Sounding a mite panicked by the negative public response to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s willingness to bend rules to help political allies in trouble with the law, the United Conservative Party has retreated to its ideological safe space: Law ’n’ Order, with a side of dog-whistles and urban crime stereotypes.
There is a deep and obvious irony in this strategy, of course – the UCP is cranking up the frightening prospect of “social disorder,” one of its favourite phrases these days, because its leader is in trouble for trying to get some real agents of social disorder off the hook.
When Premier Smith found herself in hot water after being caught chatting sympathetically on the phone with a gay-hating, COVID-denying, border blockader awaiting a verdict on charges of criminal mischief, her response was to try to scare the bejesus out of Albertans about “violent criminal incidents” on city streets.
When voters look askance at re-electing a political party dominated by allies of the group alleged to include extremists plotting to murder Mounties in hopes of creating an Alberta Alamo moment, the UCP brain trust must have concluded the answer was to blame federal bail policies for the number of homeless folk in the downtowns of Alberta’s underfunded big cities.
Never mind that Premier Smith said out loud she had been speaking with her officials “almost weekly” about a political ally facing criminal charges stemming from his role in the Coutts blockade last year.
Consider the news release published by the government Tuesday in the wake of Monday’s embarrassing news conference at which Premier Smith refused repeatedly to answer media questions about her simpatico tête-à-tête with pastor Artur Pawlowski.
“Enough is enough,” screeched the headline atop the release, which was supposedly about “Transit safety and violent crime.”
“Alberta’s government is taking action to restore order and improve public safety in response to increasing crime and disorder in the province’s big cities,” said the subhead, dog-whistling about us city folk.
“In both Edmonton and Calgary, criminal activity is on the rise,” the release began. “Between July 2022 and January 2023, Edmonton’s LRT and transit centres experienced an increase in violent criminal incidents of 75 per cent. In Calgary, overall criminal occurrences at LRT stations increased 46 per cent between 2021 and 2022.”
One would like to see some explanation of how those statistics were calculated. Could the end of pandemic restrictions have anything to do with these seemingly large increases in crime?
You have to dig a little deeper to get to the actual announcement: Ms. Smith has directed her “public safety” minister “to work with his cabinet colleagues to develop a plan to hire 100 more street-level police officers over the next 18 months to increase the visible law enforcement presence and tackle criminal activity in high-crime locations in Calgary and Edmonton.”
How long they’ll be there, and who will pay for them, was not explained.
“Safety on public streets is never negotiable,” the release quoted Ms. Smith saying. “We can address root causes like mental health and addiction at the same time, but we will not compromise on security for all Calgarians and Edmontonians. This starts with the federal government reforming its broken catch-and-release bail system and includes us working with cities and police services to fight back against criminals.” (Emphasis added.)
As Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis, a former police officer, added in his performative statement during the Calgary news conference on the supposed crime spree, “We need jail, not bail, for violent offenders.”
Promising “to take back the streets from the violent repeat offenders that are causing chaos in our communities,” Mr. Ellis hyperventilated that “the crime and disorder that we are seeing in our streets today is a direct result of the Liberal-NDP coalition and their dangerous policies. …”
“These are dangerous and violent criminals, they are a serious threat to our communities,” he continued, although it turned out he wasn’t talking about any of the convoy-blockaders who seem to have the premier on speed-dial for legal help and sympathy.
While there is no doubt downtown Edmonton in particular is a depressing mess, it’s got little to do with either municipal governments or Ottawa’s bail policies – it’s mostly the result of bad old-fashioned financial neglect of social problems by Alberta’s provincial government.
Are the streets as threatening and dangerous as Mr. Ellis claims? Absolutely not. I speak as someone who walks through downtown Edmonton literally every weekday. It’s depressing, but it’s not New York in the 1970s.
Still, this nonsense will sell well in rural areas of Alberta where the myth that cities are hotbeds of immorality and crime sells well with UCP voters who imagine they are pillars of rectitude and righteousness by comparison, a caricature encouraged by the UCP.
And in Edmonton, it’s hard to believe that city police – led by “a reliable UCP validator,” as one commentator described Chief Dale McFee, who with his Calgary counterpart participated in Tuesday’s newser – haven’t been avoiding the bleakest parts of the city’s downtown to ratchet up political pressure on a city council that objects to the UCP’s aversion to providing housing for the homeless.
There are, of course, things that could make Alberta’s cities safer – and one would be a serious effort to control the easy availability of firearms, an obvious idea that is anathema to the UCP.
So, yesterday, the same UCP Government trying to scare us with “social disorder” announced “a new regulation restricting municipalities and police from entering into unilateral agreements with the federal government” to get firearms off the streets.
Say what? “Alberta’s government is providing clarity to municipalities, police services and police commissions about their responsibility when considering accepting federal funding to enforce a federal firearms confiscation program,” said the news release on that topic. (Emphasis added.)
“This action demonstrates that Alberta stands unequivocally with law-abiding firearms owners, but there is more to do,” Justice Minister Tyler Shandro was quoted saying. “Stay tuned.”
Mr. Shandro didn’t put in a physical appearance on Tuesday, presumably because Ms. Smith’s handlers were afraid reporters would ask him about what he told her when they talked about Art Pawlowski.
Regardless, his announcement yesterday makes it clear enough just how committed the UCP Government really is to making Alberta’s streets safer.
That is to say, it is not interested at all. Fortunately the streets of Alberta’s big cities aren’t nearly as dangerous as the UCP and its political allies in uniform pretend they are.
I haven’t returned to Edmonton in perhaps 18 years now. I lived downtown and off Whyte Avenue then, so I cannot say if crime is worse now. But what I do know is generally street drug issues, homelessness, and mental health issues untreated are all much worse Canada wide. This is no accident that such exactly coincides with the return of fiscal austerity policies of monotonous governments of decades duration. Extra police and more beds in jails are no solution. Adequate social resources are. Social housing and outreach is far cheaper than beds in jails. I might also add, preventive social services are also a cheap investment with returns – even Presto Manning knew that little. The police also know they don’t do mental health/social problems- it comes up every time they kill or assault another street person. How nice this (uc) party can find more money for weapons and death. Even police officers seemingly agree this is just more money for chaos, and a job they are not qualified for.
Homelessness is a complex issue, but one thing is clear: there needs to be enough safe, secure affordable (to the occupants) supportive housing for each and every unhoused person, period. For example, the city I live in reported 328 unhoused people in its annual Point in Time count this past September, so by rights it should have at minimum 300-350 spaces in supportive housing.
Now, there are many reasons why an unhoused person might decline to be housed if a space opens up, but lack of availability when that person makes the decision to seek a roof over their head shouldn’t be one of them. There also need to be wraparound services to support the occupants, and to mitigate those many reasons why someone living rough on the streets might not want to move into said housing.
The only remaining reason why anyone should still be living rough in the streets must be that while there is enough space for them, and all the services are there, the only way they’d ever move indoors would be to be dragged kicking and screaming, which we wouldn’t countenance. And I’m sure that would be a very small percentage of the total population of unhoused persons.
Until we get to that place, we aren’t doing enough to remedy this problem.
And before someone here tells me I should be advocating to City Council on this, or even running for Council myself, I’m not a City resident but a County one, living in a subdivision that abuts the City limits. So my voice on City issues is limited.
https://www.mygrandeprairienow.com/105747/news/300-people-experiencing-homelessness-in-grande-prairie-according-to-city-point-in-time-count/
The UCP is trying to regain lost support and lost trust, before the provincial election. I wouldn’t fall for it, but others are dumb enough to do so.
Focus on “safety” is partly due to long-term hollowing-out of media newsrooms over past 30 years as revenues disappeared into the World Wide Spiderweb. With few beat reporters– and few knowledgeable editors directing them–the easy stories are crime, traffic, and easy-to-read news releases. “If it bleeds, it leads.” Short attention spans, at both ends of the media pipeline, leave little time for probing underlying causes and solutions. CBC (Radio and website) is a partial exception, as is the Globe. And of course this blog.
This is a profound truth, Robert. There is also a direct link between over-emphasis on crime reporting and feeling of vulnerability and fear among the general population. It is quite true the conservative owners of our media emphasize crime reporting because it cheap and can be done by a reporter with few brains and no experience – and probably, soon, by AI. But it also frightens the population and makes them long for fascism just so they can go about their lives peacefully. Funny how that never really works out. Nevertheless, it is a tried and true formula, and I am quite sure our media moguls understand that and know what they are doing. DJC
The call and response of representative democracy! If we have a problem, do we have to solve it? But of course! https://youtu.be/UDfAdHBtK_Q Look, we’ve been at this since time began. Admit we’re all monkeys and we can beat the clowns!
Another example in an ongoing parade of examples of the incompetence of this feckless and frankly, quite useless government.
Not that there isn’t a mounting third-world catastrophe in the transit system brought on by the homeless-ness problem and exacerbated by typically wild-west criminality; there is and has been for a couple years. But these slobbering idiots posing as conservative ministers haven’t and wouldn’t touch that issue with a 10′ pole.
Unless they can make some perceived political points on it.
Then they’ll spend like drunken sailors to make all kinds of hyperbolic headlines. 100 cops in 18 months; my rosy-red arse! Just watch! It’ll never happen.
Not least because these clowns and goofballs won’t be in government but even if, they could never get it together to roll out that kind of program.
Hi Ranger. Does the phrase, “Throwing money at a problem won’t solve it” sound familiar? I strongly doubt the Smith/ UCP/ Take Back Alberta Party remembers the phrase–unless they’re throwing it at the NDP.
Doctors, nurses and teachers all took a very public hit because the UCP don’t like public servants. Cops? Nah, the UCP just LOVE cops. But you can’t just wave a magic wand and turn civilians into qualified police officers. At least Mike Ellis is realistic enough to say so.
Where the money for the extra hires and training will come from is a mystery. Whether the money will be there on 1 June is questionable at best. (I was gonna ask if it’s really needed, but after 30-odd years of austerity budgets, starting with Ralph Klein slashing municipal grants—used to fund city cops!—it’s hard to argue.)
I’m morally certain the UCP guv’mint has been putting the arm on Edmonton and Calgary to put more money into their police budgets. Whether we need cops more than we need social workers and health workers is a legitimate question. We just learned the UCP/ TBA response: a knee-jerk “NO.”
Funny how the UCP drastically cut funding to municipalities including the cities of Calgary and Edmonton, which obviously slowed down having a police force in line with population growth, then without consulting with the cities simply say they will fund more police. This is just like many other slimy tactics the UCP uses, cut the hell out of something like education, health care and so on, then announce a supposedly big increase to make them look like heroes.
Perhaps from Mr. Ellis’s perspective as a former police officer, more police is the solution to every social problem, even though he seems in his statement to acknowledge other approaches are needed. As the old saying goes – when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem seems like a nail.
However, this money would be better spent on mental health, addictions programs and full time shelters for homeless people. As someone who spends a lot of time downtown, it seems there are a lot of troubled people there, but not so much all the criminals he imagines.
However, I suppose this tough on social disorder approach plays well to the imagination of the UCP base, who mostly avoid or never go to such places anyways. It also allows the UCP to talk about something else other than Smith calling and consoling with COVID protesting law breakers. I suppose their election slogan should be tough on some criminals, gentle on others.
In any event, they also predictably try blame other parties for whatever the problems are, which is particularly annoying. After all who was the government here in Alberta for the last four years when all of this went to heck?
re: Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek’s response to a question from Keean Bexte.
You got me curious, David, so I googled it as you suggested. During the get tough on crime announcement, right wing columnist Keean Bexte asked Ms. Gondek when she had changed her mind about defunding the police. This might have been a fair question in a different environment, but given the scenario in which Mr. Bexte asked the question, Ms. Gondek could hardly answer honestly. Imagine the storm that would erupt if she had answered with her heart: “I still believe in defunding the police, in the sense that some of the resources we direct to the police would be better spent on deploying mental health specialists to situations where they would be better suited to a defuse a situation with a mentally ill person rather than a police officer with a ‘get tough on crime’ attitude.” And that would be even before a free speaking Mayor Gondek went on to suggest previous UCP policies to mental health care and addictions contributed to the problem in the first place.
Walking away from the podium was the only thing Ms. Gondek could do in the scenario
she found herself in. I expect some UCP strategists felt a bit of relief that the Calgary mayor chose not to answer honestly as well.
Edmonton is an incredibly dangerous place to live if you drug user. There is literally an epidemic of drug poisoning in the city. Almost a predictable outcome of closing supervised consumption sites and throwing that money to your religiously affiliated abstinence only “outreach” programs
Tyler Shandro, a small excuse for a man, both physically and emotionally, overcompensating with a big shotgun. As an aside, aren’t the judges that are granting bail provincial judges, appointed by provincial governments?
When I relocated to Edmonton from the Evil East in 1998, I was surprised at how our French/Métis/fur trade roots had disappeared from the landscape as one moved from Manitoba westwards. While some small towns and parts of Klondike Days did reflect those roots, most celebrations highlighted the American traditions of cowboys, gold, quick draws and river boats.
I moved to Calgary in 2002 and the Americanization of the landscape was complete. C & W music, the Stampede, cowboy attire whenever and wherever, strange religions and even stranger political beliefs. Sure, Quebec City has its winter carnival but you don’t see folks dressed as Bon’homme in August.
My point is that the “law and order” schtick is another incremental step to becoming a clone of Montana, Idaho and the likes. Elected sheriffs? Why not. Election spending limits? Hello Citizens United.
The Milk River and even the Battle River won’t protect our Canadian roots.
Canada has a long and rich history of country music, Calgary, and the prairies including alberta especially.
I’ve said this a lot, but in a province where a huge amount of city dwellers are rural diaspora, there is nothing such as 1 to 1 on any of this.
I mean the leader of the opposition is from Fairview. Cmon.
Missing:
We call them c’boys (kuh-bois). I believe the term is “all hat, no cattle”. I’m pretty sure that I’ve ridden more horses than 99.9% of the people in Ranchman’s on any given night, but they can pretend better than I can. Calgary does not have a tradition of cowboys any more than most of America, and although there are still cowboys, they were never a dominant feature of our society, just a culture totem.
Chompy: I just want to pitch in that I have only ridden a horse a couple of times, and hated it (the seat is too far from the ground, for one thing), and own no cattle (although I did accidentally bid on a heifer once at a cattle auction I was covering). Nevertheless, I strongly believe that cowboy hats in their great variety are a legitimate fashion choice for anyone, regardless of gender or politics, anywhere, and the only reason I won’t take one of mine to Europe is that I don’t want to carry a hat box. I favour the Stetson Open Road and it’s my opinion that the Open Road favours me. Thank you. Thank you very much. That is all. DJC
While we are getting into it, the idea folks have of the romantic American cowboy is also a myth, largely stolen from Mexican and Spanish culture, and cemented in early Hollywood pictures. On top of it, a good number of those folks, (also in Canada) were black. The idea of the west is largely just competing myths.
The recent calls in Calgary and Edmonton calling “citizens’ engagement” to deal with the ever present crime waves on these cities’ public transit systems does open the door to the worse situations.
Citizen engagement to calm the bountiful proliferation of meth-heads and crackheads on public transit sounds more like urging the innocent to tread where the more thoughtful fear to is just asking for trouble. And where the unaware citizens are reticent to go, the ginned-up pugilists will, with pitchforks and clubs in hand. Open season on the undesirables? You betcha.
But this is where we are now. The UCP sold everyone on the notion that it’s time to break the public services, only to cause severe social backlashes. Why not encourage vigilantism and roaming posses of the righteous to correct the hard that liberals have wrought? It worked so well in Escape from New York.
Just: As you will recall, the UCP is already calling for vigilantism in rural areas – against those fictitious urban gangs that drive out to rural Alberta from Edmonton and Calgary to steal combine-harvesters. (Hint: Dog-whistle all you want, but if someone stole your combine harvester, chances are extremely high that it was a white guy who lives in a rural area, and is probably one of your neighbours.) DJC
I think it goes further, and gets worse than that Mr. C.
I think a lot of them want to shoot Indians.
Fortunately the streets of Alberta’s big cities aren’t nearly as dangerous as the UCP and its political allies in uniform pretend they are.
I don’t know. As an out-of-province tourist in Edmonton I might unwittingly wander into a UCP area.
We don’t have those in Edmonton.
UCP areas are absolute hotbeds of white-collar crime. You’d be lucky to get out with your pension intact.
When one lives in an irony free conservative bubble, where the UCP seem to exist, it is hard to perceive one’s own hypocrisy.
I do not think that this taped conversation is going away any time soon. It is far too disquieting to many voters.
I believe that voters do have a sense of fairness and political correctness. The more Danielle slips and slides over this the worse it will become for the UCP.
I expect to see parts of it show up in NDP election adverts.
Dear Albertans: Do you not get the message being sent by the UCP/Cons of a police man wearing a black shirt and a Justice Minister swanning around with a shot gun? How about the black shirts spying on environmentalists and trying to entrap opposition politicians? What do you need to understand about what these creatures are – a Premier taking time out of her day to commiserate with a guy facing criminal charges? Freedumb indeed, but who are the dumb ones?
Let me interpret that quote from the premier into “actions speak louder than words”-ese: “We can address root causes like mental health and addiction at the same time, but we will not.“ There. Even the Calgary Police Commission understands.
“Police officers can only do so much when the crime is fuelled by addiction, mental illness and homelessness,” commission chair Shawn Cornett said Wednesday.
“Officers need a place where they can take people who have mental-health or housing challenges because, otherwise, officers take them from a transit location, deal with them for a short period of time and they just relocate to businesses, parks or other transit areas. It doesn’t deal with the problem that’s causing this.”
Social supports are needed to address the root causes of the increase in crime and disorder in Calgary, Cornett said.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-police-commission-says-new-officer-funding-not-long-term-solution
Social supports are not a priority these days in UCP quarters. The article mentions that police staffing levels have been a concern for a few years, too. Perhaps this is the effect of $12M in various funding cuts by the UCP to Calgary police alone? Something tells me that Calgary’s share of proposed re-funding, $4M, does little to restore $12M taken away. Of course it’s all just an election promise anyways, and we know what happens to those after election day.
I’m not sure what to say about Tyler Shandro posing like Elmer Fudd.
Hey, guess what! Elmer Fudd is giving up his gun! He and Shandy get to keep the brown hunting jacket, though.
https://people.com/tv/elmer-fudd-no-gun-in-new-looney-tunes-reboot/
Great column David.
On the news clip I saw, the phrase “Safety on public streets is never negotiable,” was outed as another lie in short order when a reporter (perhaps one of the few non-sock-puppet reporters left) wanted to know when Calgary would see the 50 peace officers on the streets of our ‘crime ridden’ downtown.
I believe it was Ellis who answered very quickly that it would not occur this year but next.
So when it comes to large urban centres like Edmonton and Calgary, ‘Safety’ can wait – even in an election year.
Sounds like a very large “compromise” to me. It appears to me that Take Back Alberta seems to believe that city dwellers should be last on the list to receive any kind of financial help from the province.
These reformers are as two-faced as they come. After bashing Trudeau for trying to protect Canadians from the stupid gun violence we are seeing in the U.S. and praising criminal convoy truckers, and trying to protect a mindless so-called pastor they want us to believe they are concerned about our escalating street violence. How stupid do they think we are? Catering to the minority is all they have, anyone with an ounce of intelligence doesn’t want anything to do with them.
“how stupid do they think we are?”
Pretty damn.
And not without reason.
Thank you for your outstanding analysis, especially pointing out that 100 police officers ♀️ won’t be appearing on the streets of Calgary and Edmonton anytime soon.
Don: If the UCP is re-elected, it is quite possible they will never appear. The need will have passed and we will be back to reflexive austerity. Ironically, this UCP election promise is much more likely to be kept if Albertans elect the NDP. DJC
At the presser yesterday, did Shandro not say “protecting our guns”? I was driving at the time and may have misheard the quote. If not, it was an astounding comment in the face of the current “protect the children” rhetoric.
Is THAT why I got a demon-dialler crank call from Mike Ellis? And here I thought it was just the detested pre-election blather. Law’n’order for everybody! Especially non-UCP supporters.
It really is shocking that a conservative premier in Alberta would have a phone call with a man who emigrated to Canada only to use his religion as an excuse to attack freedom and democracy loving Canadians. Is she related to the Bin Ladens?
She’s a Fraser alumni rite ? Same thing, different fundamentals.
Reasoned speculation suggests that rhetoric, appearances [the actions and activities of a highly trained deceitful manipulator acting as Premier/lobbyist/talk show host], and past as well as current behavior are highly suggestive of a particular desired endpoint [for a ‘petrostate’]:
“On the other hand, an elected autocracy is a form of government in which the autocrat gains control through a democratic procedure, such as an election. Once in charge, an autocrat will, however, use their position to expand their authority, restrict the impact of other political figures, and attack democratic institutions like the court and the free press, . . . For Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, the allocation of political power explains the maintenance of autocracies which they usually refer to as “extractive states”. For them, the de jure political power comes from political institutions, whereas the de facto political power is determined by the distribution of resources. Those holding the political power in the present will design the political and economic institutions in the future according to their interests. In autocracies, both de jure and de facto political powers are concentrated in one person or a small elite that will promote institutions for keeping the de jure political power as concentrated as the de facto political power, thereby maintaining autocratic regimes with extractive institutions. [Where] Extractive economic institutions are the opposite of inclusive ones: their purpose is to steer the economic rewards [achieved by both an unequal distribution of assets and the customary absorption of losses by the state] toward a relatively small elite.”
See also for example, “Extractive capitalism and the security state”—-Lindsey Bertrand and compare with Artur Pawlowski, or
https://medicinehatnews.com/news/local-news/2023/03/01/barnes-brings-lich-to-budget-tabling-as-guest/
Unsurprisingly, this is where we are currently,
“Premier Danielle Smith says members of the Alberta legislature, including cabinet ministers, are not free to talk to accused people about their criminal court cases but her call to a man facing charges was OK.”
But, “Legal experts say the call was a clear violation of the democratic guardrail that keeps politicians from having a say in who gets charged and how cases are prosecuted.”
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/alberta-premier-says-politicians-cannot-talk-to-accused-but-her-call-was-ok-1.6345997
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate..” or imaginary and illusory, could lead to insanity, that would be defined as sanity due to fear? What a Party the UCP is!
Re: The UCP blocking the gun confiscation (sic) program
Although it is likely to be revised, it is my understanding that at this point someone who owns an illegal gun can surrender it to the authorities, without fear of criminal prosecution, until Oct 30. In addition to amnesty, they will also receive payment for the value of the gun based on what it was worth on May 1, 2020, the date the gun was declared illegal. Presumably, after Oct 30 anyone caught with an illegal gun can face criminal charges, and they will no longer be eligible for compensation when the gun is confiscated.
This is the program that Tyler Shandro’s Bill 8 is designed to interfere with. It may really appeal to the gun-nut base of the UCP, but in the process it is really disadvantaging other gun owners, especially if the UCP should win the next election, and Shandro is able to block the buy-back program all the way to the deadline.
What of a true law-abiding gun owner? (as opposed to someone who only obeys the laws they agree with). Such a gun owner would realize the gun they own is now illegal, and they, very reluctantly, need to get rid of it to stay on the right side of the law. If they were in any other province, they could take the gun to a police station, surrender it, and apply for compensation. Do they forfeit compensation as a result of Shandro’s ‘help’?
Shandro’s legislation may successfully insulate Albertan gun owners from the federal program, but what happens when that gun owner wants to move to another province after the deadline? As soon as they cross the provincial border with their illegal gun they can be arrested. In that light it would be risky to even use it for hunting because of the likelihood of encountering a game warden, or one of their hunting peers reports them.
Law abiding criminal gun owners also need to realize that their shield from federal prosecutions will only be in place while we have a gun friendly provincial government. A future NDP win, or even a return to a progressive conservative government, will likely see that protection end, and they are back possessing a gun that can get them in trouble, and they will receive no compensation when it is confiscated. In that sense gun owners are lucky there will be an election between now and the deadline; if the NDP wins they can still apply for compensation.
I am struck by the parallels between this and the UCP’s much hated ‘just transition’. In both cases the federal government is taking the position that a difficult change must be made, and they are trying to make it easier, while the UCP is simply putting their fingers in their ears and making a noise so they don’t have to listen.