It’s never too early to panic! UCP introduces bill to extend its term and ‘control everything, everywhere, all at once’

Re: pic of Marlaina…..
Looking wistfully into space thinking ‘ I wish I was back @ the Macdonald’s drive thru, it really a happy day ‘…..??

The harm continues

The NDP candidates must know that the gig is up and Nenshi is far ahead as they are now playing, the anti-union card.

Wily Chrétien was granted an early election in 2000 and the partisan probably didn’t feigned indignation, but it was maudlin nonetheless. The right was still in disarray after the Tory’s two largest back-to-back parliamentary majorities got reduced to just two seats in ‘93; erstwhile ProgCons flocked to Bouchard’s Bloc Québécois, which became Official Opposition, or Manning’s Reform which worked hard that term to restore a right-wing party to power but, without support from its Quebec whipping-boy, merely replaced the Bloc as Opposition in Chretien’s successful 2nd-term bid in ‘97; after Manning’s ‘unite-the-right’ fiasco snuffed his aspiration to lead the new Reform-a-CRAP-a-Con Alliance and instead elected the inimitable Stockwell whose jingoistic leadership hived off an independent conservative caucus in protest, Chrétien simply waited until Day’s jet-ski pants had fallen all the way down to his ankles, only then arranging a snap-election against yet another hopelessly-led party of the right—third in a row. Chrétien handily won.

Its frustration understandable, the right affected outrage. Chretien’s playing ego-politics with the election date purely to get a rare, third-term feather in his cap, it accused. Foul ball!—it cried, the Liberals were taking unfair advantage of the goofy leader the Anglo-right’s own members elected and, in its self-appointed accuser-and-judge reaction that would thenceforth become template for its self-justified retribution for introspectively-perceived victimhood, it made a holy vow to never be hungry again—for tomorrow is another day!

In fact Chrétien was capable of doing more than one thing at a time and knowing how. Some say he sought a third, back-to-back majority term (first one since Wilfred Laurier’s Liberals in 1908) to spite his arch-rival, Paul Martin, whom he’d kept close as finance minister (underlying friction: Chretien’s welfare liberalism vs Martin’s business liberalism). Much more loudly, Chrétien was accused of taking unfair advantage of Day’s supposed bad luck, of gaming election rules, and of moral duplicitousness the Anglo-right loved to smear Quebec politicians with. Yet Chrétien’s rationale convinced to the Governor: the Loyal Opposition must be prepared to assume government at a moment’s notice in keeping with Westminster tradition that the Sovereign’s subjects can never be, not for an instant, without a government that can act. Plainly the Day Opposition wasn’t prepared and the Governor agreed a general election would remedy.

While outwardly affecting moral indignation, shadowy stalkers circled the anoxic murk of the conservative fish tank, eventually to swallow whole the two right-wing factions, rump-first, in 2003, then winning power in 2006 and implementing a four-year fixed-election date. The dastardly Liberals would never agin “cheat” Canadian ‘democracy’! Proof that BC Liberals were really a right-wing party, totally unrelated to federal Liberals: premier Campbell’s legislation of Canada’s first four-year term in 2001 on identical grounds as his federal conservative counterparts.

Chrétien’s 3rd term kept Canada out of Bush’s Iraq War, but he could not avert the party’s growing left-right schism which inevitably reduced it to second-, then third-party status for the next decade. From 2001 (BC) to 2013 (Quebec) right-wing governments across Canada implemented the four-year fixed-date term.

“Playing politics” in a place where we pay politicians do do just that was never a cause for real moral outrage: Canadians deserved a proper Opposition and Chrétien —whatever his other motivations—used his prerogative to get rid of one which didn’t qualify. Officially speaking, there was nothing partisan about it—heck, even Day’s own caucus had officially split over his stupid leadership. IndyCon MP Deb Gray said it herself: Not everyone is cut out to be a leader, Stock, and there’s no shame in stepping aside for the good of the party. Chrétien and Her Excellency Clarkson agreed it would be good for the country, too.

Reform’s right-wing populism was never far enough right for Stephen Harper who circled that sinking ship until there was blood in the water. He turned conservative partisanship sharply in a republican direction, becoming pseudo-conservative in all but name. What foreign influence the neo-right now hypocritically accuses the Liberal government of allowing Harper overtly embraced when seeking support in the USA for his neo-right vision from various Republican orgs while chiding his own country as a socialist nanny state; he vowed to make Canada “unrecognizable” and, once in power, even acquiesced to removing of the Queen’s official portrait anywhere it might offend his constituent’s anti-monarchy sentiments. He rather liked the Congressional parliamentary model with its rigidly fixed election-dates and interminable partisan campaigning. But he could not long affect the war-hawk image traditional Canadian conservatism often sported with its credo of God, King and Country: his disingenuous charade backfired when vets organized provincial ABC— ‘Anybody But Conservative’ —election campaigns in protest against the CPC’s cavalier veterans’ pension and war-injury-benefit policies (ABC got in line to give the HarperCons the boot in 2015).

Harper’s biggest hypocrisy was enacting the four-year fixed-term only to abrogate his own legislation when it suited him. He outrageously bullied the Queen’s Governor into allowing a parliamentary prorogation on the sole ground that the CPC minority would have lost a confidence vote on a bill it had already tabled. By longstanding tradition the GG should have allowed the vote to proceed and, if the CPC lost, she should then have considered the commitment of the three opposition parties to govern as an alliance and, if satisfied, allowing them to test their own confidence in the HoC or, if not, calling an election. As it was, Harper’s abuse of his own law —and worse, of the Queen’s representative—nearly caused a constitutional crisis (cooler heads forestalled Liberal MPs from petitioning the Queen directly which would have created an unheard of and very undesirable precedent).

Thence, Canadians got used to their elected politicians ‘playing games’ with the election date by way of early elections whenever governing parties felt it propitious— sometimes even for the right reasons. For example, the New Brunswick ProgCon, BC NDP and federal Liberal governments convinced their respective governors to allow early elections on grounds that the Covid pandemic required new mandates. In contrast, Jim Prentice’s early-election call appeared so dodgy —predicated in part because the Alberta PC government’s absorption of Wildrose’s leader, Danielle Smith, and half her caucus when they crossed the floor should, he probably argued to the governor, get another mandate from the people. The Alberta right’s double-play attempt—despite the province’s own fixed-term law—saw the mandate go to the upstart NDP instead. After 44 years, the PCs were out.

Normally—after debates about fixed-dates died down—, snap-elections and the occasional mismatch of the winning party’s inferior “popular vote” to the loser’s superior one—such as JT’s 2nd-term minority victory over Scheer’s Opposition which, due to First-Past-the-Post, got a larger share of the popular vote. Despite the fact that we do not vote at-large for a leader (like a US president) the meaningless pop-vote mismatch provoked howls of separatist outrage from the two solidly CPC provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, inspiring “United We Roll” and “Freedom Convoys” which loser Scheer and, now, Poilievre haven’t been shy about courting. Proof that a little knowledge about how our democracy works is a dangerous thing.

But extending the four-year fixed term? Perhaps because of it —certainly in BC—we have forgotten the howls of outrage and, sometimes, retribution against parties which governed much beyond four years back when there weren’t any fixed dates at all. Used to be that every day a government approached the five-year constitutional term limit was perceived as proof of its perfidy—or at least its incapacity to address pressing issues of the day. Sometimes the overly-ripe government would try to excuse the fruit flies buzzing around it only to unintentionally prove the point. Or sometimes called “jumping the shark.”

The final “but”: Alberta’s TUBACP extending its term past the legislated four-year limit?—three years before the next scheduled election? What?—does that mean it licenses itself to settin’ the woods alight in order to trigger its desired extension—toward the deadly five years? WT—! Maybe shoulda been called the “Wildfire Party” instead.

That the BACPUT government has no political, psephological, or democratic bone in its head is a foregone conclusion. But Albertans should suspect that keeping this clown-car around to organize an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ response to expected wildfires (curiously admitting that problem smoke due to climate change is a permanent thing now) is about the last thing real professional wildfire fighters need. They already know what to do and don’t need any partisan politics to get in their way. After all, lives will be at stake.

But, for Danielle Smith, it’s her government—maybe even her party’s existence—that’s at stake if she can’t game the system and cheat both voters and the coffin laying open at the end of year five.

Piece a work, my friends, piece a work!

Jason Kennedy’s disgraced brother that was run out of BC, now owns Emergo Academy in Calgary, which trains people to become recovery and mental health coaches in two months.

https://www.readtheorchard.org/p/audio-jason-kenneys-disgraced-brother

This morning as I exited my abode I was confronted by? Wait for it! An Orange sun accompanied by a smoke filled atmosphere! According to data, this is no longer an anomaly. Who knew? What can be done? When did it start? Here? Why is it happening again? How do we change it?

More bad news, UCP organizers are trying to use their antivaxx lies against the children of Alberta.
https://twitter.com/markusoff/status/1789371860565508559
This had better be the last straw leading Albertans to get rid of Smith and the UCP.