Happy Independence Day. May Canada long remain independent of the United States, the wishes of the United Conservative Party, its MAGA supporters, and the current president of the United States notwithstanding.
Just a week ago, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith launched her “Alberta Next” project, which is supposed to ask Albertans what issues should be put to them next year in a series of sovereignty referenda. One of the questions we Albertans were asked to consider voting on is whether we should have an Alberta provincial police force to replace the apparently too-Canadian RCMP.
Then, at a news conference the day before yesterday, Ms. Smith announced that despite the opposition to this idea by a majority of Albertans, her government was going ahead and setting up a provincial police force right now. They’ve even hired a chief. So what’s the point of the Alberta Next project, one wonders, if the government’s going to put the cart before the horsemen, as it were?
The post below first appeared in this space on April 19, 2024. Despite the dramatic changes south of what used to be known as the Longest Undefended Border in the World, some things obviously haven’t changed all that much on this side of the Medicine Line.
This being the Fourth of July and all, it seemed like an ideal time to review that rumour that the UCP would like to call their new politicized police force the Alberta Rangers as they struggle remake our province in the image of the soon-to-be-Impoverished States of America, one big beautiful bill at a time.
Planned provincial police to be called Alberta Rangers?
Did a little birdie just chirp in my ear that the United Conservative Government has already picked out a name for the new provincial police force it claims it hasn’t yet decided whether or not to set up?
It wasn’t a tweet, merely a chirp, but I must say it had the warble of truth.
Brace yourselves for the Alberta Rangers.
This, presumably would be a bit of cowboy cosplay intended to extend the faux cultural distinctiveness of Wild Rose Country by making it seem less like a Canadian province and more like the state, formerly the republic, of Texas, a part of the United States that Alberta hardly resembles at all.
In reality, what Texas resembles is Canada. It has more than 30 million people without even having to count unauthorized immigrants, plenty of tidewater, a grownup economy that involves more than resource extraction, and a rough split between progressive-minded and conservative folk (Republican for the time being but with demographics inexorably marching toward a Democratic Party majority).
The U.S. state that Alberta actually resembles is Oklahoma, a landlocked oilpatch in flyover country that can advertise lower house prices than most states. Even so, a case could be made that the Sooner State has a more diverse economy than Alberta’s, what with the aircraft industry and the world’s largest per-capita prison-industrial complex.
That’s one thing about OK that the UCP presumably aspires to imitate. In 2018, 1,079 of every 100,000 adult residents of “the World’s Prison Capital” were in jail, a higher incarceration rate than any actual country on the planet!
But I digress.
About those Texas Rangers, they have an undeservedly good reputation thanks to televised fairy tales like Walker, Texas Ranger, a 1990s TV crime series wherein a slightly pre-geriatric fifty-something Chuck Norris used wheezy karate moves like roundhouse cowboy-boot kicks to round up and lasso pretend bad guys.
The reality is somewhat worse, and one suspects the UCP knows this, which should make us more uncomfortable with the Ranger idea, if indeed my little avian friend has chirped accurate data.
As reviewer Michael Sandlin put it in the Texas Observer in 2018, by the late 19th Century the Rangers had become “a state-sponsored terror squad directed to secure white racial hegemony along the Texas-Mexico border.”
In 2022, Reform Austin noted that the “near-mythical law enforcement agency that is often portrayed as a tough, elite unit of crime fighters” had more recently “shown that they may be little more than a political catspaw as well as incompetent at their jobs.”
Well, at least this would be on-brand for the UCP and its intention to create an Alberta police force to replace and historically erase the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which it once complained in a news release (since removed from the government’s website) was “overly bureaucratic” and “unable and unwilling to confront activists.” That pairing suggests that in the eyes of the UCP the Mounties are too focused on due process and fundamental rights and not willing enough just to wade in and crack the heads of citizens who oppose UCP policies.
Getting back to Texas, Reform Austin cited a 2021 New York Times exposé that revealed how the Rangers’ investigations of accusations against other police agencies often “fell short of basic standards.”
According the to the New York Times story, its reporters “identified 29 cases the Rangers had investigated since 2015 in which a person stopped breathing after struggling with local authorities. None of those inquiries led prosecutors to charge anyone in law enforcement.”
Also on brand for the UCP, I’d say.
One good thing about the real Texas Rangers is that there aren’t very many of them of them – fewer than 200 according to several websites, all of which give slightly different numbers.
That, at least, is something the UCP perhaps ought to imitate, although not the fact that you can literally count the number of female Rangers on the fingers of one hand.
If I’ve got the UCP reasoning wrong, and they actually want to name the provincial police force after a football team, they should call it the Alberta Stampeders. Obviously, they’re not going to go for the Elks. Too woke!
Either way, forming an Alberta police force is a bad idea. Calling it the Rangers is a really bad idea. Which means that’s almost certainly what the UCP intends to do.
When they do, remember where you heard it first. And hang onto your CPP!
Queen Danielle, no doubt caught up in the excitement of Kristi Noem and her relentless ICE cosplay, hair extensions, and hyperinflated Botox treatments, will likely apply similar unserious efforts to build her provincial police force. (AKA Alberta Rangers) This is so coming, get ready.
And now that Americans are learning that DHS/ICE has secured a budget well in excess of $800 B, the pull for Smith to just up and create a paramilitary force maybe too tempting. I mean, nothing is more impressive than masked armed men, frightening people, and causing havoc among the Libs. The enticement is just too great for Smith’s pecan-sized brain.
Ha ha……you nailed it……
Your observations and comments I could only echo, the one difference, your reference to a pecan, I would rather a pea. This government is clearly the most pernicious in Canadian history, perhaps that helps us understand why they want to wrench Alberta away our safety nets, so they continue their regime of fiscal fiduciary incompetence, marginalizing our seniors, our sick, our disabled, people in care and stooping so low as to wrestle away $200.00/month of Federal aid from AISH recipients. These UCP members and supporters are a mutant gene run amok that originated in Didsbury. This is not my Alberta!
TENET: Ironically, Didsbury has been just about been laid waste to by PCAA/UCP policies. By contrast, Olds – with a public institution at its centre, is going great guns. DJC
OMG, saw Noem with Trump out and about trying to look useful or perhaps in control of things, but not so much. Noem looks ridiculous and so will Smith. It being Alberta the cowboy hat may pass, but no not for a premier in Canada. Wonder if Smith will get cowboy boots and some sort of uniform or outfit when she has her new storm troopers. I really may have to travel over to Alberta, visit the nephews, have a look around and then its back to B.C. Smith like some children who don’t get to be the club leader is setting up her own club so she can be “important”. We have seen some clown shows in Canada, but Smith may get the award for best acting.
Little birds have been telling me that the much ballyhooed Texas shale oil patch is on the verge of running dry. All the big wells have been played out. Sure there are lots of little wells but they are not economically viable. So Alberta is getting less and less like Texas every day.
Ronmac: I have heard the same thing about the shalepatch. Indeed, back in the day when Obama was president, knowledgeable oil industry analysts predicted just this, about now. That is why China is electrifying so quickly and effectively. DJC
I also came across a video saying the Texas oil barons aren’t drilling and are pulling up stakes at a fairly rapid rate because the Saudis are deliberately tanking the cost of oil at Trump’s request.
So if Dixie Dani and her crew of runaways are thinking about bailing, they’d best think again when oil is $45 a barrel because they won’t be getting enough to pay for a parking ticket–never mind running a province.
Yet another soothing double-bind courtesy of our benevolent plutocracy. Would you like your technofeudal estate to be overseen by the traditional anti-worker, anti-indigenous paramilitary force that brought you the Estevan strike murders and the Winnipeg strike murders and the pre-Pearl Harbour registration of Japanese Canadians, and whatever it was they did with the Air India bombing, or would you prefer a paramilitary force cooked up by a gang that is less ethical and more compromised than J Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn dream team?
Compare and contrast:
https://www.coalking.ca/challenges/strikes_drumheller_2.html
“The strike busters were paid $10 a day plus all the alcohol they could consume to break the back of the OBU strike. The “specials” patrolled the streets and gathered any lone miners. If they did not offer resistance, they were sent to work in the mines. If they resisted in any way, however, the miners were severely beaten, sometimes resulting in serious and permanent bodily harm. Some men were also actually tarred and feathered while others were hanged upside down by their feet and were forced to drink horse urine….Even their homes were not safe from the strike busters, who would occasionally raid the shacks to force the strikers into a fight or submission.”
https://history.alberta.ca/energyheritage/coal/triumphs-and-tragedies-1914-1930/labour/drumheller-coal-mining-strike-1919.aspx
Who would have thought that Alberta of 1919 is about to happen again a century later?
This is not the Alberta of my founding family. Double-bind is apt, since it often referenced as a precursor of schizophrenia.
As it appears it will not be long now before the RCMP are relieved of their role in rural community policing across the country therefore making plans for provincial policing seems wise. The devil is in the details of course and it is to the details of post-RCMP policing we, the people, ought to direct our attention.
Right now the USA is in turmoil. The cops and armed forces are goosestepping over a massive wave of protesters as I type. Why Smith wants to cozy up to that fascist regime speaks volumes about what she actually wants for Alberta.
How so many so-called “freedom luvin” Albertans can’t see that, or why Carney is hand-waving away Trump’s constant war crimes and ongoing government coup, I cannot fathom. Anyone who thinks Trump’s going to be hamstrung at the next election, if there even is one, is deluded.
Just like Trump, she wants her own Praetorian Guard to protect from the consequences of her own actions if the situation becomes dire enough and the RCMP comes to arrest her for corruption or sedition.
That, IMO, is the underpinning of her present nonsense.
B….the big question is ” are they actual ‘police’ , or d’rumps renegade supporters??
Masked men, no ID’s , unmarked cars, attacking people who confront them or try to film their actions…..
Florida representatives are being denied access to “Aligator Auschwitz ” to verify conditions. The GOP is laughing at all the ‘merchandise’ they’re selling.
Marlaina posing with d’rump, again with Ice Barbie and saying D’sanctimonius is her hero…should worry ALL Canadians, not just Albertans.
Famous last words— Oh he’ll never do that, he’s just joking, it’s just leftist rhetoric…..
—–Until it wasn’t——
Randi,
Oh, ICE are unequivocally brown shirts. No training, little vetting, committing deliberate acts of terror on the streets in full view of the public. Swearing fealty to Trump. (for history buffs you’ll know it didn’t end well–for the brownshirts, either)
Also what you never see on the mainstream news…how many times residents have driven them off because Trumpy’s press minions don’t want you to see that. Happens more often than you think. Also, the Los Angeles protests are still going strong although less effective. MSM won’t cover them, either.
Alligator Alcatraz is “surrounded by nothing” the same way Israel’s formation was “surrounded by nothing”–it’s surrounded by Indigenous Miccosukee territory on three sides–who manage to live there, just fine.
The problem with Trumpy and his lot is that they babble, constantly. So I just keep telling folks, “Act on what he’s doing, not what he’s saying” not because he’s not saying things that he’ll do–but because you’ll drive yourself nuts if you think *everything* he says, is true.
As for Canada, Dixie Dani is his wedge. I know people don’t want to believe that but this is directly from the American deep state playbook of annexing and colonizing. Democracies are easy to colonize because they’re inherently unstable, fragile and persuadable.
That’s the part that I see coming.
I wish I didn’t.
She is driven by her egomaniacal, psychopathy including her Botox shots to “rejuvenate” both her faces!
It’s all fascism, all the time, from all political parties.
“’The NATO association of Canada’s youth protégé, 16-year-old Jaden Braves, who is “co-president of the Green Party of Canada’s youth wing and CEO of the Young Politicians of Canada” recently posted a video of himself firing a semi-automatic firearm while leaning on a NATO flag.”
https://globalgreen.news/semi-automatics-and-nato-flags-the-rise-of-canadian-greens-pro-war-child-politician-jaden-braves/
Murphy: Somewhere around here I have a photo of the late Jack Layton firing a machine gun on a Canadian warship somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, for whatever that’s worth. And didn’t a German Green leader turn out to be an enthusiastic warmonger when she got to be part of the ruling coalition. Someone speak with Ms. May while there’s still time! DJC
David: I don’t remember the Layton bang-bang picture, but I do remember a bemused conservative MP looking at the machine gun he was holding while on a Canadian war ship in the Mediterranean. I believe he represented your riding.
Kang: I did once live in Mr. Layton’s Toronto riding, but not at the time he was MP. The photo you mention is one of a series that I was referring to. My memory may be faulty that he was actually firing the weapon, but he was certainly prepared to do so. DJC
I feel the push for a provincial police force is due to two bad qualities of the UCP coming together: anti Canadianism and a desire for power/control. In the end, they want to replace a bureaucracy they don’t control with one they can.
The UCP with its ambivalence or dislike of Canada seems to be more and more out of tune with the mood of the times. Even before now there was no widespread desire to get rid of the RCMP in Alberta.
Voters tend to deal harshly with parties that become too preoccupied with their own political hobby horses instead of dealing with more pressing problems. Would having a provincial police force even make the top 10 list of what Albertans really want?
Sadly, a lot like Texas, Alberta has morphed into something unrecognizable: an urban rural divide that pits cowboys, rig hands, anti vaxers, double clutching, gun loving, climate denying version of mutant Didsburian man against urban (being kind) society. This is not the country my family fought WWII for, they fought for Canada as homesteader sons.
They are clearly pushing Alberta Sheriffs into this role because some of them have received more training, so they’re pretty much police right? My issue is that I highly doubt they were hired and vetted to be police officers and all that comes with that role. Just because someone can write speeding tickets or arrest someone on a warrant doesn’t mean they are the right person to tell someone their child died in a car crash or navigate a domestic quarrel between two partners (or both and more in rapid succession).
If they push the wrong people through because they need bodies, we should all be very seriously worried.
“we should all be very seriously worried.”
Sounds like the KKKeystone Kops to me.
As I said, just look at those uniforms. Escapees from Acme Central Casting Costumes and supply. How silly can The United Cornpone Party get?
Well put.
Alberta Rangers, Alberta’s UCP police force, a’ la ICE, where radio-head Smith, with full control of this force, will eventually be in a position where she can ignore court rulings, a’ la Trump. Folks, you are living through the transformation of democracy to fascism in Alberta, and her base of medieval peasants, the maple MAGAts/fake Canadians/real fascist Yankees, want her to go further. Time will only tell if she, with the help of the corporate media backing her, take over.
So next up:
– Defund public schools
– Up funding for private and home/barn schooling
– Vet all uni profs for woke tendencies
– Free annual shots of Ivermectin
– Remove all books from libraries.
i believe the players within that sector need $68 oil just meet costs. outside of alaska, conventional crude is not there in volume or at low cost recovery as well. shale and conventional liquids are both close to played out.
So Smith needs a police force, that is complicit and won’t investigate the UPC?
I feel like I am being forced fed Code Liver Oil.
This province is now the State of Alberta and Danielle Smith cannot wait to sell us as cheap as possible to her first love Trump. What a disgrace.
Carlos— just in grade 1, grade 2 we thought we were lucky enough to get the pills, ugh!!
Look on the little bright side— we all made it, 60+ yrs later, alot wiser , and still trying to “fight the good fight” .
As Charlie says: if we don’t stand up and be heard, history will repeat itself.
Useless Clowns Pretending……When banks and billionaires run the back of the shop and are financing a redneck revival with tax payers money……..wake up people…..chances are its your employer…….
So the actual name of this new organization has been announced as, “Alberta Sheriffs Police Service”. I guess they’ve been watching too many old American TV Westerns.
Sheriffs in the Benighted States are County-level law enforcement officials elected by the citizens of the County, and their sworn peace officer staff, known as deputies, have both policing and court officer functions.
Sheriffs in the British tradition, which we inherited at Confederation, on the other hand, are purely court officers, providing court security, transporting prisoners in criminal matters, and employing bailiffs to enforce civil judgements. Some Canadian Counties have even used the old British term, “High Sheriff”, as Halifax County (as it then was), Nova Scotia, once did (where I lived until 1985).
https://novascotia.ca/just/court_services/sheriff.asp
I was already unhappy when they called the Alberta Highway Patrol “Sheriffs”. Now the new provincial police will be called “Sheriffs”? Americanization by stealth?
@Jerry
ASPS…
…welp that’s oddly fitting.
Boni- oddly fitting and fitting oddly = Poilievre, back into an oversized ‘white hat’ in *’ , blue shirt and….a sheriffs badge.
So did DS make him the first honorary sheriff….lol wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
And right on cue, there’s PP taking photo ops with a couple of down home boys, drinking murcan beer while his hat’s on backwards (AFF).
Meanwhile Mr Rath is tweeting that Pierre should go back to Ottawa, he not concerned about Alberta.
Regarding the so-called ice agents, see Charlie Angus/ Meidastouch bluesky. There are other people covering the stories; while our MSM seems more concerned about “,why are you here?– PM attending Stampede and whiffing on the pancake flipping *, not saying anything about Pierre mangling the pancakes with a pair of tongs, then putting out a video that said he had to watch the PM in really, really slow motion to see if his elbows were up or down,,yada yada, flip flopping.
” and golly gee, I sur don’t ‘no why people don’t think he’d make a good PM.
But he sounded almost ‘wistful’ telling DS how much Albertans love her ( grrroan) and how he will stand up for Battle River if elected.
I guess congrats to Mr Kureck, it was soooooo lucky that there was an opening @:Upstream Strategy that all his parliamentary experience will be an asset to the company. Oh! Okay!!
Just a passing thought….IMHO
Aliance/Reform/Wildrose/UCP
The ‘chickens’—have all come back to roost in Alberta….
Presto, Harpo, PP …..and all double/triple dipping on the taxpayers dime. Some people really can’t take a hint; especially the one that so adamant about politicians should absolutely not do more than 2 terms. Take the Progressive out of the the PC party and you’re left with the Cons.
And the bats in the gallery, want to be down @ground level where the real action is.
There’ll be the obligatory ICE, DHS and CIA involvement and control spun as training, inter agency cooperation and intel sharing. Full deal MAGA
Smith and some of her cohorts just want to grow up to be maga. We will see how that goes when her idol and his followers wind up at the International Court of the Hague at some future date or perhaps simple introduced to Texas style endings at the end of a rope. It usually does not end well for people like Trump and crew or Smith or Putin, etc. Do wonder where Smith will send people she wants “out” will be shipped to or when the federal government steps in perhaps after a year or two of her carry on.
Smith needs to be removed now. Waiting will cause chaos and allow her to foster relationships with the USA that could create proprietary feelings from the USA. Worse, she could sell off Canada / Alberta to the USA, entangling Alberta in a legal, political or moral fight with both the USA and Canada. Any power she has should be crushed right now. Stop her and her separatist extremism now. I don’t want Trumpism in Canada.
Lorraine– you can’t sell what you don’t old— no matter what DS or Rat-h says. Neither seem to know anything about how the government works…imo it’s one of the reasons they’re always loud, frustrated, stamping their feet, and hollering like a typical 2 yr old trying to make it to the terrible 3s.
Check out Thomas Lukaszuk bluesky (X if you feel you have to)
#forever canadian
He just did a couple of videos explaining what he’s doing and basically explaining how & why DS and all the minions are so totally full of buffalo chips. Which reminds me, he’s also sent out an interesting letter to the Indigenous Chiefs, whom Danielle and her separatist contemporaries conveniently leave out of the picture. And it is a big picture, especially since her & Dougie were doing such a d’rump style signing for another MOU, again coincidentally after both are trying to stop the Federal government from progressing
with the Indigenous waters Act.
I’m not sure if this seems more like ‘Snake’ or ‘Chickenheart’…
Dad had a funny sense of humor. Hmmm!!