At long last, some good news for Canada’s beleaguered progressives. After a summer of watching Pierre Poilievre soar in the polls and conservative premiers use the health and safety of trans kids as a wedge issue, Manitoba’s electorate delivered a refreshing change of the political seasons. Wab Kinew’s NDP won a clear majority in Tuesday’s provincial election over Heather Stefanson’s PCs, making him the first Indigenous premier of a Canadian province — a milestone that took far too long to achieve. His win also put an end to eight years of not-so-progressive conservative government in the province, a tenure that was punctuated by one of the most cynical and craven campaigns in Canadian political history.
That included a deliberately vague promise to expand “parental rights” in schools, a nod-and-wink to the anti-trans bills being brought forward by other conservative premiers. But that wasn’t the only culture war the Manitoba PCs were willing to wage in order to win the election. They also ran ads boasting about their refusal to look for the remains of two missing Indigenous women whose bodies are thought to be in a Winnipeg landfill and would require an extensive and expensive search to recover. “Stand firm,” the print and digital versions of Stefanson’s ad said. “For health and safety reasons, the answer on the landfill dig just has to be no.”
When it became apparent this ghoulish appeal wasn’t resonating with the voting public, the party resorted to an even stranger ad that effectively acknowledged the shame their campaign had brought on the party and its candidates. “Stand firm and vote how you feel, not how others say you should,” it said. “It’s okay to disagree on issues, without the fear of being judged.”
Manitobans weren’t buying it. In the process, they sent a message to other conservatives who think there isn’t a political cost associated with these sorts of tactics that put already vulnerable minority populations at even greater risk in the name of near-term partisan advantage. And while Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe isn’t about to abandon his pre-emptive constitutional strike on the legal rights of his province’s children, he and other like-minded politicians might have to think twice about just how far they’re willing to go here.
Over in Victoria, for example, new BC Conservative Party Leader John Rustad used his first question in the legislature to ask about the province’s sexual orientation and gender identity program (SOGI 123), one he described as “divisive” and “an assault on parents’ rights.” As Premier David Eby noted, it was not an auspicious start. “It is outrageous that he would stand here and do this,” Eby said. “He sees political advantage in picking on kids and families and teachers and schools who are just trying to do their best for kids who are at risk of suicide. Shame on him. Choose another question.”
The ensuing 32-second standing ovation included not only Eby’s NDP colleagues but many members of the Opposition BC United caucus, including leader Kevin Falcon. There are some obvious political angles at work there, but it’s a sign that the appetite for this sort of U.S.-style culture war in Canada is not nearly as big as its proponents would like to believe.
Another sign came from Alberta, of all places. A heavily promoted event with James Lindsay, a controversial American speaker who routinely refers to the LGBT community as “groomers” and has described the Pride flag as “the flag of a hostile enemy,” was repeatedly deplatformed — first by ticketing apps like Eventbrite and then by the venues when they found out who they were hosting. Eventually, event organizers were forced to host it at an anonymous location and it drew only a few hundred mostly older people and the usual array of far-right agitators cosplaying as journalists.
These are encouraging signs, to be sure, but they’re hardly enough to put an end to the ongoing attempts by conservatives to smuggle American-style culture war politics across the border into Canada. After listing off the various depressing developments in Canada’s conservative movement — Danielle Smith’s reckless abuse of the truth, the Saskatchewan Party’s pre-emptive strike against the legal rights of LGBTQ kids and Poilievre’s ready embrace of some radical right-wing candidates, Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur noted that “this stuff goes in one direction, and it’s a bad direction.”
He’s right. That direction won’t change until voters make it abundantly clear conservative parties in Canada are going too far with this stuff, and that they’ll pay a real price at the ballot box for it. The defeat of Stefanson’s Progressive Conservatives, and the rejection of her odious campaign, is a start. Next year’s provincial election in Saskatchewan will be another opportunity for voters to push back against this sort of polarizing nonsense and punish a government that has been almost gleeful in its willingness to deploy it. And then, of course, there’s the federal election, whenever that comes.
But one thing should be obvious by now: If we want to keep this toxic nonsense out of our politics, we’re going to have to fight for it. The good news, as Kinew’s election victory demonstrates, is that we can win.
Alberta’s unrequited love affair with Quebec
What do the provinces of Quebec and Alberta have in common? Other than a shared disdain for Pierre Trudeau and a fondness for picking political fights with Ottawa, not very much. But Alberta, at least, is trying to change that, and the long-running crush that its conservative politicians have had on their Quebec counterparts and the power they wield in Confederation has reached a new fervour under Premier Danielle Smith.
In fairness, this renewed relationship — one that dates back to Peter Lougheed and René Lévesque’s common front against Pierre Trudeau and his quest to repatriate Canada’s Constitution — began with Jason Kenney and his “Fair Deal Panel”, which recommended Alberta create its own police force and pension fund, among other things. But Kenney, who spent many years in Ottawa and clearly sees himself as a Canadian as much as an Albertan, never really seemed to have his heart in the effort to drive a wedge between his province and country. Smith, on the other hand, is all-in.
Her case for an Alberta Pension Plan, after all, revolves around the existence of a similar plan in Quebec, which tends to orient its investment strategies to the province’s economic interests. And like Quebec separatists of the 1990s who thought they could separate from Canada while still retaining its currency, trading relationships and other benefits of Confederation, Smith enjoys pretending that Albertans can have their cake and eat it too when it comes to pulling out of the CPP.
Likewise, the notion Alberta should collect its own income taxes is drawn straight from Quebec, where residents have to file two different tax returns every year. Both ideas come with all sorts of extra bureaucracy and red tape, which are supposed to be one of the conservative movement’s big enemies. But as we’ve come to learn over the last few years, there’s almost no cost too big when it comes to owning the libs — especially those associated with Justin Trudeau.
As professors Daniel Béland and André Lecours noted in a recent paper, “There is strong evidence of political diffusion from Quebec to Alberta, something Alberta political actors are not trying to conceal. In fact, they mention Quebec as a model on a regular basis, as they look for leverage for increasing the autonomy of their province and its influence in the federation.”
There’s just one thing missing — a federal party that will actually stand up for Alberta’s interests. Yes, that’s how the Conservative Party of Canada would identify itself, but the Harper years showed that it’s far more interested in advancing its own agenda. And why wouldn’t it? With Albertans and Saskatchewanians serving as a loyal and reliable voter base, there’s no need to put forward policies or ideas that might play well there but poorly in places like southern Ontario or Quebec. It’s why for all of Harper’s talk about equalization before he became Prime Minister, he barely touched it while he was in power.
As I wrote back in 2019, “If Albertans want the rest of Canada to take their issues more seriously, they’ll have to do something even more radical than push for separation: stop voting Conservative.” Unless and until they put their votes in play the way Quebecers have consistently, they’re not going to get the same degree of attention from federal politicians. Case in point: In the last five federal elections, the caucus coming from Quebec has had a majority of its MPs come from three different parties — Liberal, NDP, and BQ. Since 1968, Alberta has only sent more than three non-Conservative MPs to Ottawa twice (1993 and 2015).
As Béland and Lecours argue in their paper, “Without a credible secessionist threat, territorial politics in Alberta is unlikely to generate the same type of pressures that have been associated with Quebec for the last half century.”
Don’t bet on that credible threat emerging any time soon. The Maverick Party, led by former CPC MP Jay Hill, was a monumental flop in the 2021 federal election, and the odds of conservative Albertans jumping ship on the CPC right as Pierre Poilievre seems poised to grab the reins of power are about as good as my odds of getting elected as a federal New Democrat in Calgary. In Alberta, it seems, the political beatings will continue until morale improves.
And as if to add insult to injury, Quebecers continue to turn their backs on Alberta’s primary industry and preferred cultural touchstone: oil. According to a new poll from Léger, nearly nine-in-10 Quebecers think oil and gas companies should be regulated so they reduce their emissions. In other words, they support the very federal emissions cap so loathed by the Alberta conservatives trying to imitate them. “With such a high rate of support from the population of Quebec for regulation of the Canadian oil and gas sector, the federal government has free rein to act and be ambitious,” said Anne-Céline Guyon, climate and energy analyst for Nature Québec. “Quebecers want this sector to finally face its responsibilities and finally do its fair share. This means, among other things, that all regulations must be aligned with the 1.5 C objective.”
Ouch.
Required Reading: Clean Energy Canada’s climate math
Wind, solar and other forms of low-carbon energy are expensive indulgences, and they could triple the average household’s utility bill if they’re adopted too widely. That’s the message Danielle Smith and her Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz are aggressively pushing in their new advertising campaign, one that asks people in Alberta and other provinces to “tell the feds” that the proposed Clean Electricity Regulations are too much, too soon.
But a new report from Clean Energy Canada has a much different message — one that’s actually grounded in facts, not fear. According to their calculations, switching to lower-carbon lifestyle choices like electric vehicles and more energy-efficient homes could save a homeowner in a Toronto suburb as much as $800 a month. “That’s even taking into account the costs of buying and installing the technology,” the report says. Over the course of a year, that’s almost $10,000 in savings, while a condo owner making similar changes could save $5,500 a year. At a time when household budgets everywhere are being pinched hard by inflation, this almost seems too good to be true.
That’s because, in some important ways, it is. First, while it accounts for the up-front cost of an electric vehicle, it assumes the alternative is buying a new gasoline-fuelled one. For many — I’d argue most — households, this isn’t actually the decision they face. It’s more about whether to upgrade an existing used vehicle with an electric or hybrid one, and the math there obviously tilts more favourably towards the status quo.
More important, perhaps, is the way people actually think about these things. The paper has a detailed breakdown of the various costs — operating, amortization, and so forth — but it’s one that only aligns with the thinking of a small percentage of the population. Most of us are not, I regret to inform you, entirely rational economic actors. And so while EVs clearly have lower operating costs and lower depreciation rates, those don’t feature as prominently in our minds as the sticker price.
There’s a clear role for governments to play here, I think, if they want to speed up the adoption of these technologies. They can help people get over that initial hump, whether it’s through direct purchase subsidies or financing programs like so-called “property assessed clean energy” incentives, which allow homeowners to finance energy-efficient upgrades through their property taxes.
Yes, market-oriented conservatives will probably howl about how this represents a further intrusion of the state or an act of climate socialism. Let them. These measures are also very popular and bound to get more so as awareness of climate change and the cost savings associated with reducing emissions continues to spread.
Paging Dr. Ivermectin
Amid all the noise around an Alberta Pension Plan and the federal clean electricity regulations, Danielle Smith managed to slip in a sneak preview of what her government’s response could look like if we face another fall and winter surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations. When asked by reporters (The Breakdown’s Nate Pike, who did a bang-up job of asking the question) if she’d get COVID-19 booster this fall, Smith said, “I’m a healthy person, I take care of my immune system. This is something I should talk about with my doctor, not media."
Health Minister Adriana LaGrange was no more forthcoming about her own willingness to get vaccinated — or, at least, to talk about it. "I'm very healthy, as well. I also believe this is a personal decision."
Given their previous comments on the issue, including Smith describing unvaccinated people as the “most discriminated against group I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” it’s unlikely that either will actually get it. They won’t be alone there, either, given the dwindling appetite for preventative (and, yes, life-saving) measures that target the flu and COVID-19. But that dwindling appetite is in large part a function of the growing conservative pushback against any attempt to treat or prevent this illness.
It also reflects the growing power of Take Back Alberta, which already deposed one UCP leader for his willingness to occasionally say and do the right things when it came to public health measures. In response to a tweet from University of Alberta professor Timothy Caulfield, who specializes in health law and science policy, TBA leader David Parker said, “Nobody wants your fake cures, you or the corrupt government.”
That attitude almost certainly explains Smith’s refusal to encourage people to get vaccinated this fall. It explains why the UCP membership — whose turnout will be driven in large part by TBA’s attempt to win control of the rest of the party’s executive — will be voting next month on a policy resolution that supports allowing doctors to prescribe Ivermectin and other quack treatments for COVID-19 and provide “vaccine exemptions” for those who want them. And it explains why continuous masking is no longer required in Alberta’s hospitals, despite provinces like British Columbia bringing it back in advance of the fall flu season.
“Alberta’s government has been clear in the past, we will not be mandating masks for Albertans,” Ministry of Health press secretary Charlotte Taillon said in a statement to Global News on Thursday. “In cases where there are COVID-19 outbreaks in health-care facilities like long-term care, we expect people to take precautions and protect themselves and others. That may mean staying home, rescheduling visits or wearing a mask.”
In other words: until or unless the situation in our hospitals gets much, much worse, Albertans are on their own. We can only hope (and sure, even pray) that this fall’s respiratory virus season isn’t a bad one.
Chart of the Week
Because I’m a nerd who loves charts, and because this newsletter needs a bit more in the way of visual variety, I’m introducing a new semi-regular feature: the Chart of the Week.
For all of her talk about electricity bills potentially tripling in 2035 due to nefarious federal policies, in many cases, they’ve already tripled. In August, for example, a hypothetical home in Quebec using 750 kWh of electricity would pay $62.93 for the energy, while in B.C., they’d pay $74.69. In Alberta, using the province’s so-called “regulated rate option” (which many households default to), they’d pay $320.64 for the electricity — and that’s without the province’s elevated transmission and distribution charges or the carbon tax.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the crisis that Smith should have been focused on all along: not draft regulations under discussion that won’t take effect until 2035, but a real affordability crisis that’s hitting poor and middle-class Albertans the hardest right now.
The Wrap
It was a light week for me in terms of columns because I was in Toronto taking care of some family-related matters.
For those looking for an explainer on the electricity regulations that Alberta keeps crying bloody murder about, I cooked up a Twitter thread to try to sort through at least some of the noise.
Last week, I joined Gen Squeeze founder Paul Kershaw for a fun conversation about the housing crisis — well, as fun as you can have talking about this issue. As I apparently told him, "We need a new platonic ideal if we're going to make this country accessible to young people again, to immigrants, to strivers, to entrepreneurs, to people who want to do more than just spend 60 per cent of their income on housing. You know, shelter should not be the thing that defines how we exist and the choices we make… I’d love to get back to a place where we didn't talk about housing like it was some sort of national obsession. But it's going to require some hard conversations. And it's going to require electing people who are willing to kind of stick their necks out a little further than we've seen so far."
Check it out if you want, and rate/review accordingly.
Speaking of rating things accordingly, my feelings about the ever-declining standards at Postmedia are well-documented by now. Even so, it’s worth reiterating just how low they’ve gotten of late in light of their decision to publish a ludicrous story alleging that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plane had cocaine on it during his G20 trip to India.
Anyone with a quasi-functional bullshit detector could have sniffed out that story, but apparently the potential headline (and clicks) was too much for the folks at the Toronto Sun to ignore. Evan Dyer, a CBC journalist who happened to be on that plane, had some scathing words for his professional colleagues. They’re worth reading and remembering, I think.
Finally, as ever, please share this newsletter as widely and warmly as possible. Growing its reach is an important part of our mission at Canada’s National Observer and it insulates us — and me! — from whatever nonsense is happening on the various social media platforms.