Women of ABpoli Hot Flashes: The clock is ticking
This Week in AB
The end of the UCP leadership race is near but it could spawn a host of other, somehow even worse, issues
“Alberta is friggen exhausting.”
By this time next week, we will know who a small segment of the Alberta voting population chose to be the next Premier.
For the last four and a half months -- since Kenney announced on May 18, 2022 that he would not respect the will of his party's membership -- we've been subjected to the wild and wonky world of "how badly can one person really fuck Alberta over? UCP leadership edition".
It might not even be "over" on October 6, if the self-aggrandized stylings of one of the candidates is ushered in as the new Premier; then it's going to get particularly messy, I expect (you can still register for the University of Alberta Centre for Constitutional Studies Sovereignty Act Panel --in person or via zoom-- with Lisa Young, Eric Adams, and Jared Wesley on Wed. Oct 5, at 5PM).
So far, the warring party has lost Calgary-Elbow MLA Doug Schweitzer (Aug 31), and Brooks-Medicine Hat MLA Michaela (Glasgo) Frey (Sep. 26), and Calgary-Fish Creek MLA Richard Gotfried (Sep. 29) have announced they will not seek re-election.
Leadership hopeful Travis Toews (Grande Prairie-Wapiti) also said during one of the all-candidate debates that he's not sure he'll stick around if he doesn't win the leadership. Rumour has it there are others already making their exit plans if a certain candidate with a "God-given freedoms"-complex wins.
More resignations will generate headlines but it doesn't harm the new leader's agenda; it simply allows them to attract more like-minded people to run around in circles while maniacally waving the once-coveted blue sign.
Recent polling shows that while Smith is popular amongst rural voters, her attack on the rule of law in our country is not a winning strategy for Calgary, largely believed to be the sole battleground to win government in 2023.
A Danielle Smith-led government will still likely be as popular in rural Alberta as it was when she ran the Wildrose, but that support (either for her or for a party she leads) doesn't transfer well into urban centres.
Unfortunately, discomfited voters aren't entirely keen to prop up the NDP, either.
They may come around if Smith scares them enough, however, or they might stay home, or potentially even rally around another party. We'll have to wait and see.
Beginning October 21, both the UCP and NDP are holding their Annual General Meetings outside of their comfort zones, on the same weekend, in Edmonton and Calgary respectively, as they gear up for Battle of Alberta Royale, 2023.
Hoping to play spoiler is the Alberta Party, who will be holding their AGM a week earlier on the 15th and 16th in Edmonton, and they're also offering an online option.
You can attend as a member or an observer -- non-member -- if you have lots of cash to blow.
I'll be attending two of the three and we'll have someone on the ground at the third I can't make because: same weekend, three-plus hours apart.
Exhausting indeed.
What are SLAPP lawsuits and why is Alberta unwilling to offer us protection from them?
“SLAPP suits buy silence from poor people.”
SLAPP stands for "strategic lawsuit against public participation". It is typically used to scare people into silence if they don't have thousands of dollars to blow on a legal defence.
These lawsuits don't cost much to file (especially if you have equally sketchy friends who are lawyers) and often they work as intended, with the respondent backing off of some stance or position they took and issuing a public apology.
Alberta doesn't have anti-SLAPP legislation, which means that bullies can file frivolous and vexatious bullshit suits that will cost some person actual money to defend themselves against.
Ontario introduced anti-SLAPP legislation in 2020 that helped two defendants get frivolous suits by Rebel Media dismissed.
One has to wonder if some of the more prolific users of SLAPP lawsuits having the ears of PC higher ups has prevented legislation from being enacted here.
With friends like these...
So long, farewell, adieu, etc, etc
It's weird that I know all of this better than the back of my hand, isn't it? Enough to know that the only thing Dean Bennett got wrong was that Kenney didn't say "I hold the pen" about policy; he was referring to the platform.
Kenney's winks and nods to the extremist elements of Alberta conservatism were always more likely to end his career than bolster it; as I also expect the newest CPC leader, Pierre Poilievre, is maybe finding out for himself.
Canada
Leopards still eating faces
If you want to know who's who in Canada's neo-Nazi zoo, I'd highly recommend following Kurt Phillips (@ARCCollective) founder of Anti-Racism Canada (ARC) Collective. His deep dives are incredibly fulsome.
Now, back to Poilievre.
During the CPC leadership race, Poilievre held rallies around the country for the freedom folk, as one does.
Jeremy MacKenzie showed up at one of them to shake hands with the presumptive leader and the campaign doled out pics of them as part of the "look how popular he is!" social media plan.
Those who knew who Jeremy MacKenzie was attempted to warn Poilievre about the man. Poilievre, of course, dismissed them as part of the "woke" cancel-culture mob.
That is, until MacKenzie had a public conversation about raping Poilievre's wife just because he could.
Because, you see, freedom worriers have no allegiance to anyone --they're "free", dontcha know? And going out of one's way to appeal to them doesn't mean they're suddenly offering their loyalty, or that they respect, or will listen to those who offer their attention.
It's actually the opposite.
These daft conservative leaders needed them; not the other way around.