During this fall’s eventful session of the Alberta Legislature, the United Conservative Party Government attacked the rights of some vulnerable Albertans to medical treatment, undermined the right of all citizens to public information, made it easier to keep citizens from exercising their right to use public land, and even tried to make it illegal for law-abiding citizens to obey federal laws.
Then they marked the end of the session yesterday by publishing a news release on the government website stating that “Alberta’s government was laser-focused on the protection and promotion of Albertans’ rights and freedoms, a theme that united all 13 pieces of legislation passed this session.”
This kind of inversion of the truth is characteristic of many UCP statements. Nevertheless, it must be said that even the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s famous fictional account a dystopian future would have stopped using the term “laser-focused” by now, surely the stalest lame metaphor in this province’s public discourse.
Denying the right of a few citizens to medical treatment was part of a trio of laws designed to victimize a tiny minority of trans people to satisfy the base MAGA urges of the UCP’s woke-obsessed base.
The Education Amendment Act, 2024, the Health Statutes Amendment Act and the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act each include measures based on the anti-woke hysteria used so effectively by the Republican party south of the Medicine Line.
The first bill will force students under 16 to get their parents’ permission if they want to change their names or pronouns at school; the second will prohibit physicians from treating young people under 16 seeking transgender treatment with puberty blockers and hormone therapies, even if their parents give permission; and the third will ban transgender athletes from competing in leagues not designated as co-ed in the name of protecting women’s sports.
None of this is necessary or addresses a real problem, and in some cases it will result in cruelty. But it will win votes for the UCP in certain quarters.
Premier Smith, who used to shed crocodile tears about the plight of transgender young people, has suggested she might use the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ “notwithstanding clause” if the provisions are overturned by the courts in the inevitable legal challenges.
The Access to Information Act will redefine cabinet confidentiality to include messages between ministers and political staffers, and among political staff, to shield the government from public disclosure of public information.
The new exemptions will prevent disclosure of any document created by or for the premier, any other ministers, or the Treasury Board, including emails. Well, at least this save government political aides from the inconvenience of using vaguely named Gmail accounts to avoid FOIP requests, as is common practice now.
The All-Season Resorts Act, which Government House Leader Joseph Schow bragged about in that Orwellian press release will allow the government to exempt any developer from normal environmental regulations to build exclusive resorts that will never welcome ordinary Albertans. Professional Biologist Lorne Fitch will have more to say about this in this space this weekend.
Mr. Schow was also the sponsor of the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, which will have negligible impact on either farness or safety in sport, but provides the party base with a convenient whipping child. Well, the UCP certainly isn’t about to try, as at least one prominent U.S. conservative politician has done in such circumstances, “to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.”
As for trying to keep law-abiding citizens from obeying federal laws, the UCP left that up to a fatuous Sovereignty Act motion passed by the Legislature that appears principally to be intended to hide the amount of carbon that energy companies operating in Alberta pump into the planet’s atmosphere. This will pretty well put paid to the notion of “ethical oil” from Alberta, but one suspects we’re well beyond that sort of pretence by now anyway.
The UCP position is that since the Canadian Constitution gives provinces jurisdiction over natural resources, Alberta’s Government can therefore order fossil fuel companies operating here not to obey the laws passed by Parliament. As was noted earlier in this space, one doesn’t need to be a constitutional expert to suspect that this is not going to fly if it ever gets to court.
But then that doesn’t really matter because the immediate goal of such grandstanding is to attack Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Liberal. This is the same reason Ms. Smith and the UCP will never contribute to any “Team Canada” effort to save Canadians in other provinces from U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s plan to impose heavy sanctions on U.S. allies who don’t dance to his tune.
In other news, the UCP was willing, however, to agree to take $162 million from Ottawa to fund three extremely expensive drugs for rare diseases affecting a small number of patients who might otherwise face bills of $100,000 or more a year for treatment.
Credit where credit is due, this deal was part of the National Strategy for Drugs for Rare Diseases, through which the federal government has budgeted up to $1.4 billion over three years for bilateral agreements with provinces and territories.
Taking Alberta Backwards. That should summarize what is going on with Danielle Smith and the UCP. What a horrific mess we have on our hands. The UCP have elements of the Social Credit Party, the Reform Party, Ralph Klein, and the Republicans in the United States. A very bad combination. Had anyone listened to us when we said how bad the UCP would be, we wouldn’t have this nightmare on our hands.
Anonymous Have you any relatives in the business of farming anymore? I don’t and one is whining about how the carbon tax is destroying them and I was under the impression that it wouldn’t. When I was in Sweden a few years ago no one mentioned that it was a problem for farmers. It’s been in place in Sweden since 1991 and they should know.
Fuel for farm use was exempt from the carbon tax. Lots of whin ing, not much substance. DJC
That’s exactly what I thought. Thanks David
Alan K. Spiller: I have rural relatives who aren’t enamored with the UCP.
This was echoed by Peter Lougheed decades ago referring to the
the social credit party before him. And then his warning also when he warned voters that the “reformers”were “trouble” as it would later play out with the Harper years. And now here we are with a far right extremist in the premier’s office with a boat load of conspiracy theories and endless crazy policies that will keep going down a rabbit role at our expense!
BWAHAHAHAHAHA Canadians laugh in your general direction, Alberta. Hopefully your egg prices are satisfactory.
It never stops amazing me the UCP concept of freedom – it is a pure fascist idea.
Carlos: Not to disagree, but I think it is best described as a neoliberal idea. “Freedom” means complete economic freedom, including the freedom to lie to employees, defraud customers, and destroy the commonweal. “Democracy” means anything that permits total economic freedom. If the hoi-polloi votes the wrong way, elections will be seen as a threat to democracy, and democracy as a threat to freedom. Fortunately (from the neoliberal perspective) we have only neoliberal political parties in this country bar a few fringe organizations with no representation in any legislature. DJC
In my book Dani has gone from Ditz to Dolt to Dangerous DF
Teachers, you know what to do. Refer to all students by their surnames only, adding the first initial if needed when multiple students have the same surname, or first and middle initials if needed. I verify that this is done in at least one other democratic country, even for primary school students. Hence, the appropriate pronoun is “they/them” for all. Very inclusive, much less paperwork. Aren’t you busy enough with all the permission slips for sex education and extra assessments for the youngest of the youngs?
As for the rest, the MAGA Republican takeover of Alberta and Canada has begun. Their foot is in the door with all these repugnant policies and the Fox News “drill baby” Danielle.
Now let’s see if they can cause a run on the banks by collapsing ATB Financial, maybe taking the credit unions with them. Treasury, schmeasury. Who’s to know what will happen if nobody is allowed to know what is happening? Lesson: the fox is in charge of the hen house with bird flu bearing down.
Why did you vote for this, Albertans? Cognitive damage from Covid? Enjoy the dictatorship: leopards, faces. You were warned.
Abs: Circa Canada’s centennial, I had teachers in my junior high school class who referred to us that way. It was an all-boys class, so more of an army thing than a gender sensitivity thing, I suspect, but who knows? Anyway, it’s a great idea. DJC
Agreed! The MAGA
shift is in full swing. Silent Night!
To celebrate the end of the session, Marlaina is taking a dozen or so of her besties to the Four Seasons in Las Vegas on the taxpayers dime. They don’t even try to hide the grifting anymore because they know Albertans don’t care.
What’s left of our press corpse needs a swift kick in the nads!
So “Alberta’s government was laser-focused on the protection and promotion of Albertans’ rights and freedoms”? This is true; but only if you accept that the Albertans whose rights the UCP are protecting are:
• Fundamentalist Christians
• Real-estate developers (current emphasis on commercial properties)
• CEOs of oil companies (as a group, they may differ from the UCP on what’s good for them)
And, most important of all:
• UCP cabinet ministers, with the Premier herself first and foremost.
It’ll take a win by Naheed Nenshi’s NDP to undo the damage by Smith et al. And even that’s not guaranteed, given 1) center-left parties in all the nominal democracies can’t get a grip on how to defeat the current crop of authoritarians, and 2) Nenshi’s cloak of invisibility and 3) the demonstrated timidity of Alberta’s more-or-less center political party.
It’s interesting to note the Smith government is willing—sometimes—to accept funding from the Federal government. The Federal press release includes a quote from federal minister of health Mark Holland, and one from provincial health minister Adriana LaGrange. (Of course, LaGrange’s statement ignores the Federal government’s initiative and seems to claim all the credit for the UCP government. Or maybe I’m just being cynical.)
We’ll see whether the agreement, as administered by the UCP government, actually delivers needed treatment to those unfortunate people who have rare diseases. Given the current state of the UCP’s “improvements” to Alberta Health Care, I won’t bet anything I can’t afford to lose.
Mike J Danysh: Danielle Smith is running a dictatorship. She wants to keep herself in power for as long as she can. UCP treatment is not a safe bet. Nearly $100 million was blown on Tylenot from Turkey. It has a myriad of problems.
This is what authoritarians do, they take away or restrict powers as much as they can and restrict access to information. Smith, who formerly claimed to be a libertarian, has steadily made quite the transformation over time into a leader more heavy handed that her predecessors, including most of the conservative ones.
Of course she continues to distract us with the latest war of words with the current Federal government, all while she does this, which seems to work to some extent, particularly in mainstream Alberta media coverage. I do wonder what will happen if she no longer has the current Federal government to constantly attack, if there will be more scrutiny of this and other things she has done. I suppose time will tell.