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2023's Hottest Superspreader Event (feat. completely unhinged policy proposals)
973 Plays1 year ago
The Progress Report podcast is back and fellow Progress Reporters Jeremy Appel and Jim Storrie are around to break down the resolutions and the vibes heading into this weekend's UCP AGM. This is the first AGM with Danielle Smith at the helm and we'll see where her loosey-goosey leadership style plays with an increasingly bug-eyed UCP grassroots.
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Transcript
Technical Difficulties and Introduction
00:00:14
Speaker
All right, we're going. Do we have a waveform? Everyone can hear me? We don't have waveforms in this, eh? Okay. I can hear you, and I do see a waveform. Yeah, there's a waveform. It's just small. Because I think that's just the way the platform is. That it shows up. But you're definitely making sense. Well, I can't see a waveform. It's getting picked up.
00:00:40
Speaker
Okay. Good. I can't see it, but I'll trust, trust you. All right. Uh, internet here can be a little dodgy sometimes. So, and as I say that I can't open my script. Come on, you can do it. I just literally just had it open. Okay.
00:01:07
Speaker
Oh, nice. Come on. All right. There we go. All right. Friends and enemies. Okay. Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney, recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skaigen, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory on the banks of the mighty Kasiska-Sawanissippi, or the North Saskatchewan River.
Global Events and Emotional Impact
00:01:36
Speaker
Join us today, our Progress Report staff writer, Jeremy Appel, and fellow Progress Reporter, Jim Story. Let's welcome the J-Boys to the show. How are you guys doing? How are you feeling? I'm doing all right. Yeah, you know, the past few weeks, which we'll probably talk about at the end.
00:01:59
Speaker
have been very emotionally exhausting for me and I can only imagine how much more so for people who are more directly affected by what's going on in Gaza. So yeah, I mean that's been occupying a lot of my thoughts, but there are of course other things going on in the world and in our part of the world. So I'm glad to be talking about that.
UCP AGM and Policy Resolutions
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I just made a session just kicked off, right? So taking a quick look at what the UCP would like to be working on is hopefully going to give people some insights on what's going on in session this time around.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think it will probably be a preview of the types of things that we can expect, not in this legislative session, because that's already sort of laid out, but in future legislative sessions, because thanks to the Albert NDP, we have four more years of UCP hell.
00:03:09
Speaker
That was a very slick transition, Jeremy, I have to say. The thing that we're talking about today on the pod is the policy, I guess it's technically the AGM, but the thing we're going to be talking about is the policy resolutions that are going to be debated at the upcoming United Conservative Party AGM that's happening this weekend in Calgary. These type of policy resolutions are always kind of
00:03:39
Speaker
I think they're instructive. I think they're useful to examine for kind of a couple of big reasons. I think you get to really know the priorities of the conservative activists who kind of like do the meat and potatoes work of a political party at these kind of like
00:03:57
Speaker
at these policy resolution debates, you kind of really get to pull the window back and see like, oh yeah, like this is really what, you know, you get a real window into the soul of the like sour faced middle aged woman with a bad haircut who has a fuck a Trudeau sticker on her truck who does endless amounts of paperwork for her CA. We really get to know like what her political priorities are. And the thing is those people like do end up kind of driving a lot of the priorities of a political party and especially with
00:04:25
Speaker
Danielle Smith's kind of Lucy Goosey leadership style. It'll be interesting to see what the first AGM with kind of her at the helm kind of looks and feels like.
Danielle Smith's Leadership and Grassroots Dynamics
00:04:35
Speaker
I'll throw it to you first, Jeremy. Like, what do you think this AGM is going to look like? And as we kind of get into these specific resolutions, do you kind of have any thoughts on where the priorities of the conservative movement in Alberta are?
00:04:50
Speaker
Right, well I think this AGM is interesting because as you said it's sort of the first test of Danielle Smith, now elected premier, in how she's going to govern in relation to the party's grassroots. Of course this was why Jason Kenney
00:05:11
Speaker
was turfed as leader because there became an increasing gap between what he wanted to do and what the grassroots wanted to do. He, of course, famously signed his grassroots guarantee when he was running for the leadership of the UCP. And then at the AGM, they passed a resolution calling for the outing of kids in GSAs.
00:05:36
Speaker
like mandatory outing of kids in GSAs if memory serves. And then Kenny said, well, you know what? I hold the pen, so tough. And of course, he did ultimately implement a version of that policy, although it wasn't mandatory. He sort of made it so homophobic. Teachers at Christian private schools could, if they wanted to,
00:06:03
Speaker
out kids to their parents and be protected for that. But it will be interesting to see how deep Smith's commitment to the UCP grassroots is because that, I mean, that was her, that was her pitch, right? It was like, yeah, can he betrayed you? I'm not going to do that. I'm going to be your actual voice. And of course, the exigencies of governing
00:06:34
Speaker
make that relationship a lot more of a difficult tightrope to walk than it would be in theory, right? You could talk about the grassroots all that you want, but
00:06:54
Speaker
what resolutions coming out of the AGM are you actually going to implement? Are you going to be strategic? And I think that's what Smith's going to do, and that is her strength, is she'll adopt some of these things.
00:07:08
Speaker
but not the ones that would get her into too much trouble or sort of conflict with her like libertarian leanings. But yeah, I mean, there's definitely some overlap between what social conservatives and libertarians want, particularly surrounding education and so-called school choice. So I think that is definitely,
00:07:35
Speaker
points of agreement and anything that comes out of the AGM in relation to that, we'll probably see Smith try to implement in some capacity. This is not exactly the will of the grassroots. It's sort of somewhere between the will of the grassroots and the will of the party. Because what makes it into this policy document is stuff that's like mediated through the party processes, right? It's like filtered
00:08:04
Speaker
in much the same way that if you look at one of the Alberta NDP AGM documents with their resolutions, even though, for example, a large swathe of the party wants the electeds to work on rent control, a policy like that is not going to make it into the NDP AGM document, even though the grassroots won.
Contentious Policy Proposals and Implications
00:08:32
Speaker
While we talk about this stuff, I do think it's important to keep in mind that this is kind of like a halfway point between what the bass wants and what the party wants. That's what you see in this thing. Yeah, that's a good point. The party sort of the party apparatus sort of filters out the stuff that is going to be a headache for them. And you see, I mean, the NDP
00:08:56
Speaker
I don't want to say they're good at that, but they do that effectively, right? Well, if the, uh, if the UCP are operating anyway, like the NDP operate, then they are not only filtering things out of this document, but filtering things into the document, so to speak, you know, adding, um, sort of filler. Uh, I would not be surprised if certain, uh, very loyal party members on CA's were given some coaching on what policies, uh, they wanted to have appear in this document.
00:09:25
Speaker
that's certainly the way things get done on the other side of the aisle.
00:09:29
Speaker
I also think it's worthwhile to keep an eye on these policy resolution debates, even just because of the history here in Alberta. Granted, it was the Wild Rose Party, it was several years ago, and it was a party that was not in power, it was the opposition. That was really the beginning of the end between Danielle Smith and the grassroots of the Wild Rose Party, was an AGM and policy resolutions that were passed there.
00:09:56
Speaker
I'd have to go back and check the dates, but probably something like a decade ago, maybe even a bit more.
00:10:04
Speaker
you know, not only do we have that kind of history there, but then in 2023, we also have this kind of looming organization of kind of like take back Alberta, which really does kind of whether or not it really represents the grassroots of the UCP or not is certainly a highly organized organization that has was very instrumental in, in the last AGM was also very instrumental in getting Daniel Smith elected as leader of the party. So,
00:10:30
Speaker
You know, I think this anti-vax, anti-lockdown, anti-trans group, you know, having a bit more formal structure and having kind of being a bit more organized than perhaps they were in years past is also something to keep an eye on as well. Well, a great irony of this whole thing is that Danielle Smith is going to be getting yelled at by the same people over the same policies that she was getting yelled at at that old Wildrose convention back then.
00:10:58
Speaker
We are going to see, as we go through this document, a lot of zombie ideas, bad ideas that the conservative movement has picked up and has been running with for 15, 20 years. The parental rights and parental notification stuff around queer kids and GSAs. That is an old meme at this point. They've been beaten on that drum for a long time. And it's almost exactly the same policy measures they're asking for here.
00:11:27
Speaker
that they were asking for 10 years ago. But I suppose we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Yeah, let's get into the actual policy resolutions. The first resolution that I think is worthwhile to consider is Policy Proposal 8, sponsored by Edmonton West-Henday.
00:11:45
Speaker
The resolution says that the Governor of Alberta should require teacher schools and school boards to obtain the written consent, the parent guardian of a student under the age of 16 prior to changing the names and or pronouns used by the students.
00:11:58
Speaker
The rationale sites, the governments in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick recently implementing similar laws, uh, blah, blah, blah. Parents not schools or the league or guardians of their children. Um, you know, just your usual kind of rhetoric and the rationale. So here we go. The, you know, we've seen this, this, this law come through Saskatchewan. We've seen it come through New Brunswick.
00:12:22
Speaker
Who wants to jump in first to be like, why is this? I guess my question to, let's say you, Jim, is like, why is this a priority? And what's the likelihood that this actually not only gets passed as a resolution at this debate, but becomes law later on in the UCP's term? Sure. Well, I mean, I can start with the bad news, which is the likelihood of it being passed at the AGM is very high.
00:12:47
Speaker
You know, you've seen this policy actually implemented by governments in neighboring provinces. So, I mean, I have no doubt that they see this as a very achievable thing. As to whether or not it's going to become law, I mean, I don't know. Who can predict what Daniel Smith actually legislates these days? The odds are certainly non-zero.
00:13:16
Speaker
I mean, this is very much like the next step in the same program that they've been on for a long time with the issue of queer kids in Alberta. I think this is a continuation of the same kind of culture war stuff you saw around GSAs. And very similar to the issue with GSAs, a lot of it seems to be about nothing. I have not anecdotally,
00:13:44
Speaker
heard of a lot of schools going around in unilaterally changing kids' names. I have not seen any significant documentation or research to support any assertions that there is some horrible plague of schools doing this. I mean, you may have some cases here and there where a kid gets to use a different name at school, but they're not issuing him new ID.
00:14:12
Speaker
What this taps into is this anxiety that a lot of the people in the UCP grassroots have, and which the UCPs, the various apparatuses and systems there that are always trying to whip these people up, they're always trying to make them feel anxious about it, is just this general idea that the government is trying to queer your kids. And this is what they've been howling about for
00:14:42
Speaker
at least 15, 20 years. This is just the latest variation of it. Do you think this gets passed? Do you think this gets passed and this becomes eventually law or what?
00:14:54
Speaker
Well, it definitely gets past I think I mean because again it was the UCP that really paved the way for what you're seeing the government since Saskatchewan and New Brunswick doing by weaponizing this rhetoric of parental rights and Constructing this narrative that parents are being Kept out of their children's education
00:15:21
Speaker
I mean, I would say that the impact of this policy, and again, I mean, it hasn't really been in effect for that long in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, is casting a chill on kids coming out as trans. Not so much to address this problem that doesn't exist, but
00:15:50
Speaker
to make it harder for trans people to exist. Cause yeah, I mean, it's not like teachers are going around and, you know, issuing new IDs to kids and facilitating them going through like a formal transition. But if you're a trans kid and you see all this rhetoric
00:16:15
Speaker
being discussed around schools, I mean, I think you're more likely to stay in the closet with devastating impacts. And in that regard, it doesn't even matter if it's introduced as like official policy, because the damage is done.
00:16:36
Speaker
Um, but, uh, making official policy, of course, uh, um, you know, sort of amplifies that, that atmosphere of, of intimidation. Um, whether it becomes Paul, like interrupt for just a second, like, um, like even beyond the rhetoric, like this has like a, um, a very obvious, like a mechanical impact, like, uh, just like consider the situation, right? You have a, you have a kid, they, um, for whatever
00:17:05
Speaker
reason are uncomfortable with their gender. And at school, they are, for whatever reason, asking to try something else out, to say, please don't refer to me using gendered pronouns or please refer to me with the other pronoun.
Smith's Leadership and Policy Reluctance
00:17:24
Speaker
And they're saying, no, we won't do that unless you fill out this paperwork and get your parents to sign it, right?
00:17:36
Speaker
Like consider the situation that a kid is, has got to be in. If they are trying this stuff for the first time at school, instead of not going through this at home with their parents, you know, if they had a supportive environment, if they weren't scared of their parents doing something to them, then they probably would have brought it up to their parents instead of bringing it up to their teacher and some strangers at school first. Yeah.
00:18:03
Speaker
And so this process of getting their potentially abusive parents to sign off on it, like it puts them at risk of harm. Yeah. And I think the likelihood of this passing is high. I think the likelihood of Danielle Smith actually making it a policy, I would say is relatively low. I mean, you've heard her talk about her non-binary relative.
00:18:31
Speaker
and how she doesn't think this issue should be used as a political football. Now, I know you really can't take Danielle Smith's word for anything, but I do think that there is enough common ground between her and the people advocating this policy with regards to things like school choice that
00:18:56
Speaker
she would rather focus on that aspect, on the aspect of privatizing education. So like religious fundy parents can send their kids to a school where that would be a requirement than sort of imposing it on the school system writ large. So. Now, that's that's a good point.
Conspiracy Theories and Political Misconceptions
00:19:21
Speaker
There is a bit of a grand bargain here that she can make if she doesn't want to implement this.
00:19:26
Speaker
Because the same people who are howling about this stuff, they're the private school psychos, right? They're the parents for choice in education types. They could be mollified with some other private school policy for a while. Next resolution, policy resolution 12, or policy proposal 12, the United Conservative Party believes the government of Alberta should
00:19:49
Speaker
Prohibit any land use or development planning initiatives that would restrict movement of residents as per section six of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The rationale for this. 15-minute cities. We're in 15-minute cities territory, baby. There is much debate over the- I hate being able to get a coffee when I go for a walk. Fucking sucks being able to get a coffee. And sometimes I get groceries out on that walk.
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, can you believe you should actually have to drive? You should have to drive at least 15 minutes to get anything you need. Yeah, you're not going all the way out to the superstore. You're basically doing communism. Yeah, go to Walmart, Libs. Don't you want to support the fossil fuel industry? Yeah, bring some fucking gas. I love Alberta oil and gas by driving 20 minutes to Costco. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any better
00:20:41
Speaker
I don't think there's any better example of just pure psycho shit in this document than this right here, the 15 minute cities item. I mean, this is such an insane meme in the local Tori sphere. I don't fucking understand it. The one who peddles it the most here in Edmonton seems to be a TikTok account run by some like 20 something young women. Very strange, very strange stuff.
00:21:09
Speaker
50 Minute Cities is one of the more hilarious right-wing meme issues to come up, especially when it's going after the most boring anodyne kind of libs that exist, like city planners.
00:21:27
Speaker
especially when, and also when we're talking about, yes, going to the, walking to a grocery store, walking to a cafe, uh, to enjoy anything, literally anything that is just close to your house. Um, yeah, I don't know. I think, I think we, I think we nailed this one. Unless Jeremy, you have any more bonmos on 15, 15 minutes city resolutions.
00:21:49
Speaker
Well, I was just going to say, speaking of a policy resolution to address a problem that doesn't exist,
00:21:58
Speaker
No municipality in Alberta has proposed having a lockdown where you can't go within 15 minutes of your home, right? The idea is to make communities more livable. And I think this is really just a great example of this sort of paranoid
00:22:26
Speaker
right that coming out of COVID is scared that there are just going to be all these other excuses for lockdowns, which of course Alberta never had. So I mean, I don't know if it passes because I mean, this is like some far out stuff. But if it does pass, I mean,
00:22:49
Speaker
There's no reason for it to become policy because it's like no one's doing this, right? Yeah. I hate to break it to the UCP and like people out there, like city planners don't have any real power. Uh, city councils do not have the ability to not stop you from driving 16 minutes within your city. Uh, you know, please, please go find the next invented thing to be mad. Okay. Well, everything under the rationale paragraph in this section is
00:23:18
Speaker
total fucking nonsense. But the actual policy itself, I think this is very likely to get approved at the AGM. And the only reason it is not likely to get enacted in law is that there's nothing to enact in law. Here's the actual resolution. The resolution, the United Conservative Party believes that the government of Alberta should prohibit any land use or development planning initiatives that would restrict movement of residents as per section six of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:23:48
Speaker
The resolution is the UCP should not, the UCP should believe that the government should not let you breach the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yeah, don't pass any unconstitutional laws. Good job. Yeah, and again, I think a lot of people voting for this would probably be doing so.
00:24:10
Speaker
in the context of public health lockdowns, which Smith has, of course, staunchly been opposed to, not necessarily thinking of the 15-minute city scaremongering. But again, I think it's very
00:24:35
Speaker
There's no reason for the government to adopt it unless a municipality seeks to restrict movement of residents, whether as part of this 15-minute city conspiracy, or if in the event of the next pandemic, more likely, the provincial government isn't doing anything. A municipality tries to impose a lockdown, which I don't think they can actually do, then this might be useful for a Smith Tavern or back
00:25:05
Speaker
pocket. But yeah, I mean, I don't I think it's much to do about nothing. It is a rare timeline where this goes anywhere or does anything. But, you know, I mentioned earlier that parties have a habit of filtering in things to these documents, not just filtering them out.
Race and Education Policies Compared to US Decisions
00:25:25
Speaker
And while I don't have access to the brain of whoever put this policy proposal forward,
00:25:34
Speaker
This is exactly the type of useless crap that you stuff in a document and like use to fill up the agenda if you don't want other things getting to the floor. So that's why this kind of stuff still exists in the document. It is still. They might wanna just waste a bunch of time at the AGM. They might wanna block something else from coming up for debate. And this kind of like filler crap is perfect for doing that.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is Innisfil Sylvan Lake, which is, you know, crazy town. But yeah, I think the next resolution coming from Innisfil Sylvan Lake that we're going to talk about is a lot more threatening
00:26:22
Speaker
But also like, anyways, let's talk about that one.
00:26:41
Speaker
And within the rationale of this document, of like why the UCP should bring in this policy resolution, it says, the Supreme Court of the United States recently ruled that the use of race as a factor in university admissions was unconstitutional. Wrong fucking constitution. It's a different country. They don't have the same constitution as us. Yeah.
00:27:06
Speaker
The Supreme Court of the United States is not, in fact, in charge of us here. Yeah. I like the next line too, is the responsibility of the Alberta government to act similarly? No, it's not. It's literally not their responsibility to follow rulings of the US Supreme Court. I'm sure they would like the Canadian Supreme Court
00:27:31
Speaker
to be packed with religious fundamentalists who have been mobilized in bread from birth to be conservative judges. But I don't want to say we don't have that problem in Canada, because I'm sure we do. But it's not nearly as entrenched. Yeah, I think it's time to separate and become the 51st state here, folks. I mean, really, if this
00:28:02
Speaker
Let's get on with it. The idea of the government banning post-secondary institutions from using race, I'm not a person of color. I don't know. I assume that there are a handful of scholarships and policies around this that exist at various universities.
00:28:24
Speaker
This is the priority. Like this is what we need to do. Like occasionally giving. This is a fucking, uh, uh, like plot arc from Fox news from like three months ago, right? There was, there was that guy that couldn't get into Harvard and, uh, God, I don't remember the, I wish I could cite the whole, the whole story. I watched the whole thing play out on Twitter. It was dumb as shit. And this is absolutely a reference to it. If I can recall it, I'll put it in the show notes later.
00:28:54
Speaker
But this is a response to something that was in a media cycle just a couple of months ago. And it was just one guy complaining on the internet that he couldn't get into Harvard.
00:29:05
Speaker
But I would also say, obviously, if that were to become policy, it would have to be tweaked substantially to not be based on a US Supreme Court decision. But given the way the UCP under both Kenny and Smith has been,
00:29:27
Speaker
attacking post-secondary education and interfering in its operations, I do think that this is
00:29:42
Speaker
more likely to, this is more of a threat than the other, the previous resolution about 15-minute cities, right? Because, I mean, there certainly are affirmative action programs at Canadian universities. I mean, with regards to like Indigenous students, for example.
Supervised Consumption Sites and Pandemic Policies
00:30:04
Speaker
That's the largest impact you're going to see if this thing gets written into law.
00:30:08
Speaker
is just the destruction of a whole bunch of scholarships meant to help Indigenous people. And like, I mean, you spend fucking 10 minutes walking the streets of any of the large cities in Alberta. And it is patently obvious that there is a serious racism problem here. The Black and Indigenous people are forced down into a lower economic strata. That having these affirmative action policies, like they are necessary
00:30:38
Speaker
to correct for historical wrongs. I don't know what else there is to really say here. Yeah, it's racist as hell. It's bad. This is dumb racist policy. It's bad. But it's very pedestrian as far as bad conservative policies go. Conservatives, when in your life have you not heard conservatives howling and complaining about affirmative action?
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's dumb racist policy and I could absolutely see the UCP making this like a key linchpin of a legislative session like a year or two from now. But let's move on to the next one, policy proposal 22. This one is probably the most evil. It's pretty simple and provincial funding for supervised consumption sites.
00:31:26
Speaker
You know, the rationalization here is incredibly bad and evil, saying that supervised consumption sites do all sorts of bad things. They of course don't actually mention that supervised consumption sites save lives, just that they make people feel icky having to see
00:31:46
Speaker
People who use drugs in their neighborhoods. Yeah, whenever these are people crying about like public disorder at supervised consumption sites and anything but what supervised consumption sites are actually designed to do. Just ask them how many people have died of an overdose as supervised consumption site.
00:32:09
Speaker
guarantee they'll change the topic to, you know, safe supply or something of that sort, because no one has died of an overdose at a supervised consumption site, because that is literally what supervised consumption sites exist to do is reverse overdoses. And yeah, I mean, just the wording of this, it's a failed experiment, like, no, it's not.
00:32:34
Speaker
They effectively do nothing to combat drug addiction and they do not promote addiction recovery. That's a lie. While promoting recovery from drug addiction is a worthwhile public investment, giving addicts a place to shoot up does nothing to resolve their addictions while significantly adversely affecting the communities where these sites are located.
00:33:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, well- You know, I've doorknocked Edmonton West End Day many, many times before, you know, back before I kind of split from the party, right? I was always out there canvassing for John Carson. And I know exactly what type of shitty gated retirement neighborhoods are putting forward this policy proposal.
00:33:30
Speaker
It's genocidal, man. They just want these people to die. They think that if someone has, for whatever reason, fallen into the throes of addiction, it is like an indication that that person is bad, that that person is spiritually flawed, that that person deserves what's happening to them. They see anyone with a substance abuse problem as like an irredeemable criminal.
00:33:59
Speaker
And they want them to either go through like penance in some sort of institution where they want them to die. And wanting people to die is, is wanting people to die is the, is the like reason why you pass a policy like this, because that will be the result when you close supervised consumption sites, more people will die. And the numbers coming out, the death numbers, the drug poisoning death numbers are coming out are already so horrific.
00:34:26
Speaker
And if they did this, it would make a horrendous situation even worse. And I shudder to think what the actual impact on our neighbors who use drugs would be because it would be an even worse disaster than what we're seeing now.
00:34:49
Speaker
And finally, the last thing that I want to talk about is a consistent theme that comes up through the resolutions. Nearly 20% of the resolutions that are going to be debated at the UCP AGM are really just about prosecuting various grievances from the pandemic, mandatory lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations and such.
00:35:10
Speaker
I don't want to read out the specific ones because one, like who has the time? And two, like, I think this is really indicative of a political base and a political party that is eager to kind of re prosecute those battles that also sees them as kind of like part of their political awakening. And I'm curious, Jim, why don't we go to you first?
00:35:36
Speaker
With regards to, you know, re prosecuting the pandemic, is this, this is just like to make their base feel better, isn't it? Like, I don't think we're going to see a lot of different policy changes out of this, but like, is this really just reassuring everyone that like, look, we promise we're not going to like do the bad things that Kenny did? Well, first of all, I don't think I'm as optimistic as you are that they aren't going to enshrine some of this stuff into law.
00:36:05
Speaker
I mean, I'm looking at policy proposal 16 right now, for example, the horse-paced clause. The policy proposal, the UCP believes that the government of Alberta should enshrine the doctor-patient relationship, including the right of physicians to prescribe off-label medications using their best discretion. Like, we know exactly which off-label medication you're talking about.
00:36:34
Speaker
there, man, you're talking about the fucking horse-paste. You do five paragraphs of rationale that are all COVID-19 after that proposal. It's about the horse-paste. And who was selling the horse-paste to us for a year before she got elected? The premier. So if you want to be charitable to Danielle Smith on the LGBTQ stuff and believe what she has said in the past and take that at face value and be like, OK, well,
00:37:04
Speaker
I guess Danielle doesn't want to be bad on that file. Maybe she is tolerant. I think you have to take all of her COVID stuff at face value. And Danielle Smith was one of the most egregious peddlers of COVID-19 misinformation during the start of the pandemic. One of the worst sources of it. Moreover, COVID-19 turned out to be an amazing organizing point for the right and has a lot to do with why we have take back Alberta.
00:37:33
Speaker
in charge of all of these party positions and holding the levers of power in the UCP. It's because they organized around COVID-19. So I think, of course, you're going to see COVID-19 making up like a quarter of this document. They are obsessed with it. You're absolutely right. But they have deliberately gone out and sought out people who have been obsessed with COVID-19 and incorporated them into the party over the past two years. So this is what they get.
00:38:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I think those resolutions, if they do pass, if the AGM does get swamped by Take Back Alberta supporters, I mean, again, that will be, I think, something easy for Danielle Smith to make policy because it's not something that
00:38:26
Speaker
is currently really relevant to us. So it's just something that she could do, I think, as a thought to TVA people and also something that's in line so far as we can tell with her like deeply held beliefs about medical interventions during pandemic.
Take Back Alberta's Influence and Strategy
00:38:48
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, those it will be interesting to see those because again, I mean,
00:38:55
Speaker
Not that the pandemic is over by any means, but the height of it is behind us at this time. Did you catch the story last week about the government underreporting the COVID numbers by a factor of three? Yes. Like we are in a spike again, the wastewater
00:39:25
Speaker
charts look absolutely terrible. People should be getting their shots. And if you haven't been wearing the mask, you should put it back on. Certainly. But I mean, in terms of like mass death in hospitalizations, that is down from where it was at the height of the pandemic. That doesn't mean we should throw caution to the wind as every governing body has appeared to have done. But
00:39:53
Speaker
It does I think give from a purely like strategic a moral perspective I think it does give these hard right politicians sort of
00:40:10
Speaker
some room to maneuver to do some things without actually doing them, if you know what I mean. Because again, I know exactly what you mean. And I think like doing things without actually doing them is kind of the overarching theme of Alberta politics, for sure. One of the reasons why I think it's extremely likely that you are going to see some of this stuff enshrined into legislation is that the actual
00:40:35
Speaker
policy resolutions, the actual measures that the COVID freaks are asking for are also nonsense, right? They're these little procedural things. Oh, we want you to make a statement that says doctors have a right to free expression. Okay, doctors have a right to free expression. They already do, right? Like actually, that legislation doesn't actually like cause any changes, right? So it's very easy to implement that stuff.
00:41:05
Speaker
I wonder if that applies to doctors who want to speak out about the situation in Palestine. No, it doesn't. I just read the policy resolution and it only applies to speech about medical matters.
00:41:21
Speaker
does that apply to political speech? Of course, of course. I mean, I think that when it comes to these various kind of reprosecuting COVID grievances resolutions, even if they were not actually take back Alberta priority policies, the spiritual kind of like imprint of take back Alberta is kind of all over those. And I think it's worth just taking a minute to talk about take back Alberta
00:41:43
Speaker
and just how effective they were at getting their policies in to the resolution debate process, as well as where it's at as a political movement. A lot of their stuff that they did manage to get in was pretty motherhood and apple pie stuff, like leadership review every second AGM, leadership election held if the leader doesn't win their seat.
00:42:03
Speaker
board training for constituency association executives, clarifying the rules around who can vote and take part in constituency meetings. Really the signature kind of bit of take back over to policy that actually is going to be debated is something about, is a resolution around supporting a comprehensive bill of parental rights, which is again like a trash concept that religious- Rights to do what? Rights to do what?
00:42:30
Speaker
Rights to, yeah, do whatever the hell you want to your child. But this has been an issue for kind of god-bothers and religious fundamentalists for a while, right? Which is why we've seen so much kind of Sturm und Drang over GSAs, over pronoun bills. This Bill of Parental Rights, I think, would just kind of like
00:42:51
Speaker
try and be an end-run around the specifics of that and just kind of say anything that involves a parent of all at all, just like they get to be in charge. The rationale kind of is your usual boilerplate kind of insane conservative shit.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah. And so that was that was really it. I mean, I'm curious, Jeremy, what do you think? Like, where is take back Alberta right now kind of, you know, as a political movement? And, you know, where do you think it's going to come out? How do you think it's going to come out from this AGM looking and feeling? Well, I mean, that is I would say the biggest question out of the AGM is not this or that policy proposal. It's how much influence does take back Alberta really have?
00:43:35
Speaker
Now that Smith has been elected that has a majority government does, you know, and so are they going to take over the rest of the positions on the UCP board. You know, I think that's one important question that could guide where the.
00:43:54
Speaker
the party's trajectory. I know now they're talking, I don't know if you saw Steven's piece in Press Progress, but now they're talking about going national and focusing on school boards and at the same time, you know, Marco von Hugenbos and David Parker like hate each other.
00:44:16
Speaker
And, you know, there's a lot of internal discord there. And so to what extent have we been sold this as a mass movement when it's really just David Parker, like manipulating a bunch of people and doesn't really know what he's doing? Like how much was it a product of like the, of, you know,
00:44:40
Speaker
You know, sort of the freedom convoy movement in the blockade of coots that isn't
00:44:49
Speaker
that is less relevant now that the UCP is firmly in power and that everyone has given up on actually doing anything about the pandemic, including BC's NDP government, the federal liberals. I mean, there's no indication that the Manitoba NDP government is going to do anything about the pandemic beyond telling people to get vaccinated, which they should do.
00:45:18
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, it remains to be seen, but I find that shift that Take Back Alberta is now taking to kind of contradictory focus
00:45:34
Speaker
expand its reach nationwide while also focusing on like hyper-local elections and the track record of like right-wingers trying to take over public school boards is not good because people who vote for their public school board election I mean are more likely to be progressive than any other thing because first of all you have to vote in a municipal election which is already a very small percentage of the population
00:46:01
Speaker
then you have to actually care about what goes on in public schools. So, yeah, I don't know, it remains to be seen, but I think the AGM will serve as a good barometer of how influential Take Back Alberta is in provincial politics now, or
00:46:24
Speaker
How much was it just David Parker manipulating people for his friend Danielle Smith? And to what extent was Danielle Smith just using him to mobilize people to vote for her? And now it's like, yeah, who cares? I think you're right there, Jeremy. I think the AGM is going to reveal to those who are actually paying attention and those who are thinking hard about it that Take Back Alberta is not a mass movement at all, that it is.
00:46:55
Speaker
that it is AstroTurf, that it's just a pile of money and a guy with a website. David Parker had a lot of success when he first started out because what he was doing at the start was very easy. There was a very easy mechanism, a very easy lever for him to pull and organize people around the leadership race. And he had a lot of resources. He had a lot of money. I mean, Duncan, you and I have tried to do
00:47:23
Speaker
kind of similar organizing work in the past, right? Back when Progress Alberta was a more organizing focused and less media focused organization, we were trying to do some similar things, but we didn't have the gigantic pile of money. And we also didn't have the advantage of being able to lie and manipulate people with a bunch of COVID conspiracy theories. But even we hit the wall when it came time to stop
00:47:53
Speaker
stop doing supporter ID, stop mobilizing people to easy actions and start trying to organize people for serious change. That's hard work. That's very, very difficult work. I don't think that David Parker has the right temperament for it. From what I see of him online, he's kind of nuts. He seems very preoccupied with like personal slights. He seems very angry about being shut out of various things.
00:48:22
Speaker
Um, he seems, uh, uh, very constantly obsessed with the fact that he is not in the halls of power. He seems to me like, um, uh, this, this might seem like a weird comparison. It may seem like I'm slandering the guy. What's the name of that? Um, the guy who was doing all of the local, like leftist clout chasing and then got kind of run out knobs. Oh, yeah. These guys, these guys.
00:48:51
Speaker
Right-wing Albert knobs with a ton of money. That's what this guy is. Yeah. It's the more he posts and the more unhinged his posts become, you know, I can kind of, I can only assume that there is just a negative correlation between that and like how much power and influence he actually has. Um, like look at the resolutions too, though, as proof of how powerless he is. Look at how much time and effort TVA put into these governance resolutions that don't actually do anything, you know,
00:49:21
Speaker
When I looked through these governance resolutions, I was looking for some bombshell stuff, some significant changes to who's in control of what, consolidating power behind certain people. This is all just fussing around the margins. And I think TBA is also doing what Jeremy accused the government of doing a few minutes ago of
00:49:50
Speaker
of trying to look like they're doing something, of trying to look like they're effective. They're flailing, right? They don't have a very good plan. I say they. David Parker does not have a very good plan for how to turn the UCP into what he believes it should be.
00:50:06
Speaker
I don't know. I think it's kind of, as an outsider looking in, you know, TBA and David Parker seem to be flailing. They seem to be kind of fracturing and, you know, Benita Peterson is out. This Marco Von Higginbois guy is out. The other kind of senior lieutenants seem to have pulled away. And there isn't, like you said, Jim, a big kind of unifying thing right now. Their general election is three years away. There's no leadership race. So it makes sense for these things to kind of like
00:50:35
Speaker
just diminish, but he just kind of seems, he's going to try and trigger the libs into so much on Twitter that he's going to become relevant again. It's really kind of, at least we all get to kind of see it play out in real time. Yeah. David Parker, what I will say, clearly doesn't work well with other people.
00:50:55
Speaker
right, going back to his time as a conservative who turned against the conservatives, you know, going through Merkle von Hugenbois, Benita Peterson. I mean, he doesn't
00:51:11
Speaker
Yeah, he doesn't work well with others, which is kind of hard when you're trying to build what was ostensibly a grassroots movement, and I think had many characteristics of one. But at the end of the day, of course, it's AstroTurf like every right wing grievance project.
00:51:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Moving on to a different subject.
Alberta NDP and Pro-Palestine Activism
00:51:36
Speaker
I don't even have a good segue or a transition here because there isn't really one. But I think there is a local angle to the kind of ongoing bombardment and genocide in Gaza that hasn't really been examined anywhere else. And that is
00:51:48
Speaker
the fact that several Alberta NDP MLAs have appeared at pro-Palestine rallies in both Calgary and Edmonton. In Calgary, a couple of NDP MLAs have even spoken. Jeremy, why don't you tell me about a pro-Palestine rally that you attended and who you saw there and who was there and what was the vibe?
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah, so I forget the date at this point. It must have been like a couple weeks ago. It was the day after Israel probably bombed the Ali Baptist Hospital in Gaza, big rally outside of the legislature. And Janice Irwin came, David Egan, who his pro-Palestine activism,
00:52:41
Speaker
discovered this, researching the book was used against him by Kenny to talk about how the NDP is trying to like brainwash kids into being left-wing ideologues when Egan was education minister. Rod Loyola, who's kind of, you know, I think checked out
00:53:06
Speaker
Um, you don't hear much about him. He was there. And, uh, to my pleasant surprise, Brooks Arcan Paul, um, who's brand new and is of course indigenous, um, was there. And I, um, and yeah, it was, it was great to see. I'm sure, uh, there were other people in caucus who probably would have liked to show up, but didn't want to risk it. Um,
00:53:35
Speaker
But, and also, I mean, Arke and Paul, right? He's Edmonton, West Hende, if I'm not mistaken. A lot of Jewish people live there. So that, and of course, Jewish people are not a monolith on Israel, no matter what the organized Jewish groups like the Jewish Federation and Sijah, Nabrits tell you. But yeah, it was very pleasant surprise to see Brooks there.
00:54:04
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, again, it hasn't gotten much, it hasn't gotten any media attention so far as I know. I mean, maybe like True North or Western Standard trying to do a hit piece on them, but. I haven't even seen anything from them. When I was- So Brooks- So Brooks is- Discussing this a little earlier on the Discord, like I expressed my anxiety there of talking about it. And I wonder if,
00:54:32
Speaker
Maybe this is why there hasn't been a lot of coverage from other sympathetic folks around Edmonton. Just that people are scared of bringing attention to it, that we might somehow get them in trouble. Yeah, it's not like it was a secret, right? Janice Irwin and Brooks Archan-Paul Bose posted pictures of a rally, of a pro-Palestine rally that they attended. I believe they said the one that you're talking about, Jeremy, the one that was outside the legislature.
00:54:58
Speaker
And in Calgary, I spoke with someone who confirmed to me that relatively earlier on, like not recently, but like a few weeks back, after October 7th, that
00:55:10
Speaker
Calgary MLA Parmeet Singh Bhopari not only attended a pro-Palestine rally in Calgary, but spoke as well, and that the week after, Alberta NDP MLA Garender Brar also attended and spoke at a pro-Palestine rally in Calgary. Again, no media coverage, no interest, which is bizarre to me that the local Jewish federations haven't been setting their hair on fire.
00:55:34
Speaker
And that the local, or not even the local, the right wing conservative rags haven't kind of set their hair on fire. But I don't know, is this indicative of a shift? Is it like what is something? I mean, if you're a person who does not follow Israel-Palestine closely, you might be forgiven for not understanding that these politicians really stuck their neck out by doing this.
00:56:04
Speaker
look a few jurisdictions over at the Ontario NDP. Maybe we're stealing Valour a little bit by calling her friend of the show, but I met Sarah Jama at Progress Summit a few years ago, and she was really impressed by her. She seems to have gone on to become quite an effective and principled politician as an MPP in the Ontario NDP. She made a pretty innocuous statement asking for
00:56:34
Speaker
a ceasefire asking for Israel to stop dropping bombs for a few days. And Merritt Stiles, the relatively new leader of the Ontario NDP, threw her out of caucus, not only suspended her from caucus, but they cut her office off from all of the caucus infrastructure, too. So all of the casework that she was doing for people in her constituency got blown to hell.
00:57:02
Speaker
But you don't see Nautly threatening to throw anyone out. You don't see Nautly even complaining that people participated in these things. It's remarkable. But I would say that if you're talking about local Jewish federations, I know from personal experience that they would rather work behind the scenes
00:57:25
Speaker
to get people into trouble than actually say anything publicly, especially after the Edmonton Jewish Federation's unhinged response to Sohi saying that Jews and Palestinians in Edmonton are in his thoughts, that they don't want to go public and embarrass themselves again.
00:57:50
Speaker
But I'm sure behind the scenes they're asking Nautli to do anything. And to do something, and to her credit, I don't think Nautli is going to do anything.
Local Politics and Global Issues
00:58:03
Speaker
Because, yeah, I mean, it is quite remarkable to see, given the way that Nautli has like rolled over the party of Nairam Fist, her not punishing any of these Analies, but I think it shows where
00:58:18
Speaker
Public opinion is, you know, because don't forget in Alberta, a lot of like conservative oil people are like, are at least able to understand where the Palestinians come from because they've spent a lot of time in the Arab world, you know, making oil deals.
00:58:36
Speaker
So and also in the UCP, right? I mean, you haven't seen Smith condemn anyone. And I remember in 2021, there were UCP MLAs who also spoke out against Israel's attack on Gaza. And Kenny was just like, look, I don't agree with them. Everyone knows I love Israel. But you know what? They're entitled to their opinions. And you know, I
00:59:05
Speaker
suspect Danielle Smith herself isn't particularly pro-Israel, right? I mean, there's a particular, not saying it's for the right reasons, for humanitarian reasons, but there is a particular faction of like libertarians or like, why are we spending so much money defending this country in the Middle East? Like what's in it for us, right? I can only speculate what Danielle Smith's personal opinions about this are.
00:59:35
Speaker
I mean, I expect we have a lot of listeners who want us to stick to local issues or who come here for analysis of local political issues. And I think something that people need to understand about Israel-Palestine is that it is kind of a local issue in the same way that Ukraine
01:00:04
Speaker
and the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian invasion, is a local issue of sorts. The story of Israel-Palestine is a story of colonialism. And like we have some dirty messes that need to be disentangled in Canadian history, our ostensible allies in Israel are now making the same mistakes, committing the same atrocities that the Canadian state did decades ago.
01:00:34
Speaker
Like, there's a lot that needs to be kind of un-nodded. It's just, it's so messy and tangled up here. You go to Churchill Square, and on any given day, you may have a demonstration against Palestine, a demonstration against Israel. And at the same time, you have a monument against, like a monument commemorating the famine in Ukraine that is right across the plaza
01:01:04
Speaker
from a monument to a guy who did famine to India in the same century. There is so much here that is so incoherent, and it's because this whole country is just steeped in colonialism, the original sin of this whole country, and the same sin, I think, that Israel is guilty of.
01:01:31
Speaker
And so all of this stuff is just so tied up and so messy, but you can't see it as being separate from the story of Canadian colonialism, because colonialism is one story that has hurt the whole world. So yeah, it is relevant here, even if this is ostensibly an Alberta podcast.
01:01:52
Speaker
Absolutely.
Conclusion and Book Promotion
01:01:54
Speaker
I think that's a fantastic way to end the pod. Folks, thank you for listening for the whole thing. We appreciate it when you listen all the way to the end. And your reward for getting all the way to the end is you get to hear Jeremy plug his book. Jeremy, give the book, give the book plug. Yes, my book, Kennyism, Jason Kenny's pursuit of power is coming out on February 6.
01:02:19
Speaker
I know it's a long time from now, but you can pre-order it. Go to Dundurn Press, the publisher's website, and search for Kennyism. And hit the Shop Local tab. You can put in your postal code and it'll tell you where your closest independent bookstore is that you can order it to. I know a lot of people here in Edmonton have been ordering it to Audrey's, which is downtown. But there are others. You can also get it from Amazon and Chapters Indigo and
01:02:49
Speaker
Barnes and Noble actually, if you're in the States, for whatever reason, are listening. And yeah, pre-order it because you may be telling yourself, oh, I'll get it when it comes out. But pre-orders do help promote the book once it's out. If it's gotten a lot of pre-orders, it generates a lot of hype. And
01:03:13
Speaker
and it becomes more prominent for booksellers in terms of like where they place it in the store, how many copies they order in anticipation of its release. So yeah, please do that if you haven't already. Yeah, buy the book, pre-order the book. Also follow Jeremy on Twitter if you're not doing that already and Blue Sky, if you need a Blue Sky Invite, hit up me or Jeremy. Jim is, I don't know, are you on Blue Sky, Jim?
01:03:43
Speaker
I'm taking a break still from the socials. That's probably best. If you like this podcast and you want to join the 500 or so other folks who help keep this independent media project going, it's very easy. You go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons or click on support the progress report on the homepage there, put in your credit card, become a monthly donor.
01:04:04
Speaker
Jim and I and Jeremy would really, really appreciate it. Also, if you have any notes or thoughts or comments, I am very easy to reach. I am on Twitter and Blue Sky at, at Duncan Kinney. And you can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressAlberta.ca. Thanks to Jim and Jeremy for coming on. Thanks to Jim for editing. Thanks to Cosmic Family Communist for our theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye.