SAINTS PRESERVE US

Notes on the Fringe

Spring in Edmonton, its possibility and possibilities at least, is heralded by repeated arrivals of squonking formations of Canada geese. Robins, savvier, turn up later. Summers here are short yet the days are long. The geese are quiet, content. Summer is festival season. Edmonton’s largest festival, maybe not by box office but certainly by duration, is The Fringe, an august, 10-day celebration of theatre in all its guises. Once The Fringe winds down, the Canada geese wind up, squonking travel tips throughout their flocks for the web-footed return leg of their annual migration. Cacaphonic cues of another summer readying itself for departure. The robins always elect an earlier check out. Alas, in times like these, the provincial fringe lingers, much like Moe’s Three Stooges haircut.

Chrystia Freeland is the most powerful and influential Albertan in Canada. Her remit includes the two major federal dauphin portfolios: Freeland is this country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. She was the face of Canada’s shy and tentative foreign policy; Freeland renegotiated an already perfectly adequate North American free trade agreement with der Trumpenfuhrer’s inbred administrative toadies. And she has somehow navigated the vagaries of her boss’s vacuous “Sunny Ways” and his litany of ethical lapses.

Freeland was born up north in Peace River. Friday she was close to home, visiting Grande Prairie with minimal staff and no security detail. Routine government business. Entering an elevator in the foyer of city hall she was accosted by a lout, a big man sporting a ballcap, a wife-beater and a delightfully bouncy pair of pecs. He screamed at Freeland, calling her a “bitch” and a “traitor.” He was emphatic that she was not welcome in his province. The one-sided encounter was planned; his female companion was video-ready. This is the nature of civic discourse in these days of inarticulate rage.

Alberta is home to some 4.5 million souls. Most of us live in the big towns, Calgary and Edmonton, Lethbridge and Red Deer. The large-breasted Grande Prairie clown and his auteur consort are two of the province’s 2.8 million eligible voters (I have rounded Elections Alberta’s 2021 figures). About 120,000 of these eligible voters have ponied up $10 for membership in the United Conservative Party (UCP), an asinine ride beneath a big circus tent. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, the party’s founder and the Jesuit-trained brains behind its formation experienced his “Eh tu, Brute?” moment last spring when the rank and file, prairie hillbillies, decided he was jist too durned progressive as far as sweaty, uptight libertarians go. Time for a new leader even as the party wields power.

The Platonic ideal of the Canadian federation is simple. Its aim is to elevate the subsistence level of everyone in the country’s provinces and territories. Canada’s national political parties rarely agree on the best course of action, but in general, pardon the hockey metaphor, they shoot at the same net. Everybody matters.

Alberta, formally established in 1905, has been a wealthy province since Leduc No. 1 first gushed black gold in February, 1947. Provincial governments ever since have relied on that primordial gravy train. If the train jumps the track, boom and bust, how does Edmonton claw its money back? Kenney’s regressive 2019 electoral platform was predicated on complaint, blaming distant Ottawa for decades of localized mismanagement, some kind of raw materials deal. After all, imaginary villains need labels, like “bitch” or “traitor.”

Kenney’s would-be usurpers have just wrapped up a series of leadership debates, one of which was co-sponsored by a pro-independence group and a right-wing media organization. The topics discussed have ranged from bizarre to fantastical. This is Orwell and this is Kafka unfiltered by people who’ve never read either author. These folks aren’t even trying to reach Alberta’s general electorate; they’re speaking to party members and whistling doggy style to the lunatic fringe because support from the likes of Misogynistic Paranoid Grande Prairie Boy might be enough to win a ranked ballot.

The next provincial election is mandated for May, 2023. The winning UCP contestant will be announced this coming October. The frontrunner in this painfully drawn-out race of slugs is Danielle Smith, a notorious political opportunist. She was the leader of the Wildrose Party. Still, it suited her to cross the floor of the legislature and join the Progressive Conservative Party. She has since spent her time away from politics assailing, among other things, the blatant character flaws of cancer victims. Should she win the leadership, she will not follow the honourable and traditional course of dropping an early election writ. No, she wants those seven unfettered, unelected months as premier to further disrupt already snippy federal-provincial relations and predicate a national constitutional crisis.

Smith’s platform plank, her legislative Rosemary’s Baby is the “Alberta Sovereignty Act.” No one, politicians, pundits or constitutional lawyers, knows what this means except telling Ottawa to “talk to the hand.” Elected Quebec separatists at least held two referendums. Brexit demonstrated that extraction from a political bloc proved much harder than the snappy, pro rhetoric promised. That poor policy decision wasn’t arbitrary, Britons voted, wrongly of course, but they were at least given the opportunity.

Canada geese are a nuisance. Loud and disruptive dirty birds, but, you know, at least they go away.

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of skewed espied askance since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format.