Hats off to Thomas Lukaszuk and the Forever Canadian campaign for getting Prime Minister Mark Carney to agree to show up at the group’s remain-in-Canada rallies in Calgary and Edmonton tomorrow and Friday.
Mr. Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, is enormously popular right now throughout Canada, including supposedly rebellious Alberta, so that should help sustain the wave of pro-Canadian sentiment that seems to be building in the province as we enter the final days before Premier Danielle Smith’s divisive and stupidly dangerous separation referendum.
Speaking of hats, the Black Hat guys from the separatist crowd won’t be tipping their Seppie Stetsons to Mr. Lukaszuk, the former Progressive Conservative deputy premier who’s been fighting the good fight to keep Alberta in Canada right from the start of Premier Smith’s treason-adjacent MAGA mischief. Anyway, they’re busy right now pivoting to ginning up a false “stop the steal” narrative about the Oct. 19 vote in anticipation of the expected outcome.
Like Mr. Lukaszuk, the Alberta NDP Opposition led by Naheed Nenshi has not been shy about speaking up for Canada since the separatist-dominated United Conservative Party started this subversive nonsense, and NDP volunteers are door-knocking now to get out the vote for Canada. Those facts deserve to be acknowledged and remembered.
Also mentioned in dispatches should be Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie, the only member of Premier Smith’s cabinet who had the intestinal fortitude to stand up to her party’s corruption and who now sits in the Legislature as the only representative of the pro-Canadian Progressive Tory Party.
Likewise, Heather McPherson, the NDP’s only Alberta MP, has been consistently fierce in and out of Parliament in defence of our country in the face of waves of disinformation and misinformation from the United States and other foreign adversaries of Canadian unity.
Meanwhile – better late than never, one supposes – manifestations of a stay-in-Canada nature by former premiers Alison Redford, Ed Stelmach, Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney are suddenly in the news. Ms. Notley and Mr. Kenney appeared before a presumably sympathetic audience at a Canadian Chamber of Commerce event in Alberta’s capital Tuesday. And according to The Globe and Mail, an op-ed by Ms. Redford and Mr. Stelmach, both Conservatives, and Ms. Notley, a New Democrat, will be published in the moribund Calgary Herald sometime this week.
All but Mr. Kenney have been surprisingly quiet on this topic for too long. And Mr. Kenney has a particular axe to grind in that he was run out of his job by the same crowd of separatists and MAGA lunatics (his word, not mine) who replaced him with Premier Smith. Nevertheless, while all have detractors in Alberta, each can help by speaking to loyalists in their political communities.
But let’s not forget that the heavy lifting is being done by Albertans like my neighbours, who have taken back our Maple Leaf Flag from the Convoy crowd, canvassed tirelessly for the Forever Canadian petition, and yesterday, waited stoically in long lineups on the first day of advanced polling.
As for the federal Conservatives, who occupy 34 of Alberta’s 37 seats in Parliament, they are all missing in action. Has anyone heard a peep out of any of them in support of Canada but for the occasional bleat from their leader, the MP pro tempore for Battle Rover-Crowfoot, appropriately located in the heart of dinosaur country?
The MLAs of the nominally federalist UCP, notwithstanding its internal domination by secessionists, have been even quieter in defence of their country, if that’s possible. This too should be remembered.
Their former leader Mr. Kenney is right that, when the dust settles, the UCP is going to need to decide whether it’s a separatist party or a Canadian party and if it chooses the latter course, someone is going to have to purge the separatists from its ranks.
On a personal note, advance-voting lineups in St. Albert yesterday were long – about an hour and a half through the morning and early afternoon, when I voted – but good natured and resolute despite a chill wind and no place to sit down if you forgot to bring a lawn chair. Elections Alberta staff were capable and professional, keeping the lines moving and ensuring the plethora of ballots went in the right boxes.