Our Duty on October 19

The folks at Know the Nine have articulated why those of us who care about other people should vote to remain in Canada and then vote no to the other nine questions proposed by Danielle Smith's non-binding, divisive, and distracting October referendum. While the UCP government will do what they want no matter the outcome of the vote, it's still important to show up and express our support for Canada and reject the UCP's attempts to marginalize minorities, make voting more difficult for everyone, and continue to erode our public institutions and Canadian unity. The more Albertans reject what Danielle Smith and the UCP are selling, the harder it will be for them to justify their mean-spirited, socially and economically destructive agenda. 
 

Request Your Special Ballot for the Alberta Referendumb

Elections Alberta is now accepting requests for special ballots for the October 19 Alberta Referendum. Just fill out the online form and they'll mail you a ballot with all ten referendum questions; fill it out, mail it back, and you've done your civic duty. 

Why Is This Important? 
Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party are subjecting Albertans to a pointless, divisive, misleading, and non-binding referendum. This means that no matter what the results, the Alberta government is under no legal obligation to act on the results of the vote. Given the performance of the UCP government thus far, with its track record of scandals, censorship, pandering to the Trump administration, working to undermine and eventually privatize public institutions, there's every reason to believe that the UCP will simply do what they want and ignore the people--unless of course the vote aligns with UCP values and strategy. 

There are nine blatantly leading questions about immigration and Canadian constitutional matters, all of them dog whistles to cast suspicion and resentment against immigrants and our fellow Canadians in other provinces--but especially the federal government, which happens to be Liberal these days. Surely a coincidence. 

So why vote? Because there's still a slight chance that a massive turnout and a massive vote against the immigration and constitutional questions and a massive vote to remain in Canada will at least give the UCP pause. 

How Should We Vote? 
I can't tell you how to vote, nor can any one else, nor should anyone. But I believe that anyone with common sense, empathy, and a basic understanding of politics should "no" on the first nine questions--not just for the sake of immigrants and marginalized people, which is reason enough, but because voting yes on these issues opens the door to escalating restrictions on personal freedom, loss of privacy, loss of crucial public services, worsening relations with the rest of Canada, and disrespecting the constitutional role of Canada's Indigenous peoples. 

Here's question ten, which of course the UCP has written to obfuscate the issue. Rather than a simple "Should Alberta stay in Canada?" or even "Should Alberta separate from Canada?", we get: 

Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?

The available responses are: 

Option 1: Alberta should remain a province of Canada.

Option 2: The Government of Alberta should commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada.

I'll be choosing option one, and I hope at least 85% of Albertans will do the same. Also, note the wording of option two, which explicitly states that the next referendum, unlike this one, would be binding--should Albertans vote for option two (and should we get shunted into a parallel universe where the Clarity Act doesn't exist). 

My prescription: 
"No to the nine, and Option 1 is just fine." Or maybe "No to the nine, one for the ten, and let's not go through this nonsense again." 

Alberta's Referendumb

I've avoided writing about Alberta politics very much for the last few years. It's because everything Danielle Smith and her crew of UCP grifters do is engineered to hurt Albertans while enriching themselves and their circle of cronies. They've demonized the LGBTQ+ community, censored books, short-changed municipalities, failed to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for environmental cleanup coasts, and encouraged a separatists movement to divide Canada. And ever since she became Premier, Danielle Smith several of her MLAs have been openly cozying up to Donald Trump and his circle of criminals. 

All this infamy has come to a head with the announcement of Alberta Referendum 2026. If you can stand to explore the site, you'll discover the NINE (mis)leading questions Albertans will be asked to vote on this October. You'll find the carefully crafted findings of the Alberta Next Panel, an exercise in finding the answers they wanted to divisive questions. 

Speaking of the questions: five on immigration (controlled by the federal government) and four on the Canadian Constitution. 

All nine questions are specifically crafted to foster resentment of immigrants and the rest of Canada. Even if Albertans overwhelmingly voted YES on all nine questions, Alberta would be put through years of painful, harmful negotiations with the rest of the country. And we would deserve the scorn of our neighbours from coast to coast. 

The most obvious insult to our intelligence? Referenda aren't binding in Alberta. So even if Albertans vote NO on each of the nine questions, the Smith government can do whatever it wants, given they have a majority in the Alberta Legislature and a proven willingness to use the notwithstanding clause to overcome any court challenge. 

Indeed, the Smith government only just announced that Alberta will be switching to permanent daylight savings time--despite the recent referendum where Albertans rejected that very change. Wherever you stand on time zones, why would any Albertan believe the UCP would obey the outcome of any referendum now? 

This also shows that the Alberta government will clearly not enact the referendum question put forward by Forever Canadian, whose petition reached the required number of signatures even before the provincial government changed the rules to make a competing petition by separatists easier to succeed. In fact, Alberta separatists are still on the streets collecting signatures, even though today's announcement seems to make their efforts moot--in that the UCP government have done their work for them. 

Every Albertan with an ounce of sense must take this threat seriously. Please--vote NO on all nine questions on October 19. Even the ones that sound reasonable, like reforming the Senate, are engineered to increase division and, contrary to what Smith and the UCP claim, tear Alberta away from Canada and give future UCP governments more and more power to trample human rights, privatize pubic institutions, and enrich the one percent to the detriment of the rest of us. That's their endgame. 

And the gall--the absolute, unmitigated gall--to drape their separatist, hateful website with the maple leaf. And to claim it's about "a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada." Goebbels would be proud. 

Earl Am Canadian, Am You?

Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party government, clearly in the thrall of their Maple MAGA behind-the-scenes leaders, have long been planning to ask Albertans, via referendum, if the province should leave Confederation. Leaving aside the question if doing so would even be constitutional, this unnecessary and divisive proposition should be fiercely rejected. 

Fortunately, former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister and MLA Thomas Lukaszuk has more sense than Smith and the UCP and has beat the provincial government to the punch with his own referendum question: 

Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada? 

Yes I do, and if you do too, please support the referendum here. You can donate to defray expenses, volunteer, canvas for signatures, or simply pledge to sign the petition--it needs roughly 300,000 signatures to proceed to official referendum stage, while Smith's "Let's separate!" petition will require only 177,000--because of course they changed the rules. 

Why does my title sound like Bizarro wrote it? Because we're clearly living in Bizarro World these days. Let's try to round off the corners of our square earth, bit by bit. It can start here. 

Unconscionable

Today Alberta's UCP government announced most Albertans will have to pay for COVID-19 vaccinations starting this fall.

The government claims this is because over half of Alberta's supply wasn't used over the last couple of years. This isn't surprising, since premier Smith's government has consistently downplayed the severity of COVID-19 and refuses to properly publicize the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots.

Currently, Alberta has the highest rate of measles cases (per capita) in Canada. This is what happens when a government abdicates its responsibility to debunk anti-vaxxers and instead implicitly supports anti-vax messages through its policies. 

Anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-vax thinking has brought measles back from the brink of extinction--a disease that can cause death and permanent disability. 

Just like COVID-19. 

Sylvia and I can and will pay for our booster shots. We have that privilege. But what about the majority of Albertans, living paycheque to paycheque, who can't afford a shot expected to cost over $100? I guess they'll just have to take their chances. 

And of course this makes life even more difficult and hazardous for the small minority of people who legitimately cannot be vaccinated for health reasons. These people are usually protected by herd immunity, but Alberta's COVID-19 vaccination rate has dropped down to around 13 percent. Herd immunity requires over 90% of any given population to be vaccinated to protect those who cannot be vaccinated. 

The UCP's decision to charge people for a life-saving vaccine could very well sicken and even kill scores of people. It will likely place immense strain on our already overworked health care providers.

Unconscionable. 

Perhaps a Short Era of Bad Feelings

Obviously I'm not happy the United Conservative Party won the most seats in yesterday's provincial election. I find most of their policies regressive, abhorrent, and inimical to human happiness and quality of life not just in Alberta, but beyond. 

On the other hand, the provincial New Democrats just formed the largest Official Opposition in Alberta history, and they have grown their vote share election after election. It's possible that beginning in 2015, Alberta entered an era of not-necessarily-uninterrupted right-wing rule. New Democrats have proven that progressives can win and can come close to winning. 

Indeed, had less than two thousand votes swung from the UCP to the NDP in Calgary, the NDP would have won a majority of seats. As things stand, when you consider the UCP needs to elect a speaker and one of their MLAS will sit as an independent because of her sickening comments about transgendered people during the campaign, the UCP's majority is really quite narrow--only a handful of seats. The election being this close may possibly stop the UCP from being too cavalier about inflicting their worst policies on Albertans, lest they swing just a few too many moderates away from the UCP and over to the New Democrats in 2027. 

It's a sliver of hope for more rational governance. That's what I cling to today. 

An Optimist's Vote

Adapted from a Facebook post from yesterday...

Sylvia and I just returned home after voting in today's Alberta provincial election. We supported the re-election bid of Jon Carson, a member of Rachel Notley's New Democratic Party. Effectively, this means we're voting for another four years of Notley/NDP government in Alberta.

I worked for the Alberta Liberal caucus for six and a half years because I thought at the time they were the best progressive alternative to the late-era PCs. But I was happy to vote for the NDP in 2015 because Rachel Notley and her team proved they had the drive and the vision to bring long-overdue change to Alberta. Since being elected, they've governed sensibly during incredibly challenging times, bringing dignity to the Legislature and making the tough decisions needed for our long-term prosperity: doing the incredibly hard work of starting real economic diversification, instituting a carbon tax to curb our emissions, winding down coal, improving farm safety, cutting child poverty in half, setting a minimum wage, and protecting the vulnerable. The UCP would deliberately undo all that progress and waste millions of taxpayer dollars on referenda on issues that are outside the realm of provincial power anyway. On top of all that, Rachel Notley and her people have run a virtually scandal-free government, whereas the UCP has corruption built in thanks to their tainted leadership race, vandalism of election signs (sometimes using fascist iconography) and utterly vile pronouncements from a number of UCP candidates, most left unrebuked by leader Jason Kenney.

Despite having worked for the Liberals for years and my support for the NDP now, I don't consider myself a partisan. I'll vote for any team that fights for my values: compassion, reason, science-based decision making, long-term thinking, support for public institutions, care for the vulnerable, ethical behaviour. Right now, Rachel's NDP is the best fit for me, and, I believe, this province. In a few hours, I'll find out if my fellow Albertans agree.