U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau show their mutual admiration in the House of Commons last week – let’s just hope that guy with the smartphone isn’t recording a Tik-Tok! (Photo: Instagram/justinptrudeau).

During his Ottawa visit last week, U.S. President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau he was sure the respected Carter Center would be willing to send a team of international election observers to Alberta for the provincial election expected on May 29. 

An international election observer from the Carter Center (Photo: The Carter Center; Enhancements, The Author).

Election observer teams from the Atlanta-based not-for-profit non-governmental organization founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter have helped determine the legitimacy of more than 100 elections in 39 countries since 1989. 

According to the Wikipedia, “the presence of impartial election observers deters interference or fraud in the voting process, and reassures voters that they can safely and secretly cast their ballots and that vote tabulation will be conducted without tampering.”

The teams are typically made up of about 30 to 100 impartial observers. 

According to sources close to the Canadian government who couldn’t be identified owing to the usual lame journalistic excuses, something like this is going to be needed in Alberta because a separatist organization has taken over the governing party and the unelected premier thinks she has the powers of the U.S. President. 

A source associated with the U.S. Government agreed, saying, “It’s bad enough that the U.S. President has the powers of the U.S. President, let alone some nut in a place that’s right on the border with Montana, which is pretty close to being bonkers itself most of the time, although not as bad as Wyoming.”

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: The Alberta Newsroom/Flickr; Enhancements, The Author).

OK, people. Let’s stop right there. This is an April Fool’s joke, of course. Or … maybe not. Who the f … heck knows? 

But, face it, I’m just never again going to convince everybody in Alberta that an April Fool is for real like that time I said Progressive Conservative premier Alison Redford, who had just been fired by her own caucus, was going to sue the province for wrongful dismissal. Now that was a triumph of foolery! 

Anyway, I’m not sure April Fool’s jokes have much utility in Alberta any more. 

Consider that the premier of Alberta really has just been heard saying she didn’t know Canadian provincial premiers don’t have the same powers as U.S. presidents, threatened to sue the national broadcaster for defamation for playing a recording of her actual words, and a candidate for her political party was caught accusing teachers of playing pornos to their kindergarten classes. Plus ATCO, the bazillion-dollar local trailer company, has hired the premier’s predecessor, Jason Kenney, to sit on its board and presumably advise them about political matters! 

And that’s just stuff that’s been in the news in the past 48 hours! 

Well, OK, so I just showed you can make this stuff up. But why bother? 

Seriously, people, if this keeps up, irony and sarcasm, not to mention April Fool’s jokes, are going to have trouble surviving another year here in Wild Rose Country!

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24 Comments

    1. Ha-ha! One of the copyright thieves who regularly steal my copy, sometimes running it through a bizarre machine editing process, has picked this up. DJC

  1. Had me cold.
    I started this earlier for the local paper and the need for adult supervision is real
    …………
    If TBA was going to interfere with the Alberta election
    I suspect it would look a lot like this
    https://globalnews.ca/news/9577951/livingstone-macleod-ucp-nomination-vote-take-back-alberta/
    The full article details irregularities and omissions that disenfranchised voters and to my knowledge neither the winning nominee or the riding association still have not seen fit to comment even after being contacted by Global news.
    Has rigging leaderships and nominations (Harper swindles MacKay, Kenny swindles Jean, Smith and the 2% approval, pp and the membership flood)
    Become the new democracy?
    Anyway nice cloud to start under and now that moderate and progressive and united are no longer descriptive of Alberta UPC I wonder where moderate, progressive and united conservative Albertans are going to go?

  2. I don’t know what’s more ironic, that the land of the “strong and free” would need its elections monitored by a third party or that the third party in question would be the United States of America, land of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

  3. “It’s bad enough that the U.S. President has the powers of the U.S. President” Great comment and oh so true! But, as you say, it’s April Fools Day.

  4. The UCP really seem developmentally stuck at Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stage 4 – seemingly like 11-year olds that are stuck between Industry vs. Inferiority: they want and feel like they ought to be doing stuff but don’t have the wherewithal to do it successfully, claiming they do but when caught out, spend way too much energy blaming everyone else for their own inadequacies.

  5. HOT OFF THE WIRES!

    Today Rachael Notley called today for a door-to-door campaign vaccination campaign, urging the government to carefully examine AHS data to find who isn’t getting their shot and showing up on their doorstep with needle in hand. “We need to have conversations to find out what’s on their minds and what’s driving their decisions,” she said. “We need to overcome barriers on a case-by-case base and offer the vaccine right on their doorstep.”

    Gotcha! April fools! Um, er, wait a minute.

    https://youtu.be/ZWR2SHQAM0A

  6. Well , look at the silver lining; no more requirement to spend creative energy and precious time devising April Fool’s jokes.

  7. In other April 1 news:

    -UCP Government announces free post secondary education for all native born Albertans.
    -Daily sittings of the provincial legislature will be preceded by a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
    -To facilitate access, all Kananaskis provincial park hiking trails will be paved and graded. This will be funded by a special one time levy on all solar and wind projects in Alberta.
    -The occurrence of any future earthquakes in north central Alberta has been declared illegal and will not be acknowledged as they are a plot of leftist radicals.

  8. Very good DJC.

    In other news, the UCP announced that if elected they would relocate the capital of Alberta out of Edmonton. “It’s just too woke, too lefty for it to continue as the capital for all Alberta’ns.” said the Premiere to gathered media. The UCP circulated a long list of towns under consideration with Swan Hills, Oyen, Légal and Rimbey figuring prominently. A recently defrocked Jesuit Premier will lead the nominating committee at the very reasonable annual stipend of $2.5 million. Based at the ATCO Kitchen, the former UCP head chef was excited to reuse his policy chops in this important initiative.

    – 30 –

  9. This is a April Fools joke that, like those Beaverton headlines, may not be too far off the mark.

    Take Back Alberta has already pledged “action” in the event they don’t get their way. What that could be mean is anyone’s guess. But considering the shennanigans that occurred during Jason Kenney’s successful bid for the UCP leadership, I’d say that the pranks have been weaponized.

    1. Is any party safe from the kind of action TBA used to take control of the UCP? If the NDP wins in May, what prevents an organized special interest group from buying a large bloc of NDP memberships and taking over that party by overrunning party meetings and votes? Could we see David Parker as leader of of the NDP?

      1. Cornell: If memory serves, George Clark tried that with the NDP circa 2016 and the plan was noticed and nipped in the bud. DJC

        1. I don’t have any insider knowledge but have a real hard time comparing the Clark effort to the organized attack of David Parker.

  10. Well if nothing else, I got my B-in-law in Edmonton with the headline,and he came back with the comment ” I hope it happens ” , which is an indicator of the state of things in Alberta……

  11. Born and living here for many years, for obvious reasons I have recently left Alberta to live exclusively in the comfort of my own mind. Needless to say, I had no idea what day it was.

    Well, I was delighted to hear of Biden’s generous offer and thought, wow, that guy’s got his finger on the pulse, please do Joe. Imagine my disappointment upon reading your words “April Fool’s …”.

    Beyond embarrassment, I am once again enjoying my fugue.

  12. Aww, DJC, you got my hopes up there for a second. Then I remembered the date….

    Anyway, 30 to 100 observers wouldn’t cut it. They’d have to multiply by 10.

  13. It is hard to top Alison Redford and the work plan for improvement her party gave her, which was actually not an April fools joke, but Smith sure seems to be trying.

    No doubt some in the UCP would like to give Smith a work plan for improvement too now, if they thought it would help. I doubt it would. Beyond the obvious duplicity – Smith has claimed she was talking to prosecutors and then said she never talked to them, the most recent video also reminds us how at home on the fringe she is. Alberta has a Premier that is a bit of a kook, although she is also capable of appearing somewhat reasonable for some period of time.

    There is and has always been a duality with Smith and while it is unclear which will prevail, it is likely the more reasonable image she may try to present before the election may recede after if she win and Alberta will be in for a few years of a whole lot of crazy.

    On that note, I also wouldn’t be surprised if Smith goes full Kari Lake (the Trump supporting Arizona candidate for governor) if she loses the election and tries to deny the results. So while it may be an April fools headline here so far at this point, it might not actually be such a bad idea for someone to send in election observers.

  14. The sad part – that headline is actually a very good suggestion. Thanks for the laugh, and good thoughts afterwards.

  15. They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. Well—they’re not laughing now!

    They laughed when Donald F tRump said he was gonna be presidunce Of the USofA. Well—they’re still not laughing now…

    They laughed when Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was gonna be President of Ukraine. Well—look who’s not laughing now…

    We laugh when DJC writes that President Biden offered to send observers to oversee the Alberta election (which, as I write, happens in 57 days). Well,…

    As long’s we can discern sarcasm, irony, glee, and cheers from jeers, why not? I would note, however, there’s been so much to laugh at as the partisan right sweeps its own spotlight away that meme, mean, or meaningless, our cachinnation has gradually become more nervous than mirthful.

    Where did this salted hilarity all come from? Was it, “Well, just watch me,” or “Fuddle-duddle,” or “When Irish eyes are smiling,” (no American president could have been as embarrassed as by a Canadian PM singing his submission in typical simian pose—but diversity was paid lip service to, at least in the variety of chuckles as Ron and Nancy Reagan looked around, mortified, for a shamrock to crawl under while the barrel-chested chin wagged and waxed about his unprecedented parliamentary majority)? Or was it: Quebec wants out but the West wants in, and if Canada is divisible, I put pepper on my plate? (Nod to Nardwar.)

    The Alberta connection: the folksy, wire-rim-bespectacled Prairie preacher-premier’s son coins “Unite the Right”—the right he and his foil Lucien Bouchard tore in two—only, this time, Queebeck would be uninvited. And so it came to pass: the new, shotgun-wedded CPC achieved its first and last majority after its first and last two minorities, sans Québec—but only after cheating the voting system while the NDP legitimately filled in Tory, Whig, and Bloc vacancies in la Belle Province.

    Headlines: Wildrose Sends Danielle Smith to Oversee Alberta’s 2015 Progressive Conservative Election Campaign (Alberta NDP [fills in enough seats abandoned by erstwhile conservative voters] Wins Upset Majority). Minister Poilievre Tables Fair Elections Bill (ostensibly to mitigate voter fraud committed by, as PM Harper warns on the 2015 federal campaign trail, people who wear the niqab). Trudeau Promises to End First-Past-the-Post (Liberals Win Upset Majority). Donald F tRump Wins Upset (after campaigning in 2015 that the 2016 US Election would be rigged against him). tRump Claims 2016 Election Rigged (because he won the Electoral College but not the popular vote). USDoJ Investigates Russian Interference In tRump Election. RCMP Investigate Kamikaze Campaign (after Harper invites Kenney to unite the Alberta right—details of which appear to have been fire-walled). Poilievre Says Chinese Interference Designed To Elect Liberals (while Danielle Smith acts as if elections don’t really matter). Alberta Moves Election Day To April First.

    Yes, that’s right: Smith has the power—and what’s the point of having power if you can’t game the hell out of the system? And, for example, reschedule the election date, her prerogative so long’s the term doesn’t exceed five years (really, a mootness since she doesn’t believe in the Constitution or the rule of law, anyhow).

    Surprise! The election has already happened: it was held yesterday. And guess what!—Danielle can prove it: she’s twirling the lynchpin to reality around her middle finger right now at this very moment. And guess what else! There’s absolutely no evidence this election was rigged: it simply couldn’t have been. Oh, that clever girl, Danielle is!

    As politics wends its way toward Every-Day-Is-April-Fool’s-Day, a trend becomes more apparent, starting with the piddling little lie of “trickledown,” graduating to the Big Lie of WMD and the even-bigger lie that the 2020 US election was “stolen,” a preposterous accusation made by the loser and rejected out-of-hand by over sixty court appeals. Joe Biden is the President because not even then-presidunce Donald F tRump could reverse the election result by directing his thugs to attack the Capitol Building while Congress ratified Biden’s victory.

    Yet tRump is far and away the front-running candidate for GOP 2024 presidential ticket. And he never once stopped claiming 2020 was stolen from him. A significant proportion of his supporters actually believe this—everyday, including April Fools’ Day. Or can it be that April Fools’ Day actually IS everyday?

    Canada, naturally, is relatively virginal (sort of like being only a little big pregnant) with regard sowing distrust in our elections.

    I might have been ahead of the curve when I cast doubt upon the 2011 BC HST Referendum results because, a) the Chief Electoral Officer and his Vice-Chief were both fired and, b) replaced by the BC Liberals’ unilaterally appointed “Acting Chief”— (Electoral Officers are supposed to be appointed by consensus of an all-party committee), an appointee who, c) had close ties with the BC Liberal party (it looked like the appointment was intended especially to manipulate the Citizens’ Initiative process which would bind the government to hold a Referendum) and, d) who had to be court-ordered to reveal the 2010 Anti-HST Petition results prerequisite in the Initiative process and, e) who counted the mail-in Referendum ballots without independent scrutiny, and, f) released highly suspect results because they differed markedly with the intensely-surveyed opinions against the hated tax prior to the Referendum, (they rather looked more like popular polling for the two main parties at the time—that is, suspect because opposition to the HST alone crossed party lines, even costing third-term premier Gordon Campbell his job). BTW, said “Acting” Chief Electoral Officer was subsequently appointed parliamentary clerk, a position he held until stepping down under investigation of improprieties for which he was eventually tried and convicted.

    Up to this time, not many people ever suggested elections were rigged—at least not until such was merely hinted at during fishy-smelling judicial vote-sampling in Etobicoke riding where the CPC candidate was confirmed without an actual recount. At the time doubt was rather being to be raised about the veracity of pre-election opinion polls by private polling firms —polls which, in context with actual vote-counts that resulted, seemed intentionally inaccurate in order to manipulate turn-out.

    But now, as the discredited neo-right struggles to remain relevant and atone for its many sins over its four-decade political arc, it has at last resorted to claiming elections it loses have been or will be (huh?) rigged against it (but victories are somehow okay…) As leader of such a party, Pierre Poilievre has adopted this despicable tactic. Again, like so many neo-rightist parties in existential peril around the world, Donald F tRump lights Poilievre’s way. How long will it be, then, until the same sowing of election distrust infects the provinces? Alberta seems a potential candidate, not least because it’s the point of germination for the neo-right movement in Canada, and that, like neo-right parties everywhere, the incumbent UCP government appears to be well along in its throes. Just 8 weeks to go.

    Of course Danielle Smith has mooted the perfidious prospect so far by deftly avoiding it: first, by not holding by-elections in vacated UCP seats; second, by making a UCP MLA step aside so she could parachute into that safe seat; third, by appointing candidates in ridings where UCP MLAs have recently dropped out of the campaign. We already know her attitude toward democratic legitimacy: with less than 5% of the popular vote registered so far, she has taken it upon herself to set the province on a course toward independence, to take over Albertans’ Canada Pension Plans, and to privatize universal public healthcare —all big-ticket voter issues for which she still has no democratic license. To be fair, she hasn’t suggested the election will be rigged against her and, of course, won’t have that opportunity to suggest it WAS rigged against her until it’s all done and counted.

    Undermining trust in elections is the lowest politics that can happen in any democracy. That alone is enough to condemn any perpetrator to sequestration under a Chernobyl-like sarcophagus of concrete, millions of tons high.

    When the vote is accepted as hopelessly corrupted and rigged, preordained and foregone—a point I pray we’ll never reach—then the next step down the dark ladder is defilement of ballot-booth secrecy such as many voters in Nazi Germany feared: they worried the ballot had become a way of identifying the individual who marked it, a way to target and eliminate dissent against the murderous regime; if you voted against the Nazi program in a referendum, they’d know; if you abstained or spoiled your ballot, they’d know. All you could do was vote “yes” for the Nazi reference.

    We have to understand why it’s better to dispatch these anti-democracy forces by way of democratic measure rather than by any other—that is, before any other means becomes necessary. As PP introduces this middle phase in undermining trust in the whole political and governmental system —by suggesting vote-rigging—, and considering both his party’s close connection with the Albertan right and its approaching election, it falls to Alberta voters to stem the infection before it breaks into open hostility toward democracy’s most sacred institution.

    It’s much too late to think “it can’t happen here.”

    Be well, my Alberta friends!

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