SAINTS PRESERVE US

Well, That Didn’t Take Long

Following the Thanksgiving Day long weekend, a new era of Alberta politics got off on the wrong foot a week ago today, a right one in the mouth.

Newly selected United Conservative Party (UCP) leader Danielle Smith was sworn in as the province’s 19th (and unelected) premier. Smith is a populist, historically a political opportunist, and reckoned to be something less than an intellectual force by seasoned pundits. During her inaugural press conference Premier Smith announced her intention to keelhaul Alberta’s Human Rights Act to ensure that her grassroots supporters, anti-vaxxers, will no longer be subject to the tyranny of public health and safety measures. In Smith’s world, it’s a God given right to be an infected asshole.

“They have been the most discriminated-against group that I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. That’s a pretty extreme level of discrimination that we’ve seen.” Really? Readers may also wish to note that Premier Smith was born in 1971 and not 2021.

This blog post is five working days behind schedule because I’ve not been able to summon the energy to “refudiate” (God bless you, Sarah Palin! Have you met your long-lost sister?) any of Smith’s moronic claims and potential plans. This is a person who publicly trumpeted a bovine laxative as a cure for covid. Perhaps rooms for rational debate and discussion may only be found in Shambala or Xanadu. Book in advance. In the meantime, the opium den lure of languid resignation so seductive to anybody possessed of more than half a wit must be fended off at all costs. It’s so much easier to pour two or three fingers of Irish, put on a Van Morrison album and hope it all goes away sometime during the night.

You search in your bag/Light up fag/Think it’s a drag/But you’re so glad to be alive, honey/And when this is all over…

This, this Smith person isn’t just the under-qualified “Mayor of Simpleton.” Despite what the governing UCP tells its cadre, Alberta is one of Canada’s wealthiest and most powerful provinces. The problem here has always been the allocation of elastic abundance. The busts always seem to last and the booms never do. The primary domestic product of a chronically mismanaged cyclical economy is blame. Alberta looks outward only to complain about the meanies in the rest of Canada and the world at large. For a province never noted for its tolerance of unionized labour, grievance (sometimes real, but best imagined) is a reliable legislative assembly seat winner.

I’ve been paying attention to Alberta’s politics since I moved here, gratefully, 32 years ago; I’ve no clue as to how it has all shaken down to… this. Smith’s personal path to power was paved with the petulant premise of her proposed and yet to be passed Alberta Sovereignty Act. While its contents remain mysterious, it’s thought to be a sort of pre-assembled DIY platform for future blame and complaint because Smith is nothing if not progressive. Alberta political climate indicators are forecasting high whinge.

Aw, man, I’m too tired and fed up to go on. I’ve had enough, I need a drink. I need a break from this blog. See you next Tuesday.             

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of insight into the Albertosaurus body politic 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 from various retailers.