Women of ABpoli Hot Flashes: Off the rails
This Week in AB
Details of Smith's proposed Alberta Sovereignty Act to be released prior to vote deadline
The final UCP leadership debate is behind us and ballots are being mailed out to the ~123,000 members over the next couple of weeks. There will also be five in-person ballot stations around the province on October 6.
For those who want more information on how ranked balloting works, and maybe get some insight into what the numbers might look like, Stephen Carter is going to join me for a Zoom to talk about all of this on September 13, 2022 at 8pm MST. Reach out for details!
Danielle Smith's Alberta Sovereignty Act (ASA) is still taking most of the oxygen, thanks to the fact that no one has seen the proposed legislation; something Smith now says will be rectified before members vote for leader.
The Free Alberta Strategy, a horrifyingly unconstitutional fairytale used to scare logic-informed Canadians before they fall asleep at night, was cooked up by lawyer Rob Anderson, Dr. Barry Cooper from the University of Calgary faculty of political science, and Derek From, a constitutional lawyer at Anderson's law firm.
Dr. Cooper wrote an opinion piece for the National Post to affirm that the ASA as it was proposed to Smith is "unconstitutional on purpose".
Anderson claims that Alberta just needs a provincial police force so Alberta can direct enforcement to do what they want. That's literally proposing a police state but moving on.
From... well, From's claim is fully reliant on the premise that "Albertans' historical grievances are genuine and legitimate." He adds that since William Aberhart and Preston Manning, Alberta has recognized something "awry" with our relationship to Ottawa. Considering Manning's father Ernest became a protege of Aberhart's, it's basically just a continuation of Aberhart's beliefs passed down to the next generations.
Follow the "funny money", as it were.
Aside from the commentary by the authors, no one really knows what the text of an ASA would look like. Would Smith risk attempting to pass an unconstitutional Act that even members of her own caucus may not be convinced to support?
She says "no" when pressed yet claims the Act would allow Alberta to do all of the things that aren't constitutional in the first place.
Smith has said that she expects to have caucus work on the draft legislation and that it would be in line with the constitution.
While I've heard from plenty of people who did not support the United Conservative Party in 2019 say Smith would not have a mandate to support the ASA, or that ~50,000 Albertans do not have the authority to give Smith a mandate, I believe there is a reasonable probability that a majority of people who did vote UCP in 2019 would also support an ASA.
However, with a jobless economic recovery, they might not be in a position to vote for fairy tales again in the next election.
Alberta's Lieutenant Governor finds herself targeted for offering an opinion on legislation that doesn't exist yet
Alberta's Lieutenant Governor, the Honourable Salma Lakhani, who is tasked with granting Royal Assent to bills passed in the Legislature, held a media scrum after an Alberta Day celebration on the first and was asked what she would do if an unconstitutional Act, such as the oft-rumoured-to-potentially-be Alberta Sovereignty Act, was to be passed and Royal Assent requested.
Lakhani's response caused its own uproar.
"The Lt-Gov's role is highly constrained by constitutional law, in the form of constitutional conventions. She cannot refuse to apply royal assent to a bill because she disagrees with a law's content, or thinks it unwise, or even is of dubious constitutionality," replied Eric Adams, a constitutional scholar and University of Alberta professor.
"The legislature is presumed to act constitutionally and, in the event that it has enacted an unconstitutional law, the proper venue to address that unconstitutionality is the courts, not a representative of the Crown."
The fairest article I've read on the subject was written by Janet French.
Rampant speculation on what the text might say (thanks to the authors above and pretty much everyone else with a platform), has kept the ASA, and Smith, dominating headlines all summer, providing Smith, and the ASA, with a level of press coverage campaigns would (and do) pay top dollar for.
Even the LG's response offered Smith an opportunity to throw shade on soon-to-be-former Premier Jason Kenney and the Prime Minister (who essentially appoints the Governor General, who in turn appoints Lieutenant Governors based on recommendations from the Prime Minister).
It also provided a history lesson for most of us.
The last time an Alberta LG reserved assent was during William Aberhart's government, in 1937. Aberhart was so unimpressed with Bowen that he took away Bowen's access to Government House, formerly the official residence of the LG.
Since that time, convention has been to afford the Assembly or House (unmerited) good faith and grant Royal Assent to Acts put forward by the Legislature, whether they are constitutional or not.
One of the most recent Acts to be challenged was written by the NDP government: Bill 12, Preserving Canada's Economic Prosperity Act, also dubbed Alberta's Turn off the Taps legislation.
Bill 12 received Royal Assent on May 18, 2018 and B.C. Premier John Horgan filed a challenge that same month, even though the Bill had yet to be proclaimed. Upon forming government in 2019, Premier Jason Kenney proclaimed the Bill during the governing party's first Cabinet Meeting.
A B.C. justice deferred the ruling on the challenge in 2019, and the sunset clause of two years after proclamation expired in 2021. The UCP revamped the Bill to exclude some of the more constitutionally questionable language on May 25, 2021.
All of this is simply to say that convention over the past 85 years has been to just pass legislation and let the courts deal with the fallout.
Smith, for her part, has claimed the legislation would be constitutional, particularly in that it would "give Alberta the same powers Quebec has".
Which we already have without passing new Acts.
It's hard to tell who Smith is trying to deceive; she appears to be reluctant to admit a government under her leadership would intentionally try and pass unconstitutional legislation, yet also likes to pretend this legislation would create a magical world where the Alberta government reigns supreme. Frankly, I have no idea which scenario she actually believes is true.
Alberta Education publishes "teacher registry"; unsure how to obtain information about class sizes
That's really the "lighter side" of the Government of Alberta's decision to provide the public access to things they really don't need for a purpose that is murky at best.
Teachers who taught in Alberta since 1954 are registered unless they have been granted an exemption.
Supposedly, this registry is available so that students educated in Alberta can see if their teachers were certified, or if their teachers were disciplined and had their certificates revoked.
Teachers whose certificates have been cancelled or suspended for unprofessional conduct since 1990 are listed.
I'll admit, I could probably tell you the names of all of my teachers from K-9 and a good number of the ones in high school. Outside of that?
There's only one Alberta teacher I remember who wasn't one of mine: James (Jim) Keegstra, charged in 1984 for disseminating hate speech to his students while teaching in Eckville, Alberta.
He's not listed.
Honestly, if you somehow missed that you or your children were taught by an anti-Semetic Holocaust denier, wouldn't that be something you could reasonably expect a Teacher Registry (of teachers since 1954) "to provide accountability and transparency" to include on their website?
No, why would the Education Ministry want you to know if you were taught alt-history when instead, the Alberta government could put someone who changed their name after a traumatic relationship in danger? Or allow some self-righteous twat to target a teacher whose name was once more masculine or feminine than it is today?
It's almost as if accountability wasn't really part of the plan at all.
UCP projects $13 billion dollar windfall
Today's Q1 fiscal update forecasts a $13.2 billion surplus by March 31, 2023 #ableg”
Alberta has finally hit pay day with the oil and gas projects that have provided all of those well-paying jobs in Alberta for decades. Those well-paying jobs helped Albertans pull in between $2 and $2.9 trillion in personal income since 1960.
TRILLIONS.
And in the announcement of what Alberta could do with this jobless economic boom, Kenney bypassed compassion for those his government hurt most.
"We understand that in order to be a compassionate, caring province, we must be prosperous first,” Kenney said after he won the UCP leadership in 2017.
Yet, once that prosperity came rolling in, Kenney showed Alberta exactly who many thought he was: someone who hurts people because he can.
Canada
The Public Order Emergency Commission (Convoy/Emergencies Act) wants to hear from you
This story was already a week old when I found it, and the request for submissions went out a week prior.
The Commission is looking for public feedback and if you spent two weeks or more in February with your mouth agape at what was going on in Canada, please email them.
Protesters and supporters have likely been on this but a lot of people sat back in awe that border crossings were allowed to be blocked, businesses seeing transport delays, people blocked from crossing the border, people locked out of their businesses and afraid to walk through their city.
The next round of hearings will begin September 19 and they are hoping to get as many responses as possible by "early September" but submissions will be open until October 31 and "every submission will be read by the commission".
It has a nice set up of directed questions (whether you were involved in the protests or watching from afar) to help you along, or you can use them as a guide to write "up to five pages".
Have fun, be honest, be heard!
CPC Leadership Winner will be announced!!
Ummmm - when did they stop calling themselves the Conservative Party of Canada on the twitters?
Anyways, it's almost over! If it wasn't over for a whole lot longer than that. Common wisdom suggests that Poilievre has this contest in the bag.
I'm hopeful, though, that a lot of "law and order" conservatives rejected Poilievre's disdain of conservative values and saw the unexpected gem that is Scott Aitcheson. He was a reasonable, personable, charitable individual who reminded me of solid, trustworthy, respectable conservatism.
With ballots due tomorrow at 5PM Eastern, I don't mind saying he got my first vote and I only voted for two people.
Conspiracy update: Queen of Canada makes bolder claim than usual
“Romana Didulo posts a letter from the Hells Angels saying they are ready to serve as security”
“Reverse image search shows this signature belongs to Bill Kaulitz of @tokiohotel.”
There's nothing I can add to this.
Final thoughts
“Biden called out fascists in his speech, yet I did not get offended cause I'm not a fascist.”