomy? They were prominent at his Edmonton rally. Is he against free speech? Sounds as though he wants to take all the fun out of his Sunday get together.

  2. The trouble with Bradspreading is that once they spread’em there is nothing there. That’s why they just looove those guns.

    Besides, when poor ole Brad Wall was forced to spread’em by the Provincial Auditor, what showed up was some angry Nuns whose land became part of his Global Transportation Hub project at Regina. Why you can hardly cross the road for all the grain ships snarling traffic and Wall and company Bradsplaining why the Nuns should be happy that their land was flipped by insiders for a healthy profit.

    As the following commentator said, more or less: “the provincial auditor pulled down (Brad’s) pants and reveal(ed) his naughty bits — (which is) what seemed to happen in Monday’s public accounts meeting.”

    http://leaderpost.com/opinion/columnists/walls-gth-performance-an-embarrassment

  3. It is probably not a good sign for the Levanthan that most Alberta Conservatives leaders don’t want to come to his rallies any more.

    Fortunately for him there are conservative politicians from Saskatchewan who are braver, more foolhardy or perhaps some combination of both, so his show can still go on. It might not be ideal to have speakers from Saskatchewan lead a protest against the Alberta government, but it seems desperate times lead to desperate measures.

    If his latest incarnation as a protest organizer fails, Mr. Levant might recall he seemed more successful when he was pretending to be a journalist, perhaps he could always go back to doing that.

  4. The much bigger question in the background, with apologies to Thomas Frank, is “what’s the matter with Saskatchewan?”.

    For decades that province acted as the de facto moral centre of Canadian public life. Now, it’s just the grumpy old man of Confederation, yelling at the neighbourhood kids to get off his lawn.

    Observing from a distance, and with few personal connections to SK, this has been puzzling and sad to watch. But, it’s important to understand why good provinces go bad, for the sake of all of the country. So I hope that an astute analyst / historian / social pathologist will take up this challenge!

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