Gee whiz! Who knew “U.S. President Donald Trump’s top economic advisor,” as the CBC respectfully described Kevin Hassett, visited Edmonton of all places last summer?

U.S. President Donald Trump (Photo: Daniel Torok/The White House).

What was he doing here? Apparently no one thought to ask. 

At any rate, Dr. Hassett – who has been the director of the U.S. National Economic Council for all of 17 days now – was featured in Canadian news reports yesterday after he told the U.S. business news TV channel CNBC that when he was in downtown Edmonton on his mysterious visit last summer “he saw an ambulance responding to someone overdosing on fentanyl outside his hotel.”

The story also recounted how Dr. Hassett said he also witnessed “people who ‘got into a fight with cops over drugs.’”

Apparently he went on to claim that President Trump’s trade war on Canada and regime-change scheme isn’t about trade, it’s about drugs, and that “the fact is, Canada has a drug crisis, and it’s spilling into the U.S. It needs to stop.”

The U.S. drug crisis came from Canada? Yet another Who-Knew Moment! 

Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

Now, I’ve never won a Nobel Prize in economics, so I’m not prepared to accuse Dr. Hassett of being “wrong at every important juncture and refusing to admit or learn from mistakes.” I’ll leave that to former New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman, who does have a Nobel Prize in the dismal science. 

But I am wondering how Dr. Hassett knew the person that ambulance he saw with his very own eyes right outside his hotel had been overdosing on fentanyl?

Did he stop to chat with the paramedics as they performed their duties? Perhaps an emergency medical technician told him: “Why, yes, sir! This poor fellow is suffering from an overdose of fentanyl. I’m so sorry it had happen in front of your hotel. Now, if you don’t mind awfully, could you step aside for a moment as we pop him over to the Royal Alex Emergency Room? Enjoy your visit to E-Town, sir!” 

Unlikely, you think? I do too. 

In fact, the simplest explanation – Occam’s razor, and all that – is that Dr. Hassett just made it up.

Tim Cartmell, the United Conservative Party’s favourite candidate to become mayor of Edmonton (Photo: commonsenseedmonton).

But that nevertheless suggests someone put some ideas about drugs and disorder on the mean streets of Edmonton in his head. Could it have been someone he was visiting in Edmonton? Is it possible Dr. Hassett was taken on a tour where he was told by one of his hosts, perhaps not exactly truthfully, that our capital city is a drug-infested dump? 

Or could it be that senior officials of the United Conservative Party Government are badmouthing Edmonton – a city they don’t particularly like because they consider Mayor Amarjeet Sohi and many elected councillors too woke – to influential American right-wingers wherever they find them? 

Think about this dear readers. Think about how this might, say, have influenced the Trump Administration to slap crippling sanctions on Canada on the fictional grounds America’s drug crisis emanates from … Edmonton! 

Or was Dr. Hassett just here to talk to someone about his past experience advising Mr. Trump on how to downgrade the number of people reported to have been killed by COVID-19 in the United States, despite his having no background in epidemiology?

Whatever the answers to all these questions are, Edmonton City Councillor Tim Cartmell was conveniently on hand yesterday to comment to media about how alarming it is to hear things like Dr. Hassett’s frightening yarn. 

Mr. Cartmell, unsurprisingly, is running for mayor and is the UCP’s favoured candidate to fill that position this fall. 

But wait! “That was just one day of my visit,” the shocked American economist told CNBC. 

So what did he do and who did he see and what did they talk about on the other days? 

Speaking of Paul Krugman, here’s his take on that tariff ‘pause’

Speaking of Dr. Krugman, now a Substack author with a burgeoning readers’ list, what did he make of President Trump’s decision to “pause” his threatened 25-per-cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for at least a month. 

Economist and commentator Paul Krugman (Photo: Ed Ritger, Creative Commons).

“Trump folded,” Dr. Krugman wrote in his Substack yesterday. “OK, supposedly the tariffs are only on hold for a month, but some wags are already joking that ‘tariff month’ will become the new ‘infrastructure week.’”

“And supposedly both Mexico and Canada made some concessions in return for the tariff hold,” he continued. “But there’s really nothing there; neither country is doing anything it wouldn’t have done without the tariff threat. The U.S., on the other hand, agreed to crack down on weapons shipments to Mexico. Trump will spin this as a victory; low-information voters and some intimidated media outlets may go along with the lie. But basically America backed down.

“So is Trump the classic bully who runs away when someone stands up to him? It definitely looks that way.”

Well who are we to believe? A keen observer of American politics and economics for more than 20 years, or Postmedia’s Alberta political columnists? I’ll leave answering that question to you, dear readers. 

Elections Alberta fines foreign-funded TBA and its founder

Elections Alberta has levied fines totalling $112,500 against the Take Back Alberta third-party political advertiser for violating fundraising rules. TBA founder David Parker was slapped with another $7,500 in fines, according to a list of the penalties published by the provincial elections oversight agency. 

Take Back Alberta founder David Parker (Photo: Facebook/David Parker).

The term Take Back Alberta is used in Alberta to describe both the registered political advertiser and the broader far-right social conservative faction that heavily influences Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party. 

Mr. Parker, predictably, labelled the fines “lawfare,” The Canadian Press reported, but uncharacteristically didn’t come right out and promise a fight.

Among the fines listed by Elections Alberta was one of $13,500 for “acceptance of contributions from outside of Alberta and Canada.” It is absolutely a fair comment, therefore, henceforth to refer to TBA as a foreign-funded radical group. 

Join the Conversation

31 Comments

  1. Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
    I wonder if Kevin Hassett has ever read Manchild in the Promised Land, published in 1965. It is a fictionalized autobiography of the author, Claude Brown, who grew up in Harlem in the 1940s and 50s and was able to do well despite difficult circumstances. It is my recollection that there is a description of the devastating effect of heroin on members of the black community.
    And Kevin Hassett says that drug problems in Canada, Edmonton in particular, have spilled over to the US? Pure fiction, I say.
    On a more academic note, one can refer to the Leadership Conference on Human and Civil Rights which discusses the 50 years of the “War on drugs” in the U S, and goes back to problems with drugs in the 188os. (The link is below.) I suggest that Kevin Hassett read about the history of dangerous, devastating drug use in the U S and that he tell the truth about how it has affected and is still affecting the U S.
    One further note is that drug use appears to be even more prevalent and, hence, devastating in downtrodden areas of low wages, high unemployment and additional conditions leading to despair. These conditions have, apparently, promoted rampant illegal use of toxic substances such as heroin, fentanyl (which is often used to lace heroin to produce a greater effect), and others.
    There are some great articles in The Guardian Long Reads/podcast section about these subjects.
    I am not an authority on illegal drug use, but I have done some reading to try to understand why people use these incredibly dangerous substances. I am not exposed to this kind of drug use in my everyday life. The idea of using these mind-altering substances is terrifying.
    https://civilrights.org/about/#

  2. Just a thought, but maybe Mr. Hassett was here to teach or learn from our Premier Smith about the Art of Distraction. The US tariff climb down is a bit embarrassing now, so time to sort of change the topic. Also the state of our capital must embarrassing for our Premier Smith who is responsible for law and order, health care and social services here. Although she manages to suck and blow by coninuing to ignore her responsibility for things while blaming others for the problems.

    However it also does sound similar to another tale during a recent election in another province, when a prominent conservative candidate supposedly witnessed someone die from an overdose on the street on his way to a big debate. The media there was robust, but oddly was unable to verify any such death at that time or location. To be fair to our local media, perhaps Mr. Hackett was a bit vague on the time and date here.

    Athough back to what he allegedly saw, it apparently was a drug problem here which hopefully even the most geographically challenged can figure out is a long way from, not at the US border. However who knows maybe those drugs apparently consumed came from the US, they certainly were not going to the US.

    Of course their art of distraction often does not stand up well to vigorous questioning or analysis and is more meant to be a drive by smear, as they try to quickly move onto something else.

    As well as the US tariff climb down, which some US politicians probably don’t want to talk about much now, Smith probably does not want to talk about the fines to her former supporter or the Law Society sanction to her former Edmonton cabinet minister. Funny how some of her former supporters also turn on her and end up doing badly just like with Trump’s. Just like with drugs, lots of self harm here but these conservative politicians also seem to be trying to harm us.

  3. Well dang it ya’all, that the story I was told, and so Edmonton or Vancouver, well they’re both cities up there in Can-ada right?

    OMG, these people think we are as dumb as they are…..HECK NO…..rrrrrgh!!! Ok, deep breath!
    Story….
    Leaders debate night, BC election, Oct 9th.
    John Rustad ” on the way to the debate, I saw a man “fatally overdose” ……blah, blah,blah.
    He was called out, news coverage by CBC, Global, the Vancouver sun & other smaller sources. So, he lied, got caught, changed the story. Con’s…Meh!
    Skippy has been ‘hiding’ in BC for about a week now- doing what? good question.

    So, Skippy & his buddy Ada Zivo
    did a video on the DTES , propaganda use against the so called NDP/Liberal coalition, about the drug deaths etc etc.
    Heck, just the other day when Skippy did his little spiel that he condescended to give to the press, he falsely claimed that PMJT had legalized fentanyl. Rustad and co have been promoting the DTES video to the conspiracy theorists.
    Adam connected to Marlaina’s drug recovery (sorry, former) expert. Another of Rustad’s group posting selfies with Rfkjr and I’m trying to remember who it was that Rustad was sending to the states for “what ever reason”.
    This requires some sleep or another pot of coffee.

    IMHO — BUFFALO COOKIES, and looks like it’s going to be another shot at CBC- discredit the new CEO?

    Sorry, I don’t know how to enter the links, just Google John Rustad/ fake story Oct.9th

    1. Rustad is Danielle’s 5th-column in BC, she PP’s in Alberta, he tRump’s in Canada, and tRump Putin’s in the USA.

      If ‘six degrees of separation’ is accurate, I could include my neighbour down the street as Rustad’s 5th-column on my little Island.

    2. Follow up:
      First — my apologies, correction: video was made by Aaron Gunn.

      The CTV morning news about Kevin Hassett was showing a clip of an “incident ” from 2023, yet the clip of Hassett was him saying ” when I was there last summer ” (so 2024?)….
      “that was just one day of my visit “.
      Could find no news of him coming to Edmonton, though an interesting one of him complaining (?) about SHarper being able to lower the corporate tax rates down to 15%.
      —–‐——————————
      Rustad’s campaign spokesman Anthony Koch and party president Aisha Estey – who posted “Make Canada great again ” when they went to DC for d’rumps inauguration.
      – —-‐——————-

      So, am I the only one who’s noticed the production of Skippy’s media “statements” ?
      Up on rooftops in Halifax, up on scaffolding in Vancouver in the back parking lot of, I’m guessing a cable co business and again yesterday ,standing on a platform that looked like a square trampoline.
      Standing above the reporters?
      Going full on Dr JP /critter news about the fentanyl issue and how harsh he’s going to be on the criminals. ( and what ever was in those over the jacket fanny- belt cases that both him & his security (?) guy were wearing??

      Our media or lack thereof, have not once in the last 3yrs said anything about the fact that BC declared it an drug overdose emergency in 2016 . ie: it had been building up to such a high level under the Harper government, that they had to declare the emergency.
      And as pointed out on the news #s are down 13% in BC from last year .
      Also ironically, I guess, Marlaina’s helicopter patrols night vision crew, caught 9 migrants, trying to cross the border—- INTO Canada! At the Coutts border no less. How very odd…(tfic)

      And in the meantime, if anyone is paying attention, US military plane carrying 100+ nationals landed in India yesterday.

      I expect the border patrols on our side are going to be busy, because I’m pretty sure that there’s probably a directive on the other side ” I see nothing ” ?
      D’rump using military planes is quite the tactic, but even those are fuel guzzlers that need to be paid for. Though I’m sure that since India refines so much fuel for jets, they got a ‘buddy’ discount.

  4. Say that he actually “backed down”.
    Saying so out loud is sticking a needle into an inflated ego.
    This is how they made a war monger out of Bush senior by calling him a “wimp”.
    Krugman is doing no one a favour

  5. We are one of the worst. When you think of crap holes in the US San Francisco, Portland and Denver come to mind.

    When other think of crap holes in Canada Edmonton come to mind.

    Edmonton city council ok’d crap pipes and syringes to be handed out on LRT stations. Does it get any worse then this?

    1. DT Edmonton has long been on the rough side, but it has gotten far worse – easily the worst big city downtown in Canada. Hassett isn’t wrong.

      SF has improved markedly since the pre-APEC clean-up. The new Mayor has also made a noticeable difference. SF2022 was straight out of the Walking Dead

      1. Doug: I can’t say anything about the state of San Francisco. I haven’t been there since the late 1990s. I can tell you that New York City has grown much worse since the pandemic and the end of office work, and you can attribute that to what you will. I do travel fairly extensively in Canada and I walk a lot everywhere I visit, and I can assure you that your portrayal of downtown Edmonton (bad as it may seem in spots) as being “the worst big city downtown in Canada” is not true by a long shot if you are using drug use and/or crime as your yardstick. If your gauge is architectural merit, I am inclined to agree with you. If it is vibrant street life, ditto. Or traffic flow, for that matter. But if, as I assume, we’re talking about crime and social disorder: Victoria, B.C. (my beloved Victoria), Vancouver, and Winnipeg are all worse. Ottawa is too, around the Byward Market, although there are two Ottawas – the government Ottawa and the old working class Ottawa. We’re probably tied with downtown Saskatoon in that regard, and Regina (which I haven’t visited for years) is reputed to be worse. Toronto, has patches that are worse but on the whole is better, although only a little. Calgary’s downtown is almost as dead but not quite as scary. Several smaller cities are nightmares. Try Prince George, Thunder Bay, Red Deer, Oshawa…. Since the same problems span provinces with governments of all stripes, all of which resist federal intervention if it comes with strings, this suggests the problem is a broader one than just the relative degree of wokeness. Despair, poverty and drug abuse … hmm, why would that be worse in Canada (and the United States, and the U.K., and Denmark, etc.) in 2025 than it was in 1975. Meanwhile, things are looking up in China. Whatever could be going on? DJC

        1. The Chinese pavilion at Expo 86 featured soggy laminated poster board displays, ruined by the rain. Look how far they’ve come in less than 40 years.

          Are we witnessing post-capitalist decline in the U.S.? Pretty sure that banning parcels from Temu isn’t going to stop it.

          1. Abs: China is going to end up running this planet. They have the most people, therefore most brains; the best universities (dedicated to learning, not exclusively to arranging ruling class marriages, although I suppose some of that goes on in China too); and the most obviously successful economic model. They also now have the biggest navy. The world is noticing, even if we in the collective West are not. One would have thought, therefore, that it would be prudent to try to be a good Pacific neighbour to them, instead of taking part in provocative “freedom of navigation” naval exercises in the South China Sea. As for your question, I think we’re well past post-capitalist decline and well into full-capitalist collapse. That is why the mask is coming off about the United States’ commitment to democracy in the “homeland.” DJC

        2. I was in the Bay Area for three days around New Year’s — admittedly a very limited perspective — and saw only one homeless encampment, no aggressive panhandling, and most of the drug use appeared to be old-fashioned cannabis.

          I wasn’t just in some upscale enclave either. I stayed in a modest hotel in downtown Oakland where the hallways reeked of pot smoke (but thankfully not cigarettes) and enjoyed the pubs and restaurants around Jack London Square. I rode the BART a half-dozen times — to see a friend in the Richmond area, to tour downtown San Francisco, and to SFO — and only saw a few stoned-looking people, nothing violent or scary. Same thing in hours of walking in downtown SF from Market Street into Chinatown and North Beach. In fact, similar experiences last year in Chicago, Memphis, and New Orleans, although a bit more panhandling and visible poverty in those cities than in the Bay Area.

          So don’t believe everything you read or see in the news about “hell-holes” in US big cities. Of course there are scary people, violent incidents, and places to avoid, especially at night, but that’s true in every big city around the world. I live in inner-city Calgary and visit downtown Edmonton about a half-dozen times a year; and my vigilance and precautions are no different than in the supposed hell-holes.

        3. There’s been a gang war going on in montreal since like 2016? Vancouver since what 2006 !? Innocent bystanders regularly catching stray bullets in Toronto ?
          When does that happen in Edmonton ? The most recent high profile gang killing in Edmonton was a guy from Vancouver.

          What are you talking about Doug?

          1. Bird: As you say, not very often. Interestingly, most of the stray bullets in Toronto nowadays seem to be in the suburbs, not downtown. I noticed not that long ago that one Toronto shooting that made the news was in the distant suburb where my wife and I bought our first house, closer to Pickering than the CN Tower, a couple of hundred yards away from where we used to go for pizza. That was at least a half hour Go-Train ride at speed from downtown. DJC

          2. As per Kim Bolan of the Vancouver Sun: “ The percentage of murders that are gang-related has steadily risen in B.C. from 21 per cent in 2003 to 46 per cent in 2023. As of December 2023, IHIT had 356 unsolved homicide cases.”

            Clearly it is not Edmonton that’s the problem here.

    2. Compare Edmonton in the late eighties to Edmonton now and it really doesn’t look all that bad, especially considering the population has skyrocketed, and we have a larger than average transient population because of our proximity to the largest industrial project in the history of the world. In fact there are large swaths of formerly “bad neighborhoods” that have come around quite spectacularly compared to what they were even TEN years ago. Do we have a crisis of drug poisoning? Yeah absolutely. So does nearly every western country. Does this have an impact on our public health system when infections, because of using dirty gear, are incredibly commonplace ? Yeah I would say so. Does making sure people are able to use clean works not only save us money, but is a humane and proper thing to do ? Again, I would say so, yes.

      The fact is Edmonton is an incredibly safe place to live for most of us OTHER than the marginalized population in the fringe of our society, holding on by their damn fingernails.

      These people are miserable, they’re not a threat to anyone other than themselves 99% of the time and they deserve our compassion. Comments like this make me physically ill.

  6. Don’t tell me Kev was brought to Alberta by the UCP! It’s not like they’re constantly taking trips to the U.S. or hobnobbing with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago with billionaires or anything, aside from that entourage of half a dozen presently at a prayer breakfast in D.C. Who could possibly have a vested interest in going after the mayor of Edmonton, again? I hope Kev spoke to Edmonton’s police chief while he was here. (Hi to you too, Kaycee.)

    TBA is foreign-funded! It’s enough to make your head spin. I never could have imagined that something else might have been foreign funded in the time leading up to the formation of TBA, until now. I guess nothing is sacrosanct these days. I’m sure we can count on FINTRAC and the RCMP to review this matter for any activities of a criminal nature, right? It’s a shame the public isn’t privy to Elections Alberta’s report. Those fines are pretty steep.

    Today on my travels, I will remind others that Canada is a drug-infested swamp responsible for all the substance use ills of the oligarchy south of the border. Anyone who says “tariffs” will be met with a sharp rebuke: “Drugs! Drain the swamp!” I will explain that Donald Trump said the tariffs are economic force used for annexation, but we should not believe him, due to his fondness for lies. Tariffs will keep coming up until Canada solves the U.S.’s drug problems for them. I will remind them that the orange humanitarian also promised yesterday to ethnically cleanse Gaza for resort development. Imagine what would be done with 41M surplus Canadians after the annexation.
    (Someone should nominate him for the Nobel Piece Prize because he wants a piece of everything.)

    Once again, thank you to the wanna-be overlords. How would we ever know what we think without you telling us? BTW Kev, did you have an entry visa? No? Seems like we should add that to our non-tariff sanction list for the future. Anyways, I hope you had some time for souvenir shopping before you returned to the Motherland.

    https://youtu.be/JVpl3ptNPKo?si=M1tPJQUp4XgunfaA

  7. Badmouthing Edmonton sounds like something Marlain-a-Lago would do, but she doesn’t spend enough time there to know what’s going on since she much prefers taxpayer funded vacations to warmer locales during the winter.

  8. Will Smith be called to account for her close links with Parker and TBA and her election support from them??
    She was a guest at Parker’s wedding, so that fact will not allow her to pretend she wasn’t close to him, regardless of her later trying to put distance between them.

  9. @djc
    Has anyone fact checked Hassett? His whole yarn really sounds like John Rustad’s blarney during BC’s election campaign.

    As for Dr. Krugman: yes, the orange shit gibbon did back down. Though I wish Trudeau had extracted a similar firearms promise like Mexico did. Something to use for negotiating in 29 days?

    And “Pave Darker”, who increasingly looks like a David Orchard redux, boohoo. Cry me a river. Too bad there is no jail time. I will be curious to see how he pays – does TBA still have enough supporters willing to donate?

    As for Postmedia – how the hell did they get Competition Bureau approval to acquire all 4 major dailies and 29 small town papers in Alberta?

    1. Gerald: All good questions. As far as I can tell, no one fact-checked the Hassett claims. Stories were filed, credulously. Frankly, I don’t think it even occurred to anyone in our pathetic media that there might be questions to ask. DJC

      1. Why would they be questioning a ring wing brother? They only question the left wing communists.
        I come to Edmonton downtown everyday and I cannot believe the exaggeration I hear from people that very rarely come here.
        It is not pretty and it is sad to see people at this level of desperation, but we could make the situation better if instead of just playing the blaming game we could find solutions.
        Being addicted to these current drugs is almost impossible to recover from and some of them are lucky to overdose. I have seen cases where people are no longer human, their brains completely destroyed by very high toxic combination of compounds.

  10. So now they want control of our municipal governments and finish destroying anything previous governments have created for the good of the people turning us into a true dictatorship run by right-wing extremists, and Albertans are just dumb enough to let them, aren’t they? Voting for the word Conservative is all they care about and too dumb to realize there is nothing conservative about them.

    1. Alan K. Spiller: It sure looks that way, doesn’t it? Peter Lougheed and Don Getty never treated municipal governments like dirt, and he ensured they were funded properly. Ralph Klein cut off funding to Alberta municipalities, and bullied their leaders. The UCP are doing the same thing as Ralph Klein was. How foolish can people be?

  11. So he “saw” all of that did he?
    What he did not see in Edmonton was people openly carrying guns. He didn’t see parents screaming as they found out their child had been killed in another school shooting. He didn’t see a church being shot up. He didn’t see families shot up and killed because one of the parents were upset. He didn’t see the bodies of 48,838 people killed by guns in Canada. He didn’t see schools in lock down in a regular basis. He didn’t see a gun man shoot and kill people in Las Vegas. and the list goes on. The leading cause of death for children in the U.S.A. is being shot to death.
    Yes, we have drugs in Canada, but the U.S.A. on a prorated basis has a whole lot more.
    Perhaps the man ought to remember, people in glass houses ought not to throw stones.

  12. “The U.S. drug crisis came from Canada? Yet another Who-Knew Moment!”

    The ‘crisis’ is one of a long series of politically constructed imaginary terrors using a calculated misinformation/disinformation campaign designed to deliberately distract, confuse, and agitate the uninformed; even as, the proposed solution(s) may in fact worsen the situation by: oversimplifying complex issues, fixating on quick, often flamboyant solutions, ignoring unintended consequences, fixating on controlling highly dynamic situations that often create unpredictable outcomes, ect.

    Thus the ‘need’ for a Fentanyl Czar as part of a simple fix/appeasement:

    https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2025/02/government-of-canada-expands-plan-to-strengthen-border-security.html

    Even though:

    1. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/03/politics/us-canada-trade-fentanyl-fact-check/index.html

    2. “Bier said more law enforcement will only increase the amount of fentanyl coming into the country, because traffickers are motivated to move more-potent substances that take up less space, which is why fentanyl has been replacing heroin in North America. “U.S. consumers are willing to pay a lot for illicit narcotics,” said Bier. “As long as they’re willing to do that, there’s going to be people willing to supply that market.”

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/fentanyl-smuggling-us-border/

    3. https://www.salon.com/2023/01/15/the-fear-mongering-narrative-around-fentanyl-has-eerie-parallels-to-the-crack-epidemic/

    4. “Nowadays fentanyl is a boogeyman, something people fear can injure them at any time. But fentanyl is neither good nor bad, it is literally just a molecule. It is simultaneously an invaluable medical therapeutic and the primary cause of record-breaking overdose deaths. Notably, fentanyl is not a new drug; it has been FDA-approved since the 1960s and in street drugs since at least the 1970s, and it is well-studied and well-understood. The problem with the publicized information is that the people who speak the most and the loudest — and dominate reporting — appear to neither have studied nor understand fentanyl.”

    https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/toxicology-report/101577

    5. “The concept of moral panic – coined by Stanley Cohen and popularized by Hall et al.– refers to “the process of arousing social concern over an issue” generally by “moral entrepreneurs disturbed by conditions and/or behaviours they feel affect the moral order, seize the issue to try to regain control of the public agenda or to (re)impose or maintain their values and code of conduct”. . . moral panics recruit pre-existing cultural anxieties, applying them to nebulous or ill-defined social phenomena to generate a public perception of lawlessness, regulatory laxness, or absence of appropriate governance.”

    6. Rinse and repeat as required.

  13. I keep wondering if this is a set piece in the conservative training manual. Rustad tried the same thing during the last election here in BC!

  14. Smith is motivated to propagate tRump’s lie that fentanyl is “pouring into our country from Canada.” Remind that his press secretary claimed fentanyl kills tens of millions of Americans. The two false claims combine as neatly as a syllogism —at least as a ‘silly-logoism’ in Trump-world —that Canada is not only “ripping us off,” as the presidunce repeats in his große Lüge fashion, but killing Americans by the millions. (I accept any ratio of ignorance-to-chauvinism among MA(&A)GA sicko-fantasizers. They might be hard to discern from each other within any particular MAGA individual.)

    But isn’t governor Danielle clever? She can send the emissary back to the Orange-Goo-Tan to spout the Edmonton-fentanyl-hellhole myth, to mollify her presidunce, and then to brag about the progress Alberta’s made in keeping fentanyl from pouring over the Alberta-US boundary by using the actual, much lower extent of fentanyl tragedies to compare with the false, much higher narrative. AND she can use it to strike Edmonton on the head like she’s done so many times as if the provincial capital, which is entirely represented by NDP MLAs in the Assembly, were a cursed serpent in a once-pristine garden.

    Galling, yes, but she and PP are so hitched to tRump’s crazy-train it’s as likely they’ll be along for the wreck as it is King Merde-ass will add his special touch to gormlessly derail it. If the first fortnight of tRump 2.0h-oh (like the first two years of Danielle’s last mandate) is any indication, that oughta be sooner’n later.

    Over the years I’ve lived in Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria. One can find tragic situations in any city, including these, and anyone can focus in on one, little part to claim the whole city is the worst. But I can tell y’all, Vancouver always has and always be by far the worst (no, Victoria’s drug epidemic doesn’t hold a candle to the DTES of Vancouver, Canada’s poorest postal code—not by a long-shot). Anybody says or thinks any different doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or hasn’t been out of Edmonton to compare.

    Like some commenters above: one dug a hole, the other laid-out the plans for a shit-house, and then they took a closeup. Is what it looks like…

  15. Going all the way back to Tricky Dick Nixon, we are once again reminded that the war on drugs has nothing to do with drugs.

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