Why did Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides choose or approve a nano-clip of prime minister Pierre Trudeau saying “just watch me” to illustrate a cringeworthy social media video justifying Premier Danielle Smith’s unconstitutional Sovereignty Act?
As an educated person, Dr. Nicolaides should know what the elder Mr. Trudeau was talking about when he uttered those famous words in the midst of the October Crisis of 1970.
Despite the obvious intention of Dr. Nicolaides’ video Monday to deceive its viewers, Mr. Trudeau’s blunt remark, delivered with tightly controlled fury, had absolutely nothing to do with Alberta, natural resources, or disputes with Ottawa about constitutional jurisdiction.
It was on October 13, 1970, members of the Front de libération du Québec had kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner in Montreal and the labour minister in Quebec when Mr. Trudeau was confronted on Parliament Hill by CBC reporter Tim Ralfe with questions for the PM about “people with guns” guarding Canadian streets.
When Mr. Ralfe suggested the PM had better choices about how to respond to the crisis in Quebec, Mr. Trudeau famously shot back:
“Yeah, well there’s a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don’t like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed, but it’s more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don’t like the looks of a soldier’s helmet.”
Mr. Ralfe responded: “At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?”
Mr. Trudeau: “Well, just watch me.”
Three days later, he invoked the War Measures Act.
I can tell you that most Canadians admired Mr. Trudeau intensely at that moment, even if they were among the few who didn’t think he was on the right track. History suggests he was.
Regardless, surely Dr. Nicolaides (PhD, Political Science, University of Cyprus, 2013) knows this was a crude deception. If he didn’t, well, that makes one wonder what a PhD from the University of Cyprus is worth, anyway.
This part was bad enough I had to watch the rest of the video, an interminable seven minutes and 38 seconds of Dr. Nicolaides wandering through the premiers’ picture gallery on the Legislature Building’s third floor, flicking his fingers nervously at portraits of some of the premiers, and delivering a tendentious potted ahistorical lecture about “those who began the fight against the federal government over a century ago.” (Eyeroll.)
With presumably unintentional hilarity, the minister tries to paint Alberta’s first premier, Alexander Rutherford, as some kind of conservative revolutionary in the manner of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Mr. Rutherford was a lawyer, advocate for creation of a University of Alberta (he would be appalled at what Dr. Nicolaides has done to that fine institution), strong supporter of public education, and founder of a public telephone company. He was also an avowed Liberal, but never mind that – Dr. Nicolaides certainly did.
The United Conservative Party minister strolls on past a few more premiers’ portraits, complaining along the way that British Columbia entered Confederation with its rights to resource ownership but the Prairie provinces did not – omitting to mention that this was because when they were made provinces in 1905 they had just been carved out of the Northwest Territories and did not, like B.C., already have their own colonial government.
He pauses in front of the portrait of John Brownlee, fifth premier of Alberta, on whose watch the Canadian government handed the ownership of resources, peaceably enough and better late than never, to the three Prairie provinces in 1930. The minister described that premier as a hero, as if he’d just won a war with Ontario.
He did not mention that the United Farmers of Alberta premier was driven from office in a sex scandal, but in fairness, he only had seven and a half minutes for this drivel.
It’s after that the porkies really start in earnest, and I’ll just leave readers who would like to be spared the agony with some key points:
– Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government did not attempt to nationalize Canada’s energy sector, as Dr. Nicolaides falsely states. Its National Energy Program did, however, try to make Canada self-sufficient in energy and encourage Canadians to invest in our energy sector.
– Nor has the federal government “made it clear” it wants to phase out the oil sands – it bought and built a pipeline to keep them running, for heaven’s sake. It has acknowledged, though, that eventually they will be phased out, just like the western Canadian beaver pelt trade. One way or another, this will happen whether we plan for it or not.
– It is also false to state, as Dr. Nicolaides does, that federal environmental laws, whatever one thinks of them, “serve no purpose” but to infringe Alberta’s rights.
– As for the claim that Justin Trudeau’s government is “once again infringing on our rights,” Dr. Nicolaides has a right to his opinion, but that is for Canada’s courts to settle, not the Alberta Legislature acting as a constitutional kangaroo court.
Once can only hope that the quality of Dr. Nicolaides’ lectures at the Asper School of Business in Winnipeg and the Edwards School of Business in Saskatoon was better than this!
Danielle Smith utters another inappropriate analogy …
Meanwhile, Premier Danielle Smith, famous for calling the unvaccinated “the most discriminated group” she’s witnessed in her lifetime, got up on her hind legs in the Legislature yesterday to compare Alberta’s relationship with the federal government to that of First Nations under the Indian Act.
“The way I’ve described it to the chiefs I have spoken with is that they have fought a battle over the last number of years to get sovereignty respected and to extract themselves from the paternalistic Indian Act,” she told the House. “We get treated the exact same way from Ottawa.”
Needless to say, the reaction has not been positive.
Oh my, where does one begin with this? Perhaps to note the UFA government was a direct forebear of the CCF and then the NDP.
That the NEP coincided with an economic recession in Alberta and Texas. Meaning the 1980’s to 1990’s economic collapse had much to do with world oil prices, and not Ottawa. Peter Lougheed well knew the Alberta economy was a price taker not a price maker. It’s just something a one product economy suffers from. Unless you are the monster producer. Pipelines or not a price taker will suffer at times.
Perhaps it is time for Alberta to diversify away from oil and that other non-productive assets like real estate. Time to engage in some collective planning perhaps? The conventional petrol stocks, like North Sea oil, are running dry. The tar sands are expensive to produce, and environmentally unfriendly. So the direction seems clear.
More Ottawa bashing from the UCP crew, and no realization that the problems Alberta has faced over the decades are largely of a self inflicted nature, minus the low oil prices, that often come. The preparation for the inevitable times when oil prices go downwards are, however are the Alberta government’s own fault. It started when the Alberta PCs rejected getting the very good oil royalty rates that Peter Lougheed had, forsaking $575 billion in the process. Along with this came no enforcement of abandoned oil well cleanup by the Alberta PCs, like Peter Lougheed had been doing, making Albertans have to come up with $260 billion to rectify this long-standing issue. Along with this, came very pricey misdeeds, that occurred over the decades, which also cost us billions of dollars, including ones where very large sums of money were thrown away on oil industry related projects, like the Redwater upgrader facility boondoogle, by the Alberta PCs, and the dead end pipeline project from the UCP. After these things occur, the the blame goes to Quebec, or to Ottawa, because we sent our money there, which didn’t happen. Can you expect anything else from pretend conservatives and Reformers? Looking at the massive wealth that Alaska and Norway have with their oil, and it shows we have been on the wrong track in Alberta for a long time. Whatever little is left of any oil wealth, the UCP is using it to buy votes, straight from Ralph Klein’s playbook. How out of touch with reality can you get?
It ‘s telling that Ms. Smith related only what she told the chiefs, not their reception of this patronizing lecture on post-colonial theory. It’s clear, though, that she liked what they were hearing.
The delusions of Danielle Smith’s reasoning is reminiscent of the proverbial bull in a China shop! The gift of the gab but with both feet inserted into her mouth! Houdini would of been impressed!
Foot-in-mouth disease seems to be an epidemic affliction among the UCP. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before some mental genius in the UCP caucus declares that Ottawa’s treatment of Alberta is no different than the way the Nazis treated the Jews. Of course, Danielle Smith will stand and declare herself and all Albertans to be latter day Anne Franks. Instead of earplugs, Yellows Stars will be distributed in solidarity with the most persecuted, the Antivaxxers. Danielle Smith will deliver another sorry/not sorry apology and move on. Just watch her.
Alberta has graduated from being the crazy uncle in Confederation to being the screaming tantrum addicted adolescent.
I’m not sure Nicolaides is helping Smith’s cause with his odd video. I do wonder how on board the Kenney cabinet loyalists are with Smith’s ideas, but for now she seems to have enough political support that they are in a strange forced Stepford cheerleader mode. However, if that support changes, I could see it all easily falling apart. Maybe its good he is now distracted from his previous task of destroying educational institutions, although I suspect he may get back to that.
Perhaps a key learning that he missed in his video clip about Trudeau Sr was all the political and economic damage that came with Quebec separatism. Although they are in a somewhat better place now, Quebec is not as ecomically well off as Alberta. Montreal in particular lost its place as Canada’s leading business center as many large Canadian companies fled in response to all the political uncertainty.
One problem with carelessly starting political fires is they can get out of control and rather than help the cause, singe those who are playing with fire. Perhaps that was the only real outcome of Kenney’s equalization referendum.
The issue of climate change is definitely now an international one. So if the UCP believes Trudeau Jr is the sole cause of all their problems that is another delusion. Even if he were gone tomorrow, there is no going back to the Harper years at this point. The country and the world has changed.
I’m not sure what history lessons can be gathered from Smith and her minion’s ramblings other than their thinking is very muddled. I suppose stirring up outrage, grievances and anger might help certain politicians electorally, but it can also be a pointless exercise that leaves everyone else worse off. Surely the conservative types who focus on business confidence realize that.
Political “Science” degrees (an oxymoron I think) from any educational institution seem to graduate those with a penchant for attempting to destroy the countries (provinces) they live in and tend to make a living on the public purse while doing so. But, maybe I’m having a bad day.
lol maybe I’m having a whole bunch of bad days, because nowadays it seems like 60% of all degrees of any kind are used for that purpose! Here’s a comic about that’s (sort of) it:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2394
Roger, the usefulness of a Poli Sci degree (or any other, for that matter) depend on the attitude of the practitioner. As a counter to Barry Cooper, here’s a brand-new article in Policy Options online magazine, co-written by Lisa Young, professor of political science at the University of Calgary.
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/december-2022/western-alienation-constitutional-challenges/
Her blog, published on Substack, is here:
https://lisayoung.substack.com/
I watched the video, David, thanks for posting it.
The video is enhanced with some really inspiring music, and supported with a lot of archival film clips, and concludes with a banner labelled ‘United Conservative Caucus’. This begs at least three questions:
1. How much did it cost to produce this video? It clearly was not just Nicolaides walking while his assistant shot the video on a cell phone.
2. Who paid for the production of the video? Are Alberta taxpayers paying for the production of something that concludes with a banner promoting a political party?
3. What is the objective of this video, other than to promote the UCP?
I like people who want to follow the money.
It is likely that political donation money, which Albertans subsidize with tax credits, was utilized to make the video if it was made by the UCP or an UCP MLA.
Albertans should not be subsidizing political parties with donations. The “dark money political donations” should be banned to help clean up the political system. There are laws that are supposed to keep dark money out of politics but they are not easily enforceable. China’s interference in the political system shifting money to politicians is a perfect example of why political donations need to be banned. Good luck penalizing China for breaking laws in Canada.
Every single election could be solely an internet, door knocking and flyer campaign only to reduce expenditures and corruption in the election system. The King’s Printer could print off a single flyer for every candidate and put them in an envelope so that when you open you mail box, you will have a package with a flyer from every candidate running to examine on your couch. This would allow for tighter political controls. This is what political intelligence and convenience looks like. We need subsidized political donations to support bad polarizing politics like we need a hole in our wallets to support the wealthier people with tax credits who donate to politicians.
Tell big lies and tell them often. Eventually, the lies will be believed. There is a precedent. A Government Minister. also a Doctor, did this very same thing between 1933 and 1945.
This is what happens when politicians of the right-wing bent get their hands on history and rewrite it to suit their whims. Facts? What facts? It makes a person wonder what the Calgary School professors, including the de facto premier of Alberta, Barry Cooper, were spouting when Dr. Nicolaides earned his undergrad degree there, and if indeed the University of Cyprus is a private diploma mill. If you thought the school curriculum rewrite was bad, pity the children of Alberta once this lot rewrites it. Surely they cannot resist such a temptation.
Make no mistake, the misuse of the October crisis statement is quite intentional. This government is foreshadowing its intent to see armed rebellion in the streets of Alberta’s cities if ASWAUCA doesn’t get royal assent. This is why the Lieutenant Governor must reject it.
Now on to Danielle Smith’s comments about white colonists’ suffering being just as great as the suffering endured by First Nations (making light of the racism, genocide and residential schools inflicted on First Nations by white colonists). This use of false equivalencies might be why she falsely claimed First Nations ancestry. How disturbing that she is so callous and manipulative. What’s her next move? Declaring apartheid?
If these events don’t frighten Albertans, Albertans have more than a few screws loose. Our Looney Tunes UCP government is unhinged and dangerous. They rewrite history to foment armed rebellion. They make racist statements in the legislature. They using “sovereignty” to break apart a democratically-elected federal government. Stop this train! I want to to get off.
Anyone with a conscience and a basic understanding of 20th century world history might find it hard to sleep at night with all that’s going on in Alberta. The cure for this insomnia is to vote against these United Crackpots in the next election. They’re dangerous lunatics.
Thanks, DJC, for your witty column to explain why this highly produced video brought to us by the UCP government and Advanced Education Minister Nicolaides is just a hot mess of gaslighting twaddle.
It is as ChatGPT wrote the video script to a query to produce a history of the grievance that ABs have voiced over the years. The result is a mix of fact and fiction that requires someone with knowledge and expertise to see through. Yes, AB has over the years has had some legitimate grievances, such as control over resources, tariffs, and the freight rates. But these have long since been resolved and should be ancient history. Yet they are still exploited for political partisan gain, as evidenced by the UCP video.
One thing I would draw your readers’ attention to is the underlying racist content of the video that is occasioned by references to a 1911 book “Canada and her colonies; or Home rule for Alberta” by A. Bramely Moore (https://archive.org/details/canadahercolonie00bram/). This book argues, in part, that one of the reasons AB needs greater independence is to be able to assert protection against the evils of immigration by people of colour. See this Twitter thread for an analysis of the racist nature of this book: https://twitter.com/davejtoews/status/1602746525243015168?s=20&t=suhN58xgf5L9H8mEssu0xQ.
Professor Wesley also has some things to say: https://twitter.com/DrJaredWesley/status/1602849114601185280?s=20&t=suhN58xgf5L9H8mEssu0xQ
This video adds to the growing pile of evidence that the UCP caucus and government is a swamp of right-wing fringe lunatics. It also brings into clearer relief some of the very dark undertones that seem to fuel the unfortunate popularity of this party.
Phlogiston: thanks for the links, I think.
IMHO , it’s unfortunately a verification of the attitude of some family friends who were condescending before, but not outright “racist ” ,but have now found a communal support base to start vocalizing their thoughts. The seeds that were sitting in the ground are now being watered and fertilized.
History is our past that can be learnt from, ignored,or in the case of the Prof. re-interpreted for ones own uses, and it seems that it’s always the power grabbers who like to twist the words for their (esp) political gains or in the case of the self-called “head twit’, their narcissistic whims , and having no moral conscience they don’t care who gets hurt on the way.
Danielle’s statement to the chiefs is as close as you can get to “stay in your own lane ” , I’m telling > YOU <
what and how I see this picture.
Especially after their reception to her " indigenous " ancestry. One thing we do know with narcasistts, they have an unhealthy need for payback when they feel their "feelings " have been hurt. Plus HER sovereignty, couldn't possibly be over shadowed by theirs…it's not in the playbook. If one does a closeup of the picture of her at the Shopper's presser, where she* is standing just in back of Min. Copping , I "almost" feel sorry for him. Moral courage is a hard commodity to come by, especially once you've jumped on the CPDS train ….
(*the word ruthless comes to mind)
Phlogiston, I’m certain Smith et al will swear up and down they never, ever meant to send a racist message. It’s probably even true. They are perfectly capable of cherry-picking the ideas they want for their “sovereign” blather, while ignoring any inconvenient historical context.
It’s as if Danielle Smith simply wants to light a fuse and walk away. Otherwise there is no cogent rationale —not even in a partisan sense— for the direction she’s taking: straight away from winning incumbency.
DJC – when I was a kid the idea of the hero reporter was still alive. I used to think being a reporter would be a mostly great job with two big downsides – first, poring through a ton of boring information in order to find new stories/amass the context necessary to spot future news stories; second, pouring your soul into the best article you can write that you think says something people need to read in such a way that they will be receptive to it, then having to convince your boss to run it at all, then having it distorted by your boss to make it more profitable to the owner, thereby weakening its ability to affect the social change you had (presumably) gotten into journalism to affect.
Now, I think that instead of endless boring information to consume, there is endless toxic, deliberately misleading information to consume. Instead of everyone’s articles being distorted to make it more profitable for the owners, that’s still happening plus writers have been told loudly-but-not-out-loud that certain stories and perspectives will not be platformed at all, and that whatever stories are platformed will be distorted to further the ideology the owner wishes to push into society, and by the way print media is dying so there’s a bunch of layoffs coming and those of you who get to keep your jobs will be expected to work harder for less and, in some cases we can even confirm instructions being given by ownership to make an organization “more conservative” (Postmedia as per their wikipedia page, they laid off a lot of people in order to keep the most spineless mooks willing to put their name on articles promoting things like climate denialism, covid misinformation, and even sedition and white supremacy). I’m not denying that news organizations are still a for-profit business, but the profit is IMO secondary to the goal of modifying public opinion to pressure politicians to do things that you want them to.
Anyways, the point of all that was to thank you for putting in the hard work to slog through toxic garbage like what you describe enduring in order to write this article, and to ask you how you can consume that much garbage data without having it affect your mental health. I have to completely ignore politics for as long as a couple of weeks periodically – consuming news of any kind on any topic gradually gets me angrier and less hopeful until I realize I’m becoming a bitter hopeless ball of misanthropy again and then I take some time off. I think I would be a happier and better person if I didn’t consume any news at all – I also think the long-term consequences of that decision would bite me and everyone else in the butt someday. The other day I overheard a snippet of conversation, someone was saying something about “my kid was watching the news the other day…” – no lie, I thought “holy smokes you let your kids watch that s*? Oh yeah, it’s the news.”
Anyways, kinda rambly way to say thanks for doing your thing and holy crap how do you slog through all this filth without becoming stained by it?
It is pretty amazing to actually see a real time demonstration of “riding the tiger”.
Where will the tiger go? What will happen to those who fall off? Prime time viewing.
My respect to all the caring, responsible and intelligent people of Alberta. Your ‘government’ appears to be engaged in a drunken game of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ without the clues … and without the donkey. Tsk,tsk.
Nicolaides is under orders. His ‘to do list’ of November 25th, aka his mandate letter, includes Government of Canada bashing instructions. [Does he really need prompting on that one? It’s been the cons fall back for many years given their otherwise essentially empty playbooks]. Smiths’ cabinet is characterized by obeisance, incompetence, running scared from the press and notable absenteeism from the Legislature for the sovereignty vote. Implosion or iceberg collision, either way they will fail Albertans.
This is what comes of sucking up to the worst aspects of Alberta’s so-called culture. Jason Kenney kicked this door open when he courted the separatist/ crazed-right fringe. He promptly learned that, once you turn these idiots loose, it’s really hard to pen them up again. Danielle Smith apparently doesn’t care about that lesson, because she is one of the separatist herd.
I wonder who told Nicolaides to star in this clumsy propaganda. I wonder who wrote the script. It’s such a blatantly wrong set of blather that only the True Believers among the UCP faithful could possibly accept it. Nicolaides has, however, managed to push every single button of the Free Alberta Fantasist control panel. It will be very, very popular among the base of the Utter Chaos Party.
It didn’t take long for Smith to walk back her stupid remarks about First Nations and Alberta being treated the same. Telling the First Nations chiefs that, “Hey, I’m a victim too” seems remarkably tone-deaf, even for Smith. She seems to have a gift for shooting from the lip, and hitting her own foot. I’m not sure she even hears what she’s saying—until after she says it.
Now, I won’t say Smith lies about stuff. Instead, I think she remembers things in a way that’s most advantageous to her while she’s speaking. But I’d really like to see her reaction to a guided tour of some First Nations reserves in Alberta; particularly the northern ones, where boil-water orders and poverty are a way of life.
Ignorance is bliss and this article shows just how out of touch UCP ministers and never mind OUR Premier are.
Not only did Justin Trudeau buy the transmountain pipeline for oil sands oil, few in Alberta realize his father saved the oil sand development in 1973 by replacing the ARCo 30 % share with government money to Alberta could get richer. Jean Chrietien saved the project and our Federal Government provide 15%, Alberta 10% and the Province of Ontario 5%. back in 1973 300 or 400 million was not small change. Chrietien in 2003 said at 25 anniversary of start of oil sands production he never thought it would be successful but were willing to invest. See: http://www.history.alberta.ca/energyheritage/sands/mega-projects/experimentation-and-commercial-development/the-winnipeg-agreement.aspx