One day after the re-election of her UCP government, Danielle Smith airily suggests an extra-parliamentary council of UCP losers for Edmonton (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr).

Even before the dust from the historically close 2023 Alberta general election has settled, Premier Danielle Smith was blabbing about creating an extra-parliamentary council of UCP electoral losers to act as Edmonton’s MLAs.

University of Calgary Law Professor Martin Z. Olszynski (Photo: University of Calgary).

Of course, the day before yesterday, 20 MLAs were elected to represent the citizens who live in the 20 electoral districts located within the boundaries of Alberta’s capital city.

The trouble is, not a single one of them belongs to the premier’s United Conservative Party. Edmonton’s citizens have spoken. The city’s electoral map is now an unbroken sea of NDP orange. Edmonton City Council is also far too woke for the taste of the premier and her coterie of Take Back Alberta MLAs from the sticks. 

So what’s a UCP premier to do? There’s no Alberta Senate from which to pluck a representative to speak up in cabinet for the city, and the UCP seems to have lost 14 MLAs to the NDP in Monday’s election (there are still some recounts to come) so there aren’t many urban candidates who can play that role. 

She could listen to Edmonton’s elected MLAs, of course, but this is the party of earplugs – granted, handed out by the previous UCP premier, but presumably still serviceable. So that’s not going to happen.

Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and Ms. Smith never was one to pay a lot of attention to the niceties of Parliamentary democracy. 

John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, better known as Lord Durham, as painted by the English portraitist Thomas Phillips, 1770-1845 (Image: Public Domain).

After spending most of the election campaign successfully swathed in metaphorical bubble wrap to ensure she didn’t say anything to tarnish the UCP’s already sagging brand, she couldn’t be restrained yesterday. 

When she immediately reverted to her trademark style of saying whatever outrageous or dangerous notion had just popped into her head, the first thing out of her mouth was her idea for the “council” of defeated UCP candidates to advise the government on What Edmonton Wants. (Hint: Not them, obviously.) 

“I’m going to put together an Edmonton council of some of the candidates who I know are going to want to run again, there are a couple of fantastic candidates, many, in fact, in Edmonton,” Ms. Smith, sounding faintly Trump like, told the host of a Corus Entertainment radio talk show broadcast in Edmonton and Calgary.

“You can always count on Smith having exactly the wrong instincts when it comes to democratic norms,” observed University of Calgary law professor Martin Z. Olszynski afterward. 

Is this going to be funded by the UCP, Mr. Olszynski asked in another tweet, “or is Smith proposing to use public money — *taxpayer dollars* — to pay would-be politicians (i.e., partisans) to give her advice about Edmonton — until they can run again?”

Journalist and righteous rebel William Lyon MacKenzie (Photo: Public Domain).

“Arguably, it’s the Premier using her power of office to secure govt funds to advance the political ambitions of party partisans,” he added, also suggesting that the idea was in violation of the Conflicts of Interest Act, which the Legislature’s Ethics Commissioner has already found the premier breached in her congenial chit-chat with her former friend, Pastor Artur Pawlowski. 

Well, this was a quick reversion to form, but it certainly wasn’t unexpected. There’s plenty more where this came from and we’re going to be battered by it literally for years now. 

Usually the UCP and similar Canadian Conservative parties look south to the United States for their undemocratic ideas, but this one actually seems to have its inspiration in Canadian history, events that took place long ago enough to justify an etching in some future edition of the Canadian passport!

I speak, of course, of the Family Compact, that undemocratic network of business, legal, and religious cronies who dreamed of creating their own Canadian aristocracy and dominated the government of Upper Canada in the first few decades of the 19th Century. 

Well, if you went to school when I did, you’ve literally seen the movie

“Fortified by family connexion, and the common interest felt by all who held, and all who desired, subordinate offices, that party was thus erected into a solid and permanent power, controlled by no responsibility, subject to no serious change, exercising over the whole government of the Province an authority utterly independent of the people and its representatives,” Lord Durham said of the Family Compact in his famous 1839 report to the Colonial Office on the causes of the rebellions of 1837 and ’38. (Twenty-first Century emphasis added.) 

You ask me, that sounds pretty much like what Ms. Smith has in mind for her crackpot capital city council of electoral under-achievers. 

People, four years of this is going to be exhausting. Where’s William Lyon Mackenzie when you need him?

Monday’s election to require plenty of unpacking

Monday’s election is going to require a lot of unpacking, and one guy can’t do it all in one night. To complicate matters, I’m going to be on the road to some historical Canadian locations for a few days – not a holiday. I’ll file what I can when I can. But I can’t promise something every night. Stick with me, though, people. DJC

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68 Comments

  1. Failed UCP candidates, I supposed like other parties’ failed candidates, are allowed some kind of means of transition, as they return to regular life or plan on the next step in their public careers. In the case of Danielle Smith, while the UCP’s election win is secure, this sort of boldfaced partisanship is very telling of leadership that has to be careful over what it does next. It’s one thing to win an election, but it’s quite another thing to hold off the in-fighting that the UCP seems to relish. In Smith’s case, the consensus is that she finally figured it out, did what her handlers told her to do, and kept her mouth shut. For Smith, her path to victory was to clam up and it worked. Now, Smith intends to reward as many as she can to assure their loyalty. So, it’s very likely that the role of the War Room will be expanded to include not just the promotion of the O & G industry, but to also promote the UCP within Alberta’s urban areas. Call it a rebranding of the War Room into the Alberta Unity Council.

    In an effort to minimize the cultural divides and bring the people together, the UCP will become … WOKE? Yep. That’s what’s in the cards. It’s like that interview with the UCP’s representative for the LGBTQ2+ communities, he said he met with the infamous and UCP-elect MLA Jennifer Johnson, reminded her that Alberta is “diverse”, and the party must be as open and as welcoming to all as Alberta should be. Take that, DeSantis. Woke may have died in Florida, but Smith transplanted it in Alberta. Boo-Yah.

    It’s already beginning to look like Smith is treading a number of very internal fine lines as this point, and I suppose more are coming as she tries to build a bigger tent. Does Smith base now include drag queens? I can’t wait to find out to how that part of the strategy unfolds.

  2. This is unbelievable! Oh, it’s Danielle Smith talking.
    This seems on par with permitting provincial cabinet ministers to change legislation on a whim, without even having the changes go through the Legislature.

  3. The UCP lost around $10 billion from corporate tax cuts, where no job gains happened. This is what the UCP does to make jobs. Give the losing candidates redundant positions, that pay really well, and undermines democracy. I don’t think Alberta will last another four years with the UCP in charge.

  4. AOC said Elon put his finger on the scale of the Turkish election. Did Musk use Alberta to further test Twitter’s malevolent, malicious machinations?

    1. Now that national security interests at the EU have taken it under consideration that Musk’s withdrawal from a pact is a red flag that he intends to ramp up disinformation and internal conflict, there can be no doubt he is using Twitter to leverage his interests. Maybe the best value for his $44 B ever. At the recent World Cup final, Musk was seen in a luxury box with Rupert Murdoch. I get the feeling he was getting some advice and making a pact with the Devil.

      Treason has never been more fun and profitable; it remain so, until the seditious and treasonous garbage posted on Twitter leads the posters to the gallows.

      I similar climate existed in America prior to WW2. Hitler and the Nazis had their many fans, including one Henry Ford. With the start of hostilities in 1939, Ford was dissuaded from continuing his support with the lucrative wartime contracts. As for the other would be Nazis, they were shown prisons, ostracism, and I believe in some cases the noose. Current may have to go that far to restore stability.

  5. If everyone called it the Council of Losers and Rejects the thought that it’s a bad idea might penetrate some thick rightwing skulls.

  6. She is following her hero Ralph Klein to the tee. The conservative MLAs and candidates who were defeated were put on his expert panels and paid $780. per day screwing taxpayers out of millions more paying for the phony conservatives we want. That’s how he rewarded them for being his pals and supporting him, just like Kenney and Smith have already done with Harper, Manning, and Oberg. I bet Mau and Coping will be other ones. I’m going to be surprised if rural Doctors don’t leave after reading some of the letters in Southern Alberta papers warning the people about what was happening in their health care system. But don’t forget Kenney hired former NDP Finance Minister from Saskatchewan Janice MacKinnon who was responsible for closing 52 rural hospitals and getting the NDP defeated by the Brad Wall government. They have a backup plan to close hospitals.

  7. My letter should read ” phony conservatives we Didn’t Want” I can make typing errors too.

  8. Like the Sovereignty Act that was intended to usurp the Alberta Legislature making it completely ineffectual, Danielle Smith will do anything to undermine the elected representatives of Edmonton. Smith is the most dangerous politician of Canada.

  9. A council appointed by the premier alone to ignore the Members of the Legislative Assembly elected by the people? The people are wrong, never right! (Of course, the same argument could be used against Danielle Smith.)

    This action proves that the premier has nothing but contempt for the will of the people, for free elections, for the legislature itself and for those elected to serve in it. She couldn’t resist her autocratic urges for 24 hours. Smith attempted to interfere in justice and was found guilty of breaking the Conflicts of Interest Act. That was then, before she was elected. Now we see that it wasn’t ignorance, but bullheaded determination to ignore democracy. On day one!

    The majority of people of this province have said, “She showed us who she was: a lawbreaker who flouts the rules. We’re fine with that.” Congratulations to those people. You won. Now you will live with the consequences of your own contempt for democracy. So will the rest of us who do not support the destruction of our democratic systems. So much for the old saying that when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” You’ve given her four years of freedom to crush democracy at the expense of your own. How’s that working out for you so far?

  10. This is a problem made by progressive parties in their targeting of policies to appeal to metro populations and to not care about rural populations.

    Likely, the main issue is that co2 taxes are primarily targeted at production. With taxes on consumption made whole by direct transfers to individuals. This puts the cost of fighting climate change on rural commodity producing jurisdictions and favours metro commodity consuming jurisdictions. That’s where the blue orange divide comes from. Worst case scenario for the metro jurisdictions is that they can avoid paying the tax by importing commodities.
    Sometimes your majoritarian ways bites you in the butt. It looks good on you.

    1. Actually, as folks have pointed out numerous times already, rural and urban voters poll roughly the same when it comes to core issues like health care, climate change, the economy, and the environment. The issue is that rural jurisdictions have been hijacked by very online types who act as bullies to the rest of their community. Many rural voters see no hope in changing this, and stay home. Elections in alberta are always poorly represented, but less so, in urban areas where people feel like a plurality of opinions may prevail.

      As for your part about emissions, as the right constantly points out, Canada’s per capita emissions are high but this has more to do with industry than consumers. Folks living in the urban core burn less oil and gas than rural folks, who also don’t really burn a tonne compared the global aggregate, INDUSTRY however accounts for a Massive percentage of our greenhouse gas output, and that’s not even counting downstream, because we don’t count those if other people burn our carbon. Why the hell wouldn’t we give consumers a bailout and stick it to the big polluters, it’s a much more effective tactic if you’re trying to change corporate behaviour.

      Finally. The rural population of this province is not exclusively employed by oil and gas, they make up roughly the same percentage of urban workers, who tend to vote more like their urban peers ( and a slim % of albertans overall ) so what are you even talking about.

      Born and raised in a town so small if you look both ways you can see it all and I’m still a communist. Deal

  11. Smith’s latest anti-democratic musings do indeed reflect her political DNA. Remember the significant role she played in Klein’s outrageous replacement of the legally elected Calgary Board of Education in the late 1990s?
    On the election debriefing, the commentaries have not yet fully taken into account the incredible divide between urban and rural Alberta. And, as you pointed out, Smith will have to fill most cabinet positions with rural members, further exacerbating the situation. This deep alienation between city and country citizens will cause great pain and harm to Alberta in coming years.

    1. From what I remember that was a spectacular failure on “14 Words” Dani’s part and Oberg dissolved the entire school board they were so disfunctional. I think this is illustrative of what’s to come but I’ll admit, I’m being hopeful. These people are so hateful of anyone other than themselves the idea of them cooperating at all is pretty laughable from where I’m sitting

  12. Travelling to various Alberta historical sites, are we? May I suggest the coulees around Drumheller where the company goons would trap and beat up workers? How about the 600-capacity hall at the end of main street Sylvan Lake where Tim Buck, the Communist leader would regularity fill the place with followers of an evening?

    Too long ago? How about just about any Alberta town on a rail line? There you cannot see the farmer-owned grain elevators torn down long before their time because the Alberta PCs and the Ottawa creeps allowed the railways to put them out of business so the cattle feedlots could have cheap feed grain? You can even see one at Kuusamo that is brand new, and only handled grain for a couple of years before the railways used the impunity given to them by God in Edmonton and Ottawa to bankrupt it. Now it handles fracking chemicals.

    Oh hey, how about the thousands of miles of rail line Ottawa paid to have upgraded to handle heavy grain cars, that the Alberta PCs and their crowd of self-entitled filth got closed and sold off for pennies on the dollar? The heavy rails were removed and sent down to the US to upgrade their grain handling system. But enough of ghost infrastructure, even if the wounds are still bleeding.

    Take a drive east towards Castor and marvel at the dozens of miles of rail cars designed to carry oil languishing on a siding. You want very recent history? How about the same line under Harper and Ritz holding hundreds of aluminum grain hopper cars designed to service the Churchill grain terminal? Harpo did not stop the railways from recycling them. Then he gave one of his biggest cheerleaders the Churchill Grain Terminal. Despite the fact Ottawa rebuilt the rail line, the cheerleader soon went broke on that one, proving that being a friend of Cons is no guarantee.

    How about the present and future? Keep going east and you will see the wind-farm around Halkirk which replaced the Forestberg coal-fired generator. Still want to stay with oil and gas? Last year formerly Great Britain built just two on-shore wind turbines. The Ukraine has better idea of how dangerous that is and built 19 on-shore wind turbines because renewable is not dependent on foreign powers. Not to mention it is a lot safer and more reliable than the largest nuclear power plant in Europe which is now just a potential accident waiting to happen in that benighted country.

    Too far east? Then speaking of benighted country, safe travels in Alberta, the land that was raised on robbery, to quote Joni Mitchell. Dani and her crew are part of a long tradition.

    1. This is a historical dressing down of the larcenous right wing in alberta that I could only hope to articulate. Bravo

      1. Thanks LB: sadly, I have been involved in most of those contemporary conflicts on the losing side. Aside from Lougheed, the Conservatives and their Wildrose/UCP offspring have never built anything. They are simply vandals at best, and parasites at worst. Liberals, Tories, same old stories.

  13. While I feel the focus on Smith’s judgment in the election was excessive and started to take away too much from other important issues, I agree it remains a problem. She seems drawn to bad ideas, so it is not just the case of saying or doing some things in the past, it is also a real concern going forward.

    If it was just reaching out to defeated candidates for feedback, this would probably be ok. Perhaps some will even actually tell her what they honestly think, although I suspect most will probably sugar coat it, in hopes of getting a nice appointment to an agency, board or commission. However, in the end, they were defeated because they did not resonate with their community and perhaps did not best understand their community. So putting them in a more permanent advisory position really does not make sense.

    If they are getting a paid government position to do so and they intend to run again, there is certainly a conflict there. However, based on her recent history, Smith does not seem good at understanding or handling such conflicts, so perhaps this is not surprising.

    An astute leader would take the fairly narrow election victory as a sign to be much more careful in their judgment in the future. So this is not a good sign. While this seems like a smaller thing, lets not forget it is sometimes smaller bad decisions that eventually cause the downfall of leaders. Such as Alison Redford about booking trips on government planes. She also had a sort of miracle election win after a chaotic, come from behind campaign because some conservative voters were hesitant to vote for another party.

  14. Didn’t the CPC have “shadow MPs” with constituency offices in eastern Canadian ridings to circumvent the actual elected Liberal MPs in those ridings? I seem to recall something like this after the 2015 election. The idea, of course, was to de-legitimize elected Liberal representatives. Sounds like Smith wants to do the same sort of thing

  15. Hey, why listen to people you don’t like when you can get positive reinforcement from people you do like? It worked for Jason Kenney until Covid-19 reared its ugly head….

  16. I don’t believe this is anything new.
    I recall political gadfly Paul Hinman reporting that the PC government at the time regularly invited their MLAs from neighbouring ridings to attend ribbon-cutting and giant cardboard cheque ceremonies in Cardston-Warner, discluding Hinman from attending.
    Expect to see the same from the current administration for Edmonton events, showcasing their failed candidates.

  17. Just when you reckon Dangerous Danielle can’t get any more so. . . She sets up a government of rejects and losers for Edmonton and Calgary. And this pile of misfits will be paid for by the voters who rejected them. It almost sounds like a Monty Python skit excepting the Circus would have rejected this one. It’s going to be a cess pool like existence for the next four years, with Danielle the duplicitous.

  18. As the family compact worked so well the last time, I guess the UCP wants to Take Back Alberta to the 1820’s. On a more recent note I guess they also missed the memo on the libertarian experiment in Kansas in the early 2010’s. That didn’t work out so well for the GOP either. It will work this time won’t it?

    What is the saying? Those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it.

  19. As the price of oil and tar goes down [though this is not a long-term prediction by me], what has to happen as Albertans get their $Billion tax cut? Either renege on that, or, as is more likely, raise fees for all sorts of things and sell any and every government entitiy as quickly as possible – a la Margaret Thatcher. Even before the election the UCP raised crop insurance premiums for the farmers who voted for them by some 60%!!

  20. When I was a lad I used to imagine hearing Willian Lyon Mackenzie’s horse galloping along the corduroy road that then passed in front of where our house was built. It was a proud fact old people liked to remind: the popular leader of the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion did ride along the 5th Concession and into what was then called Majorville, established in 1828 about a mile down Duffins Creek from the millpond; a millrace flowed at the dam-level down the side of the valley, gaining enough head at the concrete abutment in the village to fall through a waterwheel, turn the grinding stones of the gristmill across the road, and flow back into the river below the bridge—the last fully water-powered commercial gristmill in Ontario. The government dismantled the dam, the pond and race are filled in with trees now.

    The village was renamed Whitevale in 1855—I’m not sure why, only that there were plenty of Majors and Whites, generations of them, at the two-room school we attended, built in 1865 and closed in 1966. In 1864 the county bought a two-acre corner of a homestead’s field for the school; in 1963 my family built a house behind it, so we kids played tag around the old place after it was shuttered— the swings and baseball backstop were still there.

    I often sought adventure alone in the open countryside, small forest lots, ditches and creeks, and stone piles surrounding every field which were full of marine fossils— or go fishing in the millrace under huge willows, or in the river under the dam for a number of bass and catfish species, even yellow perch (since extirpated).

    Sometimes I’d sit in the tall grass on the side of the road in front of the schoolhouse, waiting for a friend to ambush. Everybody walked everywhere in those days. There was always stuff to do. Most boys had .22 rifles and we’d shoot pigeons in relays, a small band of armed ten-year olds waiting at each of the three or four barns the birds flew to after each volley of lead—until we bagged our fill. Until I accidentally shot and killed a bobolink I thought was a starling. I felt so bad about that I never hunted with a gun again.

    But on those hot summer nights with the fireflies winking over hundreds of acres of grain or hay (visiting in later years the whole region was planted with corn, so no more fireflies), sitting at the end of our laneway in front of the schoolhouse, waiting for a buddy to happen by in the dark—that’s when I’d hear Mackenzie’s hoofbeats on the corduroy logs, riding from homestead to homestead, recruiting farmers for the rebellion against the Family Compact down in Toronto forty miles away—sort of our version of the Three Musketeers or Davy Crockett. My dad was from southwestern Ontario so his folk-hero was Tecumseh (we’d always stop at his and General Brock’s memorials whenever we went down to visit relatives), but east of Hogtown where I’m from, it was Mackenzie.

    I recently found a tattered old history textbook at on of the used bookstores I haunt (in BC)—just like the text I had in Whitevale school. CW Jeffery’s illustrations still send me reeling back to my boyhood, so I purchased the thing for two bucks just for the famous etching of the Rebellion’s muster on Yonge Street, muskets, pitchforks, pike poles, top hats and muddy spats. I love it. Wasn’t until my Québécois friends out here in BC showed me that I discovered that they, too, cherish a famous rendering of les Patriots marching to the Rebellion of Lower Canada—the one with the toothless Habitant stepping proudly with his flintlock, clay pipe jutting out of his lantern jaw, the tassel bobbing along from the top of his toque. (Then, of course, there’s the Manitoban Che Guevara.)

    Mackenzie was elected MLA in 1827, and became Toronto’s first mayor five years later. After losing re-election, he published venomous pamphlets and newspaper articles about the hated Family Compact, making him a popular folk-hero among farmers who asked him to lead their march to Governor Francis Bond-Head’s mansion to present their demands in 1837.

    However, loyalist troops were dispatched to intercept them.

    Shots were fired outside Montgomery’s Tavern were combatants were fortifying their nerves. One man was killed and the rebels quickly dispersed, Mackenzie to Navy Island in the middle of the Niagara River were he proclaimed a provisional, republican government and sought American help to overthrow the Family Compact government of Upper Canada. The island was bombarded from the Canadian shore, two of his accomplices captured, tried and executed (no public inquiry required like nowadays) while Mackenzie himself fled across the border to New York State where he was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for violating US neutrality laws. He was pardoned by President Martin Van Buren, thence writing and publishing Van Buren’s biography (in glowing terms, no doubt), and was later pardoned by Canadian authorities (1849), after which he returned to elected politics until retirement (from politics, not publishing) in 1857. His home on Bond Street in Hogtown where he died (1861) is now an historical shrine.

    I’ll never go back to Whitevale. Friends tell me it’s heartbreaking. In the early 70s the governments of Canada and Ontario announced plans to expropriate thousands of acres around Whitevale (including several other similar towns) and build an international airport to relieve the traffic at Malton. The people fought it, but too late because expropriations had already started with the more remote farms inhabited by aging third- and fourth-generation heirs to their forebears pioneering spirit—but whose children were all gone to the Big Smoke for well-paying factory jobs (this was before NAFTA wiped out those jobs): they were more likely to take the first offer and rent an apartment in Markham, so by the time the plan became widely known, the government said it was too late to stop it.

    Sad thing, that. I watched as whole rural communities were literally destroyed, marriages stained beyond repair, early heart attacks and, in my case—as well as many others—time to quit high school and head out to the West Coast. That was 136 years after William Lyon Mackenzie rode along the fifth concession. When I tell that story to indigenous friends, they say: now you know a little bit of what’s it’s like to be an Indian in Canada. White acquaintances, however, are usually outraged or incredulous: how could this happen it Canada? To White people, they mean…

    Epilogue: no airport was ever built. My father rented the house he built from North Pickering Housing Authority, the last one of us to live there, alone for 15 years until my brother moved him down to Kitchener in his dotage and North Pickering demolished our old place. He now rests in peace in the Whitevale Cemetery where I personally dug his grave (the sexton, one of the Major boys, never showed), just across the concession road from his beloved homestead now in a forest of trees he planted. My brother, son, and I never even looked in, just headed for the tavern. It was too depressing. But at least I talked both of them into buying stones for their respective parents. My back still aches from that day. They each sent me photographic confirmation—such good boys! So there’s that.

    What’s heartbreaking is premier D’ohFo has recently decided to use his second mandate to develop this anomalous patch of rural sameness that has become virtually surrounded by the ever coalescing cities of Ontario. The old protest signs from half a century ago have come back out. I see them on the news and on FaceBook. My mother designed the green dove logo some fifty years ago—still in use: “People Over Planes,” or “POP.” Much of this area was subsequently designated greenbelt—most likely to avoid being sued for false expropriation. I looked at a drone pic a friend sent me and almost puked. My old man, my ex-wife, so many others in the little country boneyard (the stone Methodist church was long gone before my time) will be feeling the earthmovers and trucks as the last patch of real, living history in Metro Hogtown’s environs dies an ignominious death.

    “Don’t go back, Scotty—it’ll just kill you.”

    But at least the schoolhouse will be preserved for heritage sake. A man and his wife bought it in the late 60s and made the senior room into a cool home (the junior room he used to restore antique Wolsey cars). Some time after my mother left Whitevale, his wife died, leaving him alone to take care of my dottering dad across the hayfield. I can never thank him enough. A few years ago he called me from the veteran’s hospital and we reminisced. He passed at exactly 100 and one-half years old, to the day, a few months later. So there’s that. Thank goodness he isn’t around to see what a second-term braggart is doing to the area.

    My biggest motivation to leave was the new regional district created out of two and a half old counties that established its very own police force which employed whatever dregs couldn’t qualify for even the brutal York Regional Police of which we were truly afraid. These guys were mean, see ya gambolling along the concession road, haul you over, cuff you or maybe even pistol whip the back of your head—just for walking along the same old country road you had done all your life. I asked my best friend’s older brother what it was like on the West Coast. “Way better ‘n’ here, that’s for sure.” So my gal and I took our books to the high school office and then headed for BC. Never thought of moving back to stay. Not once. So I guess I should consider that lucky.

    They named the new RD, Durham Region after Lord Durham—his good name after a bad, bad thing. The goons they named Durham Regional Police. Now cul-de-sacs are being scarred into the hill were we used to live, so the cops will have more places to snooze or, otherwise, go looking for trouble—make it up if they have to…

    Alberta: don’t let this happen to you.

    1. I lived in Whitevale around 76-77. Rented an expropriated farmhouse. About 5 of us hippies. Loved those POP signs!

  21. Failed ucpcandidates obviously do not speak for Edmonton.
    Perhaps she should speak to elected officials..like city council, or elected MPs..NDP tho they are they speak for the city…where they were elected..

  22. All the whining by these phoney conservatives about how bad Ottawa is and what they have done to Albertans yet they offer no evidence to prove they have done anything to us. Their only evidence is all a pack of lies. As my friends have said since the Klein days “They are all mouth and no brains”. There is no one better at it than Pierre Poilievre he has never had an intelligent solution to anything, all he knows is blame it on someone else.

        1. He wasn’t a member of the Angela Davis Club at the U of A either I’d bet, snicker.

    1. Alan K. Spiller: Danielle Smith has started to screw up, and it’s been a very short time since the provincial election in Alberta was finished. An oil company is laying of 1500 employees. Danielle Smith said that she would keep Albertans employed. The UCP’s corporate tax cuts are not doing what they said would happen. The jobs aren’t being created.

    2. LMAO wow!!! Big Trudeau fan, are ya? Even Notley has complained about the Libs and their nonsense. Wait… are YOU Justin Trudeau? Almost fooled us there!

  23. The defeat on Monday was particularly disappointing because instead of somebody addressing the real issues in the province we are going to get four years of idiotic ideas. Her people did an amazing job of keeping her on message during the campaign and feeding the average low information voter a bunch of misinformation. It worked. If the NDP hope to win again they will need to figure out how to win in rural Alberta. I honestly don’t think that crazy ideas represent the average voter in rural areas but the message is not resonating.

  24. At the risk of sounding schoolmarmish, I don’t think humour is the way to approach this astounding idiocy. Humour makes it sound as if critics are merely taking cheap shots in a partisan manner. A better approach, it seems to me is to 1) clearly and succinctly repudiate the idea as the absurd craziness it is; 2) REFUSE it outright, unconditionally, and without equivocation, and, finally; 3) explain unrelentingly and in minute detail just why this makes absolutely no sense and can only be viewed as the fevered ramblings of a person monumentally unfit for the job. It’s time people stopped dancing around the edges of this madness and simply refused to accept it. Failure to challenge the outrageous at every turn in no uncertain terms has allowed it to thrive and grow. It will never just go away.

  25. David,

    Not only did the UCP come up empty in electing any candidates in the Edmonton region, but if I’m not mistaken, with Madu, Savage, and Shandro defeated, they also have no one from the legal community in their ranks.
    What happens in a case like this when it comes to assigning someone to the Justice Minister cabinet post, and the caucus has no lawyers?

    1. Hermes: Tradition and practicality have it that the Justice Minister ought to be a lawyer, but it is not a constitutional requirement. So, custom, but con convention. DJC

      1. Hey DJC, trying to save you time since you are on the road. This from a CBC article by Janet French about potential cabinet appointees:

        “Justice will be an especially challenging post to fill, Boyd says, with just three lawyers among elected candidates — Brian Jean, Mickey Amery and Jason Stephan. The minister doesn’t have to be a lawyer, but usually is, he said.”

        Here is the link to the article.
        https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/who-should-be-in-danielle-smith-s-next-cabinet-experts-outline-the-possibilities-1.6861422

        1. Dave: In my opinion, Brian Jean is bone lazy and Jason Stephan is a social conservative loon, so Mo Amery would be the logical candidate for any sane premier. Since Brian Jean still harbours ambitions for the boss’s job, I guess that means Jason Stephan is in! DJC

  26. Another question for you, David: Is there a list published somewhere of TBA candidates? And were all of the TBA candidates successful?
    Which of these individuals do you expect to be appointed to cabinet posts?
    Thanks for responding to my questions.

    1. Hermes: I don’t have a list right now. I am on the road in another province. I will try to come up with one. Not all MLAs who end up voting with TBA will be charter TBA supporters. Some will hide their affiliation. But it should be possible to put a partial list together. DJC

  27. Laugh, Liberals are calling the ndp bluff. You’re a Liberal now, how does it feel?

  28. “The council of losers”, nice ring to it. At least in B.C. they are appointed to the boards of Crown Corporations or hired by some right wing lobby group.
    If Smith goes ahead with her “plans” perhaps its time to hire a few lawyers and take the UPC to court, if they can. Like that nice lawyer from Toronto who took Harper and his cons to court when they passed legislation which violated the Constitution.
    I’m sure the voters of Edmonton will ever so happy with Smith paying particular attention to them………………
    every country has at least on politician who boogles the mind. guess our’s is smith.

  29. All this trash talk needs to stop! The NDP lost and Danielle Smith is the Premier. Unless you have something constructive to say, don’t say anything at all! If you’re not part of the solution to the issues you’re part of the problem and nothing ever gets solved by trashing someone!

    1. Linda, in criticizing Premier Pants on Fire for her ignorance about democracy, the critics on this blog are being constructive. And for your information, in a democracy people have the freedom to voice their opinions. My advice to you – plug your sensitive ears and close your eyes, it’s going to be a bumpy 4 years for you and your hero, Danielle the Demented.

    2. Geez Linda. When your team loses, don’t you yell at the tv about the awful coach or a lazy player? Then you’re back cheering at the next game. Same with politics except the stakes are higher.

    3. Linda, trash talk is what smith and kenny do/did, along with some other upc candidates. Canada has a Constitution. We won’t shut up just because you don’t like what we have to say. smith won an election, no one made her the an absolute monarch.

    4. Linda: Do you like being trampled on by a pretend conservative and Reformer, who is so deceptive, hates democracy, will gut public healthcare, destroy public education, so both can be privatized, will harm the environment, cheat us out of our oil and tax wealth, do the most priciest shenanigans, which will lose us a lot of money, cause poverty levels to spike, make crime levels swell, and cause your utility and insurance costs to go sky high? What good is any of this? This is what Danielle Smith and the UCP will do. The UCP deserves criticism, because of what they do, which is detrimental to the well being of Alberta. Danielle Smith is on par with Ralph Klein for being the worst premier Alberta ever had.

    5. Literally not how democracy works Linda, in fact it is our express duty TO criticize.

    6. Linda, I suggest you tell that to the UCP trolls who infest Postmedia and CBC comment sections. Compare what you read there with the comments here. You can apologize later.

  30. I have always been an NDP supporter, and was devastated when the UCP won the election. I was so sure that Alberta was ready for what I considered a sane government. Yesterday, though, I stumbled across this podcast on YouTube. It’s a day-after analysis, not of why the UCP won, but why the NDP did not. Nate Pike uses SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to show how the loss came about, and what we, as NDP supporters, can do to prepare for the next election. It’s one point of view, but it made sense to me.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nh9MTyYlMo

  31. Hello Former and LAS,
    Not sure which I like better, “Danielle the Duplicitous” or “Danielle the Demented”.

  32. I’ve been reading comments sections in the papers again (I should know better), and something really bothered me that I couldn’t put my finger on, until I was ruminating during a lovely family drive in the foothills.
    It was in an article on CBC about the same story, and the trolls were vicious in their vengeance: Edmonton should take what they get from the UCP, and like it; it’s their own fault they didn’t elect someone on the winning side. While the tone was ugly, it was not surprising—it’s my own fault for reading that garbage. One particular poster’s comments stuck in my craw, though. She professed that while she thought Smith was the less trustworthy and worse leader, she had told anyone who’d listen in the cities that they ought to vote UCP or they might just not have a say at all, afterwards. At first, it almost made sense, even though it felt wrong. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? I mean, I’ve made comments in a similar vein about federal politics, that Albertans are kinda dumb for always being in opposition (the Harper years notwithstanding, although I don’t exactly remember him ushering in a Golden Age for us, either). And then it struck me: this insidious nonsense is how a one-party state gets made. I suppose it’s kinda what we had for 40 years of the Amorphous Political Blob of the PC’s (thanks, D. Cournoyer), and it’s no surprise to anyone else. No accountability, because no one else can win. I do remember feeling powerless as a young adult under Klein, with family in public education. As much as the trolls who want Edmonton to starve and fail for betting on the wrong horse disgust me, this subservience and acceptance of failure from the get-go are worse.

    On another note, I had the pleasure of enjoying a local brewery in the Pass tonight. The sense of community there was like a warm blanket… just not my warm blanket. Small wonder it’s hard for someone seen as an outsider to make inroads there. And I wish I had somewhere at home that felt like that, too.

    1. A strong argument for proportional representation of some sort something we will likely never see in this province as both of the main parties wouldn’t benefit. It would allow more people to vote for a party that aligns with their beliefs. The descent into a two party system is not a good thing either, just look south of the border. Looking through the numbers both parties benefited from the collapse of the Alberta party, likely more so the NDP. So you have 10s of thousands of voters who “lent” their vote to a party they don’t really align with or didn’t vote at all. Not a recipe for a healthy democracy and an engaged citizenry.
      Even in Notley’s riding one in five didn’t vote for her, I believe that was one of the biggest margins, so one in five doesn’t have representation. Likely we would see a drop in percentages for both main parties which is why it will never happen.

    2. This is a frequent ruse used by politicians of all kinds. A quasi threat along the lines of vote for the government or you won’t have a voice at the table. Peter Lougheed used a similar line around the 1980’s when facing a paltry 4 person, split in two parties opposition and it worked like sweet lulu. I still can’t believe it 4 decades later.

  33. Press release accidentally left at photocopier. Was scheduled for 9PM Friday night distribution….

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    President Danielle Smith today signed an Order in Council revoking the use of the metric system in Alberta. “As the United States is our biggest trading partner, switching to the system known as imperial will reduce costs and red tape for Alberta producers. And as we move towards union with Montana, this is an obvious first step. Metric was imposed on Albertans by eastern elites without our consent.”

    Direct enquires to: Deputy Minister, Roads & Weights

    -30-

  34. On another subject who is going to be Justice Minister? Shandro looks like he might lose – good riddance. Copping lost and Maidu lost (thankfully). I believe that they have only 3 lawyers left: Brian Jean, Mickey Amery and Jason Stephan. Not exactly superstars. The minister doesn’t have to be a lawyer but their is quite a bit of precedence. It might be entertaining if Smith did it herself. She seems to have legal opinions, albeit bad ones.

  35. Wednesday, August 9, 2023.
    This is the date set by Alberta Provincial Court.
    To sentence Artur Pawlowski for his conviction of criminal mischief.
    Took 4 phone calls to Lethbridge court clerk’s office and we finally have a date for sentencing. Let’s hope we finally have some accountability for his criminal conduct.
    Prison time?

  36. There’s something on my mind about the federal government abusing Alberta.
    A federal crown corporation is busy racking up huge cost overuns to twin the Trans Mountain Pipeline to Burnaby in BC. You and I as Canadian taxpayers are guaranteeing to backstop these cost overuns. All this to keep Albertan Oil and Gas interests happy. It’s not working. The pipeline expansion will never pay for itself. An Alberta government captured by the O&G industry is still threatening separation from a federal system which is building this folly of a pipeline.
    Prime Minister Trudeau consistently repeated during hearings about the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion that this project was in Canada’s best interest.
    It aint. It’s only purpose is to molify an Alberta government subservient to the oil and gas industry. You and I will be paying for this for decades to come.

  37. hi Dave
    I too am wondering which UCP to watch for TBA,
    This might be helpful
    If you find the 7 and don’t list them in an article I would really appreciate a list. Rock On !!
    Thanks Mike
    Lori, quoted from the Tyee
    “Williams said the divisive turmoil within the UCP created by the far-right Take Back Alberta or TBA grassroots group, which won numerous candidate nomination races, will likely continue.

    Seven TBA candidates were elected and “that shaves away more of the UCP majority,” she said. “If those folks start to flex their muscles, that could be really problematic for the government.”

    “It’s going to be a pretty tough marriage to maintain,” Williams said. “They have got some pretty deep divisions and disagreements within that party, and it will be interesting to see if they can hold it together.”
    Lori Williams, MA, Associate Professor
    Student Advisor, BA-Policy Studies major
    Office: EA3007
    Phone: 403.440.5964
    E-mail: [email protected]

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