SAINTS PRESERVE US

The Addictive Flavour of Tasseled Gucci Loafers 

Her voice still rings down the telephone line; the memory still makes me laugh. My sister calling from Montreal: “Ha-ha, Quebec’s no longer the national laughingstock!” What could I say? I was embarrassed for Alberta.

The fragment of conversation is from 2019. The nascent United Conservative Party (UCP), an uneasy coalition of traditional Tories and the lunatic fringe, had been handed its first mandate. Premier Jason Kenney commenced the province’s populist reset. The good old days had returned because the people were galvanized by a common enemy: everybody else in Canada and a minority of Albertans who couldn’t quite fit into his regressive narrative. Kenney’s tragic flaw is that he was a tad too sensible for the more extremist elements gathered underneath his big tent. God-fearing rural folk such as Alberta’s current premier, the Banshee of Invermectin, Danielle Smith, didn’t just jiggle Kenney’s highwire, they cut it.

Smith’s first piece of major legislation, passed in November, 2022 was the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act, essentially a pre-emptive complaint about every potential bit of federal legislation real or imagined. Despite the “United Canada” phrase in the act’s official title, it’s better parsed as “fuck off and die Ottawa”. Hello, bonjour Quebec! But Quebec too can fuck off along with everyone else. Smith once suggested that had her Sovereignty Act been in place she would’ve used it to dispute Ottawa’s attempt to curtail the scourge of single-use plastics, shopping bags for instance and, notably, drinking straws. Hills to die on.

Something happened Monday in Washington, DC. Something alarming in the Capitol’s Rotunda. A really anemic sequel should mob violence be your particular peccadillo. Traditionally the inauguration of the US president-elect is like John Lee Hooker’s “House Rent Boogie”: outdoors, y’know, people. Der Trumpenfuhrer’s second one was moved inside to the scene of sedition because of chilly weather. The change of venue was something of a snub to Premier Smith, she being one of the 250,000 ticket holders who, unlike former Edmonton Oiler and whine merchant Wayne Gretzky (bland, big nose), didn’t make the A-list cut. Premier Smith watched the ceremony at the Canadian Embassy, a turn of events that can only be described as ironic in the full, complete Alanis Morrisette definition of the term.

Just last weekend Premier Smith was socializing at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, licking the designer footwear favoured by an odious, vulgar felon who was saved by God to fulfill his mission of making America great again. I never guessed Smith had a foot fetish. Maybe she even paid out of pocket for a $TRUMP, a fungible token which should not be confused with a cryptocurrency. All of this fawning diplomacy to persuade der Trumpenfuhrer not to levy a 25-per-cent tariff on Alberta's energy products. As for trade goods from the rest of Canada? “Just fuckin’ yard on ‘em, eh, bud!” Yes, because the rest of Canada funding an Alberta oil pipeline to Pacific tidewater to the tune of some $30-billion just wasn’t good enough.

What’s particularly irksome about Premier Smith’s lost weekend is that the Thursday prior, 16 January, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and all of Canada’s other premiers signed a NON-BINDING declaration of unity against the massive economic threat suddenly posed by my country’s largest trading partner and greatest ally. This document was facilitated by a prime minister whose career trajectory is eerily similar to the fate of a certain Norwegian blue parrot and whose country is incapable of facilitating free trade within its borders; yet somehow some stuff gets done - if only symbolically. But my sense is that Quebec Premier Francois Legault and Ontario Premier Doug Ford are prepared to shut off light and heat throughout the northeastern United States to make a point, to counter der Trumpenfuhrer’s blanket tariff (due 1 February apparently) in our national interest. Quebec acting for Canada! C’mon! Alberta Premier Smith refused to sign the document although she mused that maybe Canada could erase some of its trade surplus with the US if it bought more, like, American food?

I don’t know, Madam Premier. It might taste leathery with hints of crow and humble pie.   

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming this year.