Where there’s smoke, the martyred American president John F. Kennedy famously and accurately observed, there’s often a smoke-making machine.
Whatever can be said about the accuracy of the notorious Angus Reid Institute poll that purports to show 36 per cent of Albertans would like to separate from Canada – a percentage that defies credulity no matter how much a majority of Albertans hate having a Liberal government in Ottawa – smoke-making machines are working overtime nowadays to ensure we know all about it.
ARI is as respectable as any mainstream pollster, so I suppose we have to assume they’re picking up on something real, even if it’s only that the commitment to democracy is so shallow among a significant segment of Alberta’s population that they’re willing to contemplate destroying one of the most successful countries in world history because their team lost an election they expected to win.
Still, even given the conservative movement’s national temper tantrum, it’s hard to believe that even 10 per cent of Albertans, let alone 36 per cent, would think it’s a good idea to risk our Canadian rights, pensions, passports, bank accounts, health care and freedom to travel for the satisfaction of owning the Libs. Perhaps the sample of 790 adult Albertans ARI spoke to last week wasn’t quite as random as the pollster thinks.
Be that as it may, I am prepared to stand corrected if more polls show the same thing. But whatever happened, the poll’s results certainly benefit the operators of the various smoke-making machines who hope to persuade Albertans and other Western Canadians that being part of a landlocked petro-republic, or worse a United States edging steadily toward a civil war, is somehow in their best interests.
Hard to believe anyone in full possession of their faculties would fall for that, but persuading people to do things that aren’t in their own interests are why we have disinformation campaigns.
The United Conservative Party Government led by Premier Danielle Smith certainly has plenty of good reasons to start generating some smoke.
Ms. Smith has claimed repeatedly she’s just a Canadian patriot who feels an obligation to make it easy for the province’s separatists to vote to leave the country. She talks constantly about how powerful the urge to separate from Canada is now that Canadians have democratically chosen another Liberal federal government in Ottawa – and the ARI poll has become an effective talking point for her.
“I would say it’s 30 per cent to 40 per cent of Albertans right now,” she told a simpatico Postmedia columnist of her estimate of the percentage who would like the province to leave Canada. “That’s a pretty high number.”
Well, as the columnist in question chirped in response, that’s a pretty high number indeed.
Of course, the smoke from the ARI poll is sure to distract Albertans from the UCP’s awful recent performance, including its Corrupt Care Scandal, its negligence leading to the ongoing measles epidemic, its assault on public health care, and its efforts to bring dark money back into election financing.
Moreover, Ms. Smith and her allies are indulging in another form of behaviour typical of supporters of Conservative parties that have just lost an election – to wit, warning the winners that they’d better abandon their election platform and adopt the losing party’s or terrible things will happen. We have seen this before, hilariously, right here in Alberta.
But Ms. Smith has added something new. Instead of merely predicting disaster if the winner doesn’t immediately adopt the policies of the loser, she vows to ensure it happens!
Again, though, this is another reason for the bad losers at the UCP to crank up their smoke-making machine.
Finally, there’s the UCP strategy of using a “citizen-generated” separation referendum to get the extremist base of the UCP out to vote in municipal elections this fall to unseat progressive councillors in Calgary and Edmonton – still more justification for fake smoke.
The Postmedia column mentioned above sympathetically noted Premier Smith’s “steady 47-per-cent approval rating.” This appears to be a reference to another Angus Reid poll, published in March, that showed Ms. Smith’s approval rating at 46 per cent, unchanged from a similar poll by the same pollster a year earlier.
However, Ms. Smith’s popularity relative to other premiers between the two samples has changed dramatically, for what it’s worth, from being tied as the second most popular premier to “the second least popular premier in March, ahead of Quebec’s Francois Legault.”
Notwithstanding rumours of a recent private poll suggesting an election now would see the NDP all but wiped out, one interpretation of the ARI poll’s conclusion “a majority of those who voted for the UCP in Alberta’s last provincial election say they would vote to leave, whether definitely, or leaning that way” could be that no one is left supporting the UCP except the nuts.
That’s probably too much to hope for. Still, according to ARI, “nearly all past Alberta NDP voters say they would vote to stay.” This, at least, makes sense.
Ironically, the fringy Republican Party of Alberta, which should be feared by the UCP for its potential to poach from its extremist base, also stands to benefit from the smoke the government is making.
Anecdotally, the RPA is said to be running aggressive telephone and door-to-door canvassing efforts throughout the province.
That can’t be cheap, although someone out there might find it worth the expense to push the UCP into even more extreme positions – just as Ms. Smith’s former Wildrose Party was financed to push the now-defunct Progressive Conservative Party farther to the right.
The RPA, interestingly, is led by Cameron Davies, whose last high-profile appearance in Alberta politics came during the 2017 UCP leadership campaign, in which he was a campaign manager for candidate Jeff Callaway, who came to be known as the “Kamikaze candidate.”
Danielle Smith is creating a hot mess in Alberta. Can’t wait for the UCP to be gone.
Just creating?
This poll affirms that in any given society, the poorly educated, driven by emotionally reinforced propaganda, will act against their own self interest. Even to the detriment of their loved ones and society as a whole. I welcome our AI overlords to run society if it can suppress and overcome stupidity by humans.
The continuing health care scandals could bring down key people in Smith’s UCP government or even the threaten the political survival of Smith herself.
So desperate times call for desperate measures, thus all the talk and polls about separatism, including making a referendum easier. Every day now spent not talking about those health care scandals is a good day for Smith. The smoke making machine is obscuring what they want to be obscured. It is working exactly as intended.
Separatism is a heck of a good distraction, especially now when Canada is feeling threatened and vulnerable from outside threats. Smith has even moved beyond the concept of a kamikaze candidate of her predecessor, there is a whole kamikaze party now. There is no better crisis than a manufactured one. Her clever staff and communications people must be working overtime, they are really earning their very generous pay right now.
Given the state of the voter mindset these days (ie. moronic) I have no doubt that polls are not to be trusted. Personally, I have never been polled. But I have no doubt that if I was, I would likely complain ad nausem and drive the interview crazy.
There’s the small matter of how people are polled these days. I don’t own a landline, nor does anyone else I know. We’re all on mobiles, and I regularly block callers I can’t bother talking to, such as those from call centres and polling firms. I don’t fill out online surveys, and I refuse to speak to anyone to approaches me on the street. I want to be left alone, and I am my happiest when no one talks to me. The ‘Speak When Spoken To’ rule applies in all instances, and extraordinarily cruel punishments will happen to those who don’t know to STFU.
You have been warned.
I’m a regular Angus Reid poll taker. They come in my inbox. This particular survey was not one I saw, nor took, and I would certainly have been among the 64% to stay.
I’m also a regular Angus Reid poll taker. I did not receive this survey in my inbox, and I also would not be supportive of separating from Canada. There is no way that anyone in their right mind would attempt to break up Canada. This separation talk is to deflect from the disastrous situation in our public education and public health care systems. And it appears to be working because the media isn’t paying attention to these areas.
Ditto. I didn’t receive that poll either. Seems odd.
BS from DS, as usual.
And….nevereverpollievre‼️‼️‼️‼️
Finally, they are called CONServatves for a reason.
They, DS mob, are not Conservatives. The UCP are Authoritarian. Fascist.
Even our newly elected Prime Minister has more Conservative in him then the UCP. The New Liberal Party has earned this election. Thank goodness. Thank you Mark Carney for coming forward to lead us.
Wasn’t there a bit of a fiasco recently with the Angus Reid’s Polster? In 2023 that number was 22%. I sincerely doubt that that number has increased to 36%.
Danielle Smith indeed, is cranking that smoke machine, so that Albertans can’t focus on her corruption scandal(s), her privatization of Public HC, Bill 54, her defunding of Public Ed, even while increasing funding of Charters by 844% over two years.
Imagine the mind acrobatics it takes to risk our province’s stability with a futile referendum, in order to hide your malfeasance in every area of your responsibilities to Albertans.
There’s a lot of smoke required, and she’s got that machine on high!
Yes to both. As always, the ucunited con party is an oxymoron. Accent on the last two syllables.
That poll doesn’t “defy credulity.” It reinforces it.
What’s it like living in an echo chamber ? There’s reportedly just under five million souls in alberta in 2025, some three and half million of them in Calgary and Edmonton alone. The reason conservatives do so well in alberta has more to do with rural gerrymandering than it does with popular vote. A province wide referendum does not have this advantage and the two major cities do NOT favour separation. Even if rural folks represented a monopoly of thought on separation (and they DO NOT) you still need to pull basically the entire population of the two major cities, as well as Lethbridge and Red Deer (which might be easier than Lethbridge but still unlikely).
Does that start to give you some sort of idea to the % of albertans that are going to rage vote against this nonsense ? Not even Bible Bill was so shortsighted. Canada is not a republic, it’s a confederation, it’s expressly constructed in that the provinces have a measure of independence within the broader federal framework that ensures equal rights for Canadians whether you live in MooseJaw, Montreal, or a Morinville.
Alberta separatists are intellectual children that have no concept of the history of the country, the history of alberta, or even the history of the nonsensical movement they have found themselves in, that NEVER has and NEVER will be supported by anything other than an aggrieved fringe of political losers that hate their neighbours.
Alberta Tories have always been crown loyalists. The British crown. This is why the KKK when they came to alberta in ‘29 focused on Catholics, even despite this subterfuge they were denounced as Yankee interlopers who should be “heaved across the border at the first opportunity” in the words of a popular newspaper man of the era.
The political heavyweights that built the Tory machine in Alberta would be HORRIFIED people on the right are even discussing it. The whole point of a Tory alberta was to be a strong BRITISH voice within confederation. A rump, landlocked, petro populist fascist state achieves nothing other than spite.
SMDH. The people who support this are morons.
No one has ever wanted this, no one ever will, if you want to move to the states see how easy it is to get a visa, or better yet try border hopping, see what happens.
If Dixie Danny had any sense she would denounce these fools as such and I bet she’d see a significant bump in the polls.
Yes, the ARI poll says 19% of Albertans would “definitely” vote to leave. Another 17% would consider it. That must be up somewhat, since Mark Carney “stole” the election from Pierre Poilievre.
Poilievre made himself unelectable in the rest of Canada, and the sore-loser, it-ain’t-fair crowd here in Oilberduh have been rubbing their problems together so hard their hair has caught fire—again. That doesn’t mean there’s a widespread, organized sedition movement here. there COULD be. But not yet.
Dr. Jared Wesley is a small-c conservative political science prof at the U of A. He’s also the chief researcher for the Common Ground organization. They try to figure out what Albertans REALLY think about politics. Their Viewpoint Alberta section summarizes the findings of various surveys they’ve done over the years.
https://www.commongroundpolitics.ca/
Dr. Wesley has pointed out that, although about 1 in 4 Albertans say they’d like to have their own country, that attitude tends to change when you ask them about the practical matters. Stuff like, oh, how to build pipelines beyond “independent” Alberta’s borders. Taxation. Alberta’s share of the national debt. Trade deals with Canada; with BC; with America; with the rest of the world. National defense. It’s a fun game; how many more can you think of?
https://drjaredwesley.substack.com/
Think about any of those things, and suddenly independence doesn’t sound so good no more. Whoda thunk it?
“36 per cent of Albertans would like to separate from Canada”.
That’s a huge number for sure. But, 36 per cent of Quebecers would like to separate from Canada too. And the Quebec electorate recently voted for the Liberal Party of Canada in order to fight effectively against Donald Trump’s policies.
Some people say that the Albertan electorate is quite backward, while the Quebec electorate is highly sophisticated. Maybe so.
But at the decisive moment, I’ll wage a few dollars that Albertans will be very reluctant to vote “Leave”, as Quebecers were in 1995.
So take courage David, all is not lost!
The majority of Albertans are against Seperation! No matter how much smoke is blown up their rear ends.
What if the smokescreen of separatism isn’t even really a bid for separatism?
What if this is the backdoor of pressure into allowing Alberta, like Saskatchewan to allow unlimited personal and corporate donations, cover the official resistance of FOIA requests, cover for privatization scandals and generally–turning Alberta into a fascist state with voting rigged to be just like the USA where votes don’t matter because the government is bought and paid for, by corporations?
If the same corporations can get the same foothold in the voting system here as they do in the USA, the USA doesn’t have to annex us–because our voting system will be corporate-controlled by the same people with the same agendas, anyway.
We’ll just have a prettier coat of paint than the US Empire.
Sorry to say but we’re basically there already.
*correction*
While Sask doesn’t have unlimited donations, they have allowed large corporate donations.
Various separatist factions with familiar faces from the anti-vaxx members of the UCP are popping up everywhere. Is the UCP fragmenting into a disunited separatist party or is this one big tent with everyone trying to usurp the leader?
What I have been seeing in the past few months expecially, but generally over the past few years, is regular people who have somehow been radicalized. People who seemed rational before the pandemic and even more recently, but have suddenly begun to post panic-laden rants about how the Liberals won’t rest until every Albertan is starving and in chains, or some such nonsense. The thing is, they seem to really believe the disinformation. And they are terrified and outraged. They are mobilized. And that may be where a lot of that 36% is coming from: people who weren’t able to defend against the disinformation campaign. There is a growing body of evidence that this “brainwashing” works. The documentary film “The Brainwashing of My Dad” explores how one man’s worldview and personality were drastically altered through his consumption of Fox Media (thebrainwashingofmydad.com). It’s happening in Canada too. People are being lured, hooked, and hauled down the rabbit hole.
This is something our new federal government needs to pay attention to. There needs to be legislation to criminalize deceit in the public realm. With the constant evolution of AI and the increased ability to manipulate photos and even video and voice recordings, it is essential to our democracy that measures be put in place to protect the public from nefarioous actors who would make wild, fraudulent claims and “prove” them using AI-created footage. A society where no one knows what is real is truly dystopian. The rise of disinformation, even in some main stream media, is probably the greatest threat our democracy faces at the moment.
Defenders of disinformation networks cite freedom of expression, but should there be a right to intentionally mislead? We have laws about intentionally misleading consumers when advertising a product. You can’t do it. There are consequences. So why are there no rules around intentionally lying about the government? About immigrants? About the LGBTQ2S+ community? About other countries and international organizations? There are people deliberately trying to cause the Canadian public to become either radicalized or so unsure of what is real that they believe nothing. If ISIS was radicalising our citizens to take up arms against Canadians, that would be a crime and the right would be demanding stiff penalties. But now they don’t want this even talked about, because it is their own people and affiliated so-called news sites that are radicalizing Canadians to, at the very least, vote against their own best interests, but also to break down Canada’s social fabric. And a few even go so far as to attempt a violent reaction, like the “friendly sausage-maker from Manitoba” who drove his truck full of firearms through the fence at Rideau Hall, looking for PM Trudeau. Playing with people’s minds is dangerous.
Before we get too wound up about “radicalization” we need to understand what *is* going on.
In the background of all this are several factors in play.
The first is genuine economic concerns, housing, inflation, wage stagnation, lack of union membership and all sorts of other working class problems that are not being adequately addressed and haven’t been in the past few decades, IMO. What’s been happening is a veneer of wiffle-waffle speak and “reframing” with half-baked non-solutions rather than genuine dialogue amongst politicians and parties as to how to address basic economic insecurities.
The second layer is that absolute sh*tshow of a global situation, every day warfare and nuclear near-misses going on. That’s often more subtle but people feel that, even when they can’t express it.
There’s been, since the fall of monarchies and the rise of capitalist statehood and the industrial revolution, an ongoing push-me-pull-you between fascism and communism. Conservatism has been shoved away from “fiscal responsibility” and “freedom of the individual” and “encouragement of business” to corporate fascism with its inherent underpinning of propaganda. Communism and socialism haven’t changed, much. Both have always lacked the financial support available to the more fascistic elements.
So with all the underlying tensions at play–it’s pretty easy to see why facistic tendencies come to the forefront and make it easier to grasp than the more nuanced discussions between conservative and socialistic elements of a governmental structure.
Logic won’t win a discussion with someone wrapped up in existential dread and the radical right wing *knows* this.
What will lead to a better road is solving some of the bread-and-butter problems households are facing while opening the door of empathy to undermine the use of rampant fear that’s used to drive these agendas.
It’s true that there’s growing uneasiness caused by bread and butter problems. The economy is changing. More rapidly than most think. Free trade has resulted in transnational corporations to play games with different labour pools. The result is that the labour commodity has been devalued in “industrialized” countries (which have seen their industries move to areas where the labour commission is less expensive). Good paying jobs that required only a basic, high school education (or less) have been moved to countries where workers with sufficient (more or less equivalent) skills will work for less. China is a prime example. One result of the “new”, de-industrialized economy is the growth of insecure, gig jobs, and downward pressure on more secure employment and jobs in legacy industries that are under threat by new technology (e.g., oil and gas threatened by renewables). We are returning to a “new” economy that is more like the “old” pre-industrialized one that existed before the growth of steady, industrialized, factory jobs in the 20th century in North America. This will be hard on workers who aren’t adaptable, which is a large part of the workforce, who will inevitably cling to legacy industries rather than retain. Many will regard short-term “solutions” (like tax reductions) as a panacea, even though they aren’t. The advance of artificial intelligence is going to put pressure on previously high paying, professional jobs also. Navigating the changes is going to be difficult and cause friction. Most people don’t deal with change well, and governments (like the UCP) that champion the current economy are bound to find favour with a large segment of society which sees transitioning to the new economy as threatening their jobs and their financial stability. If you’ve worked your whole life in oil and gas, and have a mortgage to pay, anything that threatens that industry (or doesn’t wholeheartedly support it) threatens your financial stability and your personal well-being. So things like lowering taxes, which at face value would ease financial concerns, are appealing. Immigration, which creates labour competition, is frowned upon. Inflation, which increases financial stress, is a growing concern. All of this can be traced to a worldwide “evening out” of the value of the labour commodity globally as we’re now in a global marketplace and any labour pool’s success will be more dependent on its ability to exploit local advantages (e.g., oil reserves in Alberta’s case) if businesses (and business people) aren’t able to develop industries that are less tied to local natural resources. If Alberta is going to prosper into the future (one which is less tied to fossil fuel energy and products manufactured from fossil fuels) we must develop expertise in producing products that don’t suffer from traditional business nemeses. In Alberta we are farther from markets, so transportation costs are one of our (if not our most) greatest barriers. To succeed we must must produce products and provide products that surmount that obstacle. Do long as we continue to depend on a legacy industry built on a commodity that has transportation problems, we will inevitably decline with that industry as other suppliers who don’t suffer from transportation cost problems out compete us on price, especially in a shrinking market.
Well thought out comment, @John.
If a country wants an industrial base nowadays, how can they do that? They *must* suppress wages. Coming from a Lunchbox Lefty like me, that sounds odd, I know.
But how did China do that while still pulling millions every year out of poverty?
Make basic needs available. Low-cost or free; housing, healthcare, food, transportation, secondary school education, heat, hydro, water with basic unemployment/disability benefits. A tax structure that redistributes wealth.
The Nordic countries have done all this, as well.
That leads to a better-educated, capable workforce with a greater adaptability. One thing all growing economies have, in abundance, is engineers and creators. They cherish co-operative effort. Thus, open-source projects.
China is not just full of low wage peons like the Euro-North Americans, think. It’s chock-full of skilled trades, skilled industrial labour, computer scientists, engineers, etc etc
What’s going on in Oligarchy land is the opposite. Full of regressive policies, dumbing down the population to accept eternal techno-feudalism instead of a brighter future while privatizing through patents, even the rocks and DNA.
You’re right. Alberta wasn’t always an oil-worshipping sh*tshow. It used to be packed full of farmers and markets and a supportive industries.
TBF to Alberta, we need more railways. High speed railways.
Not so they can ship oil and gas–but so they can have a brighter future shipping other goods they could be providing. Funny how railways are never on the list of “things we need here”…just oil pipelines for a dying industry.
B: China will be running the planet in a century, possibly much less. I am not *warning* when I say this. It’s just a fact, if not yet a widely perceived one. Yes, they’re not exactly democratic, but, in truth, neither are we. They have emphasized, as you put it, housing, health care, food, transportation, education, heat, hydro, water and basic benefits. We have emphasized guns and destructive speech – the very definition of “freedumb.” They have a billion people, with about the same percentage of really intelligent ones but better educated and healthier. Our system disadvantages the smartest among us, makes a virtue of ignorance, ignores preventable illness and so on. Their rise may not be inevitable, but since the coming of MAGA, our fall is. There endeth the lesson. DJC
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
I totally agree with JFK’s comment. As to the Brexit vote, there was quite an effective smoke-making machine with, apparently, money and disinformation that enabled a pro-Brexit vote success. I think, the same type of persuasion in happening in Alberta, aided and abetted by Danielle Smith. As you say, the likelihood is that the pro-separation sentiment is quite a small percentage of the population here.
I cannot claim to understand why Danielle Smith appears to think this way and suggests that the likely disastrous fate of Alberta in the extremely unlikely scenario that Alberta separates would be a good thing.
My belief is that Danielle Smith believes that the whole separation smokescreen will distract Albertans from the extreme corruption of her government evidenced by such things the $416 million paid for substandard ppe and the “Tylenot scandal” where something like $49 million is still unaccounted for, the extreme conflict of interest (and possible more serious situation than mere conflict of interest) of the director of the Alberta Energy Regulator, and the potential destruction of Alberta waterways caused by selenium which is the almost certain consequence of the planned development of coal mining by Australian interests and so on.
Creating a massive amount of controversy by stoking the smoke-making machinery of separation takes attention away from serious governance failures and the potential for dark money to manipulate Alberta public opinion and election results. It is appalling that anyone, let alone the premier of Alberta, would engage in this conduct.
Another case of residents who are voters being persuaded by charlatans to vote against their own best interests.
Here is the link to thetyee article published on May 5, 2025 about the serious conflict of interest etc. of the director of the Alberta Energy Regulator (the AER) including close ties to Danielle Smith even though the AER is supposed to act at arms length from the Alberta government.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2025/05/07/Alberta-Energy-Regulator-Close-Ties-Danielle-Smith/
Someone needs to point out to the Alberta separatists that Brexit happened with a full-blown sovereign *country* that left a multi-country union. The EU is a voluntary union of willing countries and England just un-volunteered.
A chunk of one country, smack in the middle of that country–didn’t just decide it could screw off and become its own country-within-a-country, or join another country.
It would be like Vermont, having had enough of both democratic and republican corruption, deciding to throw a referendum and becoming The Country of Vermont.
It’s patently ludicrous and it ain’t never gonna happen. All the foot stomping and tantrumming in the grocery isle to get a chocolate bar does not mean your family gets to abandon you in the shop–no matter how tempting.
The UCP strategy of “blowing smoke” is simply a reformulated adoption and updated version of the ‘tobacco smoke enema’.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/blowing-smoke-up-your
It is suitable for all of the obvious reasons: anti-science, anti-truth, post-truth, mendacity, deceptions and dishonesty that are both calculated and deliberate, ethical and moral unaccountability, a demonstrated conscienceless superiority, ect., ect. Its applications are both specific and general, as is the unrepentant refusal to acknowledge the scientific evidence that contradicts and demolishes the ideological anti-science falsehoods.
That is, “A government-appointed panel reviewing Alberta’s response to COVID-19 is calling for a halt to using vaccines, among other recommendations, in a report that critics are calling anti-science.”
https://calgary.citynews.ca/2025/01/27/alberta-covid19-report-vaccines/
The grandstanding ‘elder statesman’ should be pleased with the measles outbreak current state of affairs in Alberta. It is a development demonstrating a successful anti-science PR campaign. The MSM media remains dead silent, because putting 2 and 2 together and getting 4 would mean that the activities of the ‘elder statesman’ are in some way responsible for the current outcome. Is the god that failed ‘elder statesman’ going to take public credit for his handiwork by publishing another ‘op-ed’ in the Globe and Mail? If not, why not?
The conclusion is that ideology and cynically pandering to the ‘grassroots’ disciples and their votes means that ethics and morals are for chumps and suckers:
“Despite calls for her to apologize for saying that unvaccinated Canadians are the “most discriminated group” she’s witnessed in her lifetime, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith stood by her remarks on Wednesday, but did try to explain the intention behind her words.”
The separatist PR sideshow uses the same guidelines and follows the same procedures, generally and specifically.
I feel so sorry for our Dani! I mean she gets “the relatives of friends” table at Mar a Lago, then the “he” gets a “$400,000,000.00” dollar “flying palace” jet? She just is not trying hard enough! Suction is what gets sucked up!
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
Many thoughtful comments. I was interested in Norlaine Thomas’s view of the manipulation of ordinary people by disinformation so that they believe nothing.This leaves them vulnerable accepting conspiracy type theories with the result that they abdicate their belief in shared values such as democracy and helping their neighbour – both in their community and in the wider context of their country.
Norlaine is right, that governments should be looking at ways to combat this extreme disinformation.
One example of an attack on our democracy and on the institutions that support that democracy was Stephen Harper’s personal attack on the ethics and the personality of Beverly McLaughlin, at that time the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Since the courts protect us from instances of over-reach of government, it was convenient for Stephen Harper, then the Prime Minister, to attempt to dismantle trust in institutions that are protective of democracy. As we see now, Mr Harper, in his role as the head of the cynically named International Democracy Union, has embraced the dictatorship of heads of state, including Victor Orban the Prime Minister of Hungary.
I think that we are seeing this kind of manipulation of public sentiment from some federal politicians as well as from some provincial ones. This is particularly concerning when these politicians strive to position themselves, through the cult of personality, as the only ones who can “save” us from the ills that either exist and/or they aim to persuade us exist. They offer no concrete solutions, only the solution that they personally can “save” us.
I think that Norlaine has a good point in suggesting that carefully created legislation could be helpful in trying to combat this disinformation.
In addition, I wonder what kinds of accurate information could be provided to counteract these authoritarian tendencies. How do we, for example, retain the belief in institutions that support our democracy and protect everyone?
As I have mentioned and as Norlaine has pointed out, it is belief in underlying values that is under attack and one symptom is the erroneous belief in disinformation with the result that the opinions of the population change and may even result in even radical and violent action.
We are seeing this in the extreme in real time in the U S, and we are, I think, seeing it in slower motion in some segments of Canada, too.
Well, was it the number of politicians affiliated with the WEF or the celebration in Parliament of a rep of the Nazi party, or the support of ‘forever wars-in the ME’. Hard to tell when the contradictory and offensiv e become the accepted and unquestioned norm? Take care.
M: This may be the comment you referred to earlier. The explanation for it being missing is simple. This is a one-person operation, a hobby, enthusiastically conducted. The author also has a day job. Moreover, he also moderates all comments. He usually doesn’t refer to himself in the third person, but here we are. Sometimes comments just have to wait. DJC
A sample size of 790 can’t possibly be statistically accurate????
Hilary: Professional pollsters keep insisting that it is.I share your doubts. DJC
And would those professionals be named Brown or Nanos, by chance?
Even my 100 level stats course makes me give the side eye to that ARI poll, once I read the methodology.
From my recollections of my political science degree of 40 odd years ago, I think that gives a variance of plus or minus 3 percent. But pollsters of late don’t seem to publish the margin of error etc. Therefore, as Professor Groben used to tell us in our U of A stats class, such a result reported this way is worthless.
This guy’s tweet suggests questions asked before the poll one might have influenced the poll results?
https://x.com/BarryKiefl/status/1920653298580824492
I believe the term simpatico is a little too polite for the relationship between Bell and Smith. It is more accurate I feel to refer to Bell as the Groom of the Stool for Empress Danielle.
As for those clowns wanting to separate, you could bet your last dollar that they want to separate but continue to use Canadian Passports, Canadian currency, CPP, and the protection of the Canadian Armed Forces, when the U.S. decides to take Alberta’s natural resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groom_of_the_Stool DJC
Yesterday being Mother’s Day this bird called his mother. Being who I am we talked about the arsonist premier trying to burn down the country. Look, my parents are religious, conservative, but not fundamentalist or reactionary. My great grandfather was in the orange order in both Ireland and Canada. My parents both had conservative preachers as fathers, just for a bit of context. I grew up in what could only be described as a rural religiously conservative area.
To quote, Birds mother w/r/t Alberta separation. “It’s just as stupid as when Quebec wanted to do it in the 90s” ; this is something I’ve been repeating my whole life.
Rural alberta might be conservative, they might be racist, they might be dominated by political cliques that go back generations, but they’re vehemently pro Canada; except for the freaks and the idiots, and that’s how their neighbours see them too.
ARI is not a legit pollster since the man said on X that JT advocates church nnurning and well knowingly leans right.
The Ab Repug party is doing more than door knocking. They’re hosting events across the province organising the grassroots demanding Separation and espousing a strong dislike for Smith. Smith sees the right being further split, herself a survivor of the Wild Rose split. She tries to appease everyone but early docs show that she is a publicly stated separatist.
Bring it on losers. You will get your pathetic 4 percent support but like Pp, you won’t go away. You’ll whine and claim it’s been interfered with.
Here’s the deal: You lose the referendum, Smith resigns. Election called.
Nenshi’s NDP needs to trade in their brogues for cowboy and workboots and
a, nominate candidates mow and b organise rurally now! Now. Better now? Show us your boots.
Might I know why my comment was not allowed? As I simply remarked on events currently known to most. Pardon any error as I have cataracts which cause blurred vision –to say the least. M
M: I’m not certain. I don’t delete many comments and I can’t find one from “M” in the trash. Are you certain it was posted? DJC
What I don’t understand is what do the 20% or 36% (or whatever) who want to separate from Canada think will happen? An independent Alberta wouldn’t last long. It would be swallowed up by the US. And then what? I hate to generalize but I think it’s fair to say that the majority of the Alberta separatist leaning folk are white, Christian, anti-DEI, anti-Woke (whatever that is), anti-immigration, etc. If Alberta becomes the 51st state, that means that Americans from places like east L.A., Detroit, Chicago, New York, Louisiana, South Carolina and so on could all pack up and move here the next day. Erasing the border will not create a one way highway headed south. The moving trucks will be headed in both directions – with thousands driving north from US states most affected by climate change. If the Alberta separatists are thinking they’re going to create a white Christian nationalist homeland, they’re going to be in for a surprise.
HH: If they think they’re going to be U.S. citizens, they’re in for a surprise, too. Alberta would never be granted statehood, only territorial status, like Puerto Rico. DJC
And so therefore Albertans in Milk River can expect rolls of Bounty paper towels tossed at them.
Alberta will never succeed. What would we do for a a currency ? The national parks? The parts of alberta that are federal land (like military bases), not to mention that; a military!? The infrastructure the feds have paid, and have receipts for ? The FEDERAL police force, itself a military police that was created for just this reason ? They’re going to hold up the likely shoddy results of a REFERENDUM of a tiny percentage of the country and say give it or else? Surrender to what force ? Under what imperative!? The whole thing is nonsense.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
I also agree with B that there are concerns that government should have addressed a long time ago, including the cost of housing. Federal governments of all stripes have gradually decreased financial and practical supports for the creation of housing that is affordable to ordinary people, until this support virtually ceased in the 1990s. The cost of rental housing has, in my opinion, been driven up to a great extent by the advent of real estate investment trusts (REITs) with special tax advantages, in 1993. These corporations hue towards enriching their unit holders by, among other things, charging top dollar to renters, charging extra for any services that they possibly can such as storage space, parking etc. etc.. This small group of corporations probably owns 20% to 30% of all apartment units in Canada.
Unions have been actively suppressed by governments such as that of Stephen Harper and also by successive Alberta provincial governments. In addition, successive Alberta governments have engaged in wage suppression by means of legislation, weakening of unions etc..
These problems and others that B mentions are well expressed and documented by a particular federal political party. However, this is where that party diverges from reality. It does not have suggestions of ways to solve these problems and, in my view, many of their general policies will make these situations worse. The politics of grievance changes the way these problems are viewed and the solutions that could be applied. In addition, the leader of this party suggests that only he can solve these problems, while giving short shrift to the actual causes of the problems, choosing instead to blame them largely on a specific individual and to a lesser extent the other major political party.
There are other corporations and individuals who aim to influence public perception and to influence government policy. This is one reason that large money interests should not be permitted to donate to political parties, but allowing unlimited donations and corporate donations will be made legal again by the premier of Alberta.
When you add in conspiracy theories that claim to explain these situations, you end up with the distrust of government, the justice system, education etc. that members of democratic societies used to feel that they could rely on. Disinformation adds to the problem.
@Christiana,
I’ve been fighting the housing problem for *decades*. You are correct about REITS, and if I recall the paper I researched and wrote about them for a housing activist group–*almost all* of them, including the deceptively named CANreit–are owned by US companies and many were originally funded in whole, or in part by dark money from sketchy US finance companies who did the same to the USA…bought up swathes of mid-to-low end housing, let it run to rack and ruin, when they’d extracted every possible penny of profit then knocked the apartments down, sold the land to the finance companies who sold them to developers through the same sketchy finance companies, who then built expensive condos on the land. Some condos were sold and the rest either stayed in the hands of the sketchy finance companies or were taking back by them if the owners went bankrupt. A huge portion of said condos were bought up by non-citizens as investments. Every stage of this scam was maximized for profit but not for people.
A huge portion of this housing crisis was *created* by those tactics.
To solve that part of it is simple. *If* there was any will to do it. Make it illegal for any foreign entity/person to own land in Canada. All foreign-use land can only be leased. Commercial for 99 years and residential for 25. Or thereabouts.
This would mean going up against some of the most powerful dirty finance players in the world and ain’t nobody except someone willing to take their life in their hands–would do that.
Then, build massive council and co-op housing. In council housing (not the system of social housing we have here where it’s top-down and run by “professional managers”)…the tenants vote on their landlord for a given area every few years and have councils that decide how to keep the places, running. This is an exercise not only in grassroots democracy but also tends towards more tenant satisfaction with their units and encourages them to take care of their residences instead of disconnecting them from the source. Also, the rent directly supports the units.
I had a 10-point housing plan that would have housed *every unhoused person* within a year two decades ago with unhoused people with some choices about what kind of living space they needed or wanted–some of which was very inexpensive to implement to stop this eternal Poverty Industrial Complex wrapped around de-housing.
Also, instead of de-valuing the real estate swiftly by adding a ton of houses for sale and scaring the boomers and in a market where jobs are precarious)–I suspect most people just want to be able to live somewhere financially feasible that’s large enough or can be exchanged for something larger or more convenient to their job site or if they want to grow a family in a reasonably safe, friendly area.
No politician from *any* party is willing to step up to that plate. None.
Building houses to sell, while admirable–is never going to solve this because the people most at risk of being unhoused, may never be able to buy one. All this money in the pockets of the same private developers involved in the profit loop without a backup rental plan?
That’s a recipe for corruption and over-pricing.
My end point to this is:
Ensuring citizens know they will always have a reasonably safe and stable place to live regardless of the twists and turns where life or the global economy takes them–is the simplest way to cut down on disenfranchisement–especially if they’re given democratic input into one their most basic needs being met.
There’s a problem with the concept of “governments need to combat misinformation”–I mean, how, precisely, are they going to do that without stomping all over people’s right to be dumb or wrong, or be dumb/wrong then learn more and grow? Or just have an opinion that’s so far ahead of the norm that nobody’s caught up to it, yet?
We could be like China, cut off from all the world’s media and subject to a vast censorship regime. Keep in mind that some Chinese outlets and influencers have argued that it’s not that intrusive.
I think we need to follow the money and the best people to do that without putting the government in the bind of legislating against the right to free expression–is to pay for good quality investigative reporting. Sadly, that’s a labour intensive job that takes time, experience and yes, money. Money that’s no longer available when everything is sound bites. Then there’s the problem of those that do this sort of reporting–not getting traction. Why don’t they get traction? Because the people buying the advertising are frequently aligned with the business interests that are being reported, on. Then there’s clickbait and headline scanning to gain traction.
It’s one of the reasons I am an avid supporter of the CBC. Sometimes, they actually get to do those sorts of stories.
I don’t actually have an answer for any this.
There’s never been a solution to stupid ideas from the dawn of mankind. Today the rumour mill is just bigger and reaches further.
The other solution is to teach critical thinking…how to know what spin a certain news outlet has, how to garner facts from them without necessarily agreeing with the bias of that outlet, how to use news sources from across the world to get a sense of scale and outside-looking-in, assessments, etc etc.
But #1 on my list is to make sure people know that mainstream Canadian outlets can lose their licenses if they deliberately fabricate a story but the United States outlets–won’t. BBC has a spin but is fairly truthful yet other UK popular news tends to fall into yellow journalism… the French and German outlets while biased, have similar legislation to Canada.
I tell people to check the same story from across the world, Arab, Turkish, French, German, Iranian, Russian, Chinese etc then pick out what are established facts amongst them and how much of the rest is spin. Ignore the American news broadcasts altogether or look at them, regardless of left/right–with a very jaundiced eye.
Other than educating people, I’m not sure what else is a viable solution other than turning into propagandists, ourselves.
Please excuse my rush to question, but these days our reality seems upside down, inside out and twisted. I commented in another newsletter about the soaring pollution cost of the tailing ponds (yet to be resurfaced) in the Tar Sands and was trolled then banned, in as short a time it takes to cook a 3 minute egg.
I was simply referring to the original protocols that required ongoing resurfacing of the massive tailing ponds (then est. to cost approx. 400 billion).
After that I noticed ‘other’ negative problems being associated with most public opposition . Need I say more, but thank you for taking the time to make one person feel hopeful.
M,
Part of that may just be the algorithms (since there isn’t much of one here, it’s why the discussions can be farther-reaching) that kick you or your comment, off–in the microsecond it takes to type certain words. Then troll bots, paid for by some of the corporations’ egregious behaviour you’re discussing–automatically jump in and troll the crap out of you and if the algorithm didn’t see anything “wrong” with your comment before–it will, then.
If you haven’t tried it–go try GPT or an AI chat bot and ask a controversial question about a major corporation or the USA’s weaknesses in finance, military, oligarchical structure etc. Demand it tell you its sources. Eye-opening.
Those things are *stupid*. I mean, seriously STUPID and completely biased. And this is how your comments are being filtered–by programs even dumber, in most cases.
Then there’s the “intelligent” bots that wrap you up in a huge conversation that takes time while they spin around in endless circles. They read like gish-galloping right-wingers on meth.
Seriously, been through all this.
So you’re not wrong about reality gone sideways.
Be hopeful. And patient.
At some point, just like most people realized that Faux News and MSNBC are propaganda outlets backed by the same interests–they’ll catch on to the algorithm and AI nonsense. Add in astro-turfing.
Here it’s DJT (real person, yay!) who goes through his own comments and unless we’re insulting or potty-mouthed, he seems to let the discussions flow freely even when we disagree.
DJC surely, B!
Come to rural Alberta for a reality check. They are here, they are empowered, and they come with a variety of labels but they are all UCP. They thrive on chaos. Sound familiar? We are done.
Once again, rural alberta, no matter how aggrieved, does not have the numbers to represent a monopoly of thought on anything in the province, least of all separation. It’s not the 50s anymore, Alberta is heavily urbanized, those folks don’t want to separate. Rural alberta separatists are engaging in magical thinking, it’s not realistic on so many levels it would comical if it wasn’t so dangerous; demographics is easily the most obvious one.
Why all the speculation about the supposedly looming spectre of separation? It can’t happen, and the First Nations chiefs have explained the reason clearly. Alberta is treaty land. It does not belong to Dani and her fellow redneck cretins to remove from Canada. The treaties are with the Crown and pre-date the existence of Alberta. End of story.
The Clarity Act means the federal govt – not Take Over Alberta and the Prosperity Project – will determine the question! It may be a different question than Dani and her cronies want to ask! Thanks to the federal Liberals for that!
Eoin: One of the purposes of the UCP’s “citizen initiative” legislation is to get around the Clarity Act. That said, the question proposed is clear enough, which doesn’t make an affirmative answer a good idea. DJC