This Week in AB: October 5, 2024

New look, same great taste.

The legislative session will begin at the end of this month and we’ve already been given some teasers about what legislation the UCP will be introducing.

Targeting transgender Albertans

• Smith has said that the UCP will be inserting the government between youth, their doctors, and their parents this fall by introducing legislation against some forms of gender-affirming care for those under the age of 15. She also said that youth in Alberta could receive currently approved care with parental consent, so, we won’t know what to believe until the legislation is available; the burden of being led by someone who has to speak out of both sides of her mouth to connect with the party’s base and the general public.

• The UCP wants to ensure volunteer sport organizations maintain spaces for those born with vaginas. Party membership wanted it restricted to those who were “female at conception” — when every human zygote (resulting from the union of both “female” and “male” gametes) is by default female until such time that gonads develop — but someone in the brain trust must have realized that in order to properly discriminate against transgender people, they had to defer to science this time. The UCP has not said whether they will require genital inspections or blood tests to ensure competitors are female enough, perhaps allowing that provision of their government papers will suffice.

• Youth in Alberta will not have the personal freedom to decide if they would like to use their own pronouns at school without expressed consent from those who have the appropriate authority to determine whether their children should be afforded the bare minimum of common courtesy in choosing how to be addressed by their teachers and peers.

• The UCP is not, to my knowledge, intending to return to a time when participation in sport was restricted to people born with penises, a non-feat made easier by continuing to ignore the fact that people with vaginas are generally restricted from participating in leagues that actually pay — because they don’t have penises.

Healthcare, or lack thereof

• It has been 730 days since Danielle Smith promised to fix healthcare in 90 days.

• Alberta’s flu and Covid vaccine orders have been “temporarily paused” after the government failed to ensure its delivery contract was renewed back in April. However, the UCP was busy formulating their attacks on transgender youth at the time, so…

• Smith said the new deal on physician pay that the UCP has supposedly been working on since they tore up doctor’s contracts in 2020 will “just have to wait”, despite claiming progress had been made back in April. Alberta’s government boasted its fiscal prowess in June, stating it had a $4.3 billion-dollar surplus at the end of its fiscal year in March.

• About 14,000 referrals sent through AHS’s Connect Care portal for services outside of AHS were not completed. Government says it’s on it.

Municipal

• Danielle Smith mused that the province should take over property tax collection for municipalities at the Alberta Municipalities Association meeting at the end of September. Council members I spoke with were not particularly optimistic about the plan. It’s not even entirely because the UCP decided to stop paying their own property tax “to save money”, but moreso because councilors have seen how the province is treating larger municipalities and doesn’t trust them generally. Smith said at the time that she was “going off script”, so there’s no guarantee that the UCP will decide to take control of municipal revenues, but, because it’s Danielle Smith, there’s definitely no guarantee they won’t.

All the money in the world

• Smith says the province will take the federal government to court again over its environmental policies, saying they have demanded a four-week turnaround on amendments to its Environmental Impact Assessment legislation passed in June.

• Alberta’s solvent oil and gas producers won’t have to contribute more for environmental liabilities, despite their ever-increasing numbers. The Alberta government had to return $137 million leftover from the federal government’s hand out to remediate inactive and orphaned wells, despite the fact that the Orphan Well Association still has far more work waiting than it can get to.

Side effects may include talking out of one’s ass

• The Premier of Alberta, at a member’s only townhall last weekend, said she had been told by someone with an ounce of authority that “if anyone is (spraying chemicals over Alberta), it would be the (U.S.) Department of Defence.” I say “an ounce of authority” because that is the least someone would expect exists for the leader of a province to repeat. As it turns out, no one with any authority whatsoever could confirm that either Danielle Smith or any Alberta government official had raised concerns about “chemtrails” with them. On the latest episode of CBC‘s West of Centre, however, host Jason Markusoff was able to confirm that a member at the Red Deer event brought it up, which would certainly be good enough for “no crazy filter” Smith to repeat with her own brand of ill-gotten authority. Highly recommend the episode even if one has to listen to the former UCP president drop some poorly-timed party talking points into what was otherwise a good conversation.

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Women of ABpoli is making some changes; the newsletter will focus more on the government decisions/musings/news in shorter form, and the longer form content will be separate. I will also be dedicating one day a week to the province’s opposition. As always, thank you to everyone who reads, shares, and becomes a free or paid subscriber — your support is greatly appreciated!