SAINTS PRESERVE US

Baby, Step Back

March ’21, Edmonton, weather fine, it was business as usual for Alberta Justice Minister Kaycee Madu driving through a school zone, distracted by his phone. Maybe he was following up on the social media blow back to a recent Facebook post of his which explicitly stated that the federal government implicitly desired his United Conservative Party (UCP) government’s anti-covid measures to fail, Ottawa sentencing all Albertans to death hopefullywise. Anyway, Madu was issued a $300 ticket, compliments of the Edmonton Police Service (EPS).

Madu, or one of his flacks, has since insisted that his phone was in his pocket and ergo he could not have been looking at its screen. The distracted driving charge then suggests he was fumbling for it, head down, hands off the wheel alongside a schoolyard. Important men must take important calls because important men don’t receive any other kind of call.

Everybody knows somebody and rarely hesitates to ask the odd favour. “May I please use you as a reference on my job application?” “Would you mind driving me to the airport?” “Since you’re out, do you mind picking me up a pack of cigarettes?” “Can I please borrow your chainsaw, a spade and some sturdy trash bags?” So, why shouldn’t the provincial justice minister phone his capital city’s chief of police about an annoying traffic ticket?

News reports indicate that conversation may have been something of an awkward semantic dance. UCP minister Madu, who is Black, was merely inquiring about the EPS’s ingrained systemic racism, and the service’s profiling and carding practices. Apparently, his road violation and subsequent fine didn’t even come up in his conversation with Chief Dale McFee because, God bless him, McFee wasn’t receptive to a high level hint. The fury here resides with an elected mediocrity’s self-righteous spin on unacceptable and idiotic popinjay behaviour.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has since requested Madu to simply “step back” from his cabinet justice portfolio. There’s no justice. However, the timing of this silly little scandal involving perceived entitlement and poor judgment is ironically apropos. The UCP has tabled legislation that will eliminate traffic court as of the first of February. Ticketed drivers without automatic access to higher ranking members of the province’s various police forces will have to go online to dispute their guilt. Win or lose, fees to do so could be as much as $150. Presumably the Assistant Minister of Eliminating Red Tape (there is such a modern Albertosaurus) is clearing legal backlogs with a sledgehammer rather than a gavel: the end of presumed innocence, with Alberta Justice Minister Kaycee Madu steering the clown car through a school zone.

In other Alberta political news, the current UCP minister of health has covid. The previous guy was asked to step back because doing something next to nothing proved extremely stressful.

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of Alberta political commentary since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is my latest contribution to the province’s white noise. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.