Once upon a time Danielle Smith told Marco Van Huigenbos, ‘Coutts must win!’ Now she can’t even find the poor guy’s phone number

Now that the chickens are coming home to roost for some of the would-be Canadian colour revolutionaries of 2022, a certain amount if schadenfreude in social media was inevitable given the rhetoric of the Coutts blockaders and Ottawa occupiers. 

A lot of it can be summarized in the common Internet abbreviation, FAFO, which means, “fool around and find out,” or words to that effect. 

But I can’t help but feel some empathy, although not sympathy, for some of these characters, who were enabled and emboldened by cynical right wing politicians in Alberta and now can’t get them to pick up their calls. 

I know that by saying this I’ll get a storm of comments by folks who normally agree with me saying sharply, in effect, that they should have known better. 

And fair enough. But as anyone who’s survived being a teenager should understand, it’s easy to get carried away by a bad idea that might have life altering consequences. 

Most of us who have fallen out of the back of a moving pickup truck,* for example, live to tell the tale. Occasionally, though, someone ends up sentenced to life in a wheelchair, or worse, as a result.

Which is why it’s a bad idea to ride in the open back of a pickup truck driven by another teenager, just sayin’. If you do anyway, don’t say the old guy at AlbertaPolitics.ca didn’t warn you. 

I speak, of course, of the plaintive social media posts of Marco Van Huigenbos, the former Fort Macleod town councillor and Take Back Alberta stalwart, who played a major role in the Coutts blockade – although, as he tried to insist at trial, not as major a role as the justice system argued. (He resigned his town council seat in February, saying he faced personal legal challenges that “may indirectly cast our community and my role on council in a negative light.”)

Now that Mr. Van Huigenbos and two others have been found guilty of mischief over $5,000 – a charge that may sound light hearted but is a serious offence with serious penalties – he’s suddenly discovered that some of the right-wing politicians he supported, and who he thought supported him, don’t remember his name let alone his telephone number. 

The jury in Lethbridge certainly didn’t waste a lot of time on April 16 finding Mr. Van Huigenbos, Alex Van Herk, and Gerhard Janzen guilty of one count each of that Criminal Code offence, which in theory could result in jail terms of as long as 10 years.

Justice Keith Yamauchi of the Alberta Court of King’s Bench ordered pre-sentence reports for all three, and set a date on July 22 for a sentencing hearing – which is bound to be an uncomfortable wait for the members of the trio. 

Obviously frustrated, Mr. Van Huigenbos took to social media a day later to complain that “it’s been a bit disappointing how those who have benefited much from my political involvement now remain silent.”

He pointed to Premier Danielle Smith by name, saying that she, “and many other members of the legislature I engaged with privately, frequently expressed their support and sympathy. They even thanked me for my service.”

“To not even receive a private text or message of concern stings,” he admitted. “Hearing instead via many channels that the desire is to put Coutts and Covid in the rear view mirror is well, a bit shocking.”

“Politics is a dirty game,” he concluded. “It’s been a quick study!”

At the risk of being harsh, it’s sad, but underlings being left to twist in the wind, as the saying goes, is an old, old story. No one else is shocked. 

When you throw your lot in with a political movement that emphasizes “the virtue of selfishness,” you should expect no better. 

Mr. Van Huigenbos would be doing a genuine public service, though, if he were to provide the public with a list of his fair-weather MLA friends from 2022. I imagine that Albertans on both sides of the political rift that now divides this province would benefit from knowing those names. 

In an interview with a far-right website, Ms. Smith, characteristically, blew off the whole matter as “a caution” to would-be blockaders and incorrectly suggested the trio had been charged under Alberta’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act, not the Criminal Code. 

The Critical Infrastructure Defence Act was former premier Jason Kenney’s probably unconstitutional effort to intrude on federal criminal law jurisdiction, although it was promoted by Mr. Kenney as a tool to suppress protests by environmentalist and First Nations opponents of petroleum industry infrastructure projects. 

But all that proves is that Ms. Smith can’t be counted upon even to be technically accurate when she’s blowing off her former allies in the civil war within the UCP over whether or not to skid Mr. Kenney.

“‘Coutts must win’ was what you said at the time,” Mr. Van Huigenbos complained on social media, addressing Ms. Smith, last Saturday, “what happened?” 

What happened is the Mr. Van Huigenbos and his comrades got charged and suddenly had the potential to be a political inconvenience to Ms. Smith. She had already learned after her efforts to pardon anti-vaccine street preacher Artur Pawlowski last year that she not only doesn’t have the powers of a U.S. governor, but that acting like she does can get her in political hot water. 

Coutts must win. Really? 

One imagines Mr. Van Huigenbos’s lawyer has advised him to stop commenting publicly on this matter until the pre-sentence report has been completed and his sentence handed down. 

That too is good advice that someone who is a quick study really ought to take to heart. 

*I’m pretty sure a frequent commenter on this blog was driving that pickup truck down Pandora Avenue in Victoria when your blogger fell out. No names, though, because he probably doesn’t even remember, and his dad sold that truck decades ago.