We have many questions and Elections Alberta has been diligent in providing answers to our campaign as they become available.

But one issue I am particularly interested in right now is Special Ballots. That’s because we have until October 9th to get as many people to request them. Folks who may have challenges accessing polling locations, folks who live remotely, those who may be away for advance polling (October 13-17) and on referendum day (October 19th) are all prime candidates for Special Ballots. But it’s not just for voters who may have challenges getting to the polls. It’s for everyone!

I wanted to share with you that as of Wednesday morning, August 19th, Elections Alberta confirmed with our campaign that more than 130,000 Albertans requested Special Ballots (mail-in). They also confirmed that every eligible Albertan that requests a Special Ballot will be sent one.

That means we have work to do, friends. 130,000 is a good start, but let’s keep going. It is up to us to make sure every one of our friends, family members, colleagues, and neighbours who want to reject this divisive and wasteful Referendum requests their Special Ballots before the October 9th cutoff.

It is a very quick, simple process to make the request. Once approved, Elections Alberta will mail you a package with a pre-paid envelope so you can vote cost-free from the comfort of your own home. All you need to do is drop the package back in the mail and you’re set!

Elections Alberta tells me that Special Ballots will be counted in a central location starting at 5pm on October 19th, and that our campaign will be able to designate scrutineers for the count. This is good news.

The stakes of this Referendum are incredibly high, and the best thing we can do right now is encourage one another to participate by Special Ballot. So keep talking and keep mobilizing. Let’s but this whole mess behind us by sending a clear message that we will not be divided by this exercise. Vote Remain, Vote No, and keep organizing for a better future, friends!

Thank you for everything you do for our communities and our province. We've got this!

-B

As we turn our attention to September things—back to school, yikes! — we’re going to start hearing more and more about the upcoming Referendum.

There is A LOT of noise already on this thing, at least within political bubbles, but come September we’re going to see Premier, federalists, separatists, and Elections Alberta talking about it every day.

First things first, YES, we can vote by mail on ALL questions with a Special Ballot. Despite some confusion online this past week about an OIC from May, eligible voters are completely able to request and receive a full package to vote by mail in the Referendum.

Now, when it comes to this whole mess of a referendum, I am genuinely anxious about the process for a few reasons. First, it’s a massive undertaking and the current government have been unwilling to support EA with the resources it needs. Second, there are legitimate concerns from commentators and experts that the Referendum is not unlikely to be targeted by coordinated and resourced misinformation and disinformation campaigns. CSIS is raising the alarm so are others. The stakes are high here folks. Third, regardless of outcome on the separation question come October 19th, Alberta’s political discourse is so far removed from the material priorities of most Albertans that in some respects damage has already been done.

All these things are basically outside the control, or even influence of organizations and third party campaigns, who are working to mobilize and persuade Albertans that we need to Vote Remain and Vote No to send a clear message to the provincial government that we want to move forward and put this whole mess behind us.

We can’t convince Danielle Smith to postpone or cancel the referendum due to insufficient EA resources. We can’t stop misinformation from seeping into our social channels. We can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube on separation politics now that it’s been mainstreamed by Smith.

But what we CAN do is really, really important. We can vote, and we can do so for Alberta values of fairness, respect and dignity. In my books, as it was passed down to me by my dad, my dad’s dad, and all the back and around to when my ancestors found their ways to north-central Alberta, we are smart enough to see through bullshit when our neighbours, co-workers, and friends are being used as scapegoats by politicians.

Yep, what we can go to Elections Alberta’s site and request a Special Ballot. The process is simple, secure and will mean that we can avoid lines from October 13-17 during Advance Voting and on October 19 for the big day itself.

By requesting a Special Ballot, you will be taken through a process to verify your eligibility and then receive your package by mail with pre-paid postage so that you can vote from the comfort of your own home, for free, without having to risk long lineups!

And there are legitimate reasons for us to be worried about long lineups. So far, Elections Alberta hasn’t confirmed how many polling locations there will be, or where the polling locations will be located. They also haven’t confirmed where the mobile polling locations will be, or how many there will be. This is not to say they are behind or not sharing information that they should be at this point. But it is true that there is cause to have reasonable doubt that this referendum will be as accessible as Albertans are use to general elections being.

Until we know the details about how Advance Voting and Referendum Day will be conducted, it’s impossible to say how anxious we should be that EA can “pull this off”. I hope that our campaign will get clarity soon regarding the number and placement of polling locations.

This week though, as we get ready to officially launch the Together - No! campaign, we will also be pushing VERY hard for folks to request their special ballot, and I encourage you all to do the same!

Here’s how to get your Special Ballot:

https://www.elections.ab.ca/resources/media/news-releases/2026-referendum-special-ballot-requests/

Apply to Vote by Mail
Electors can secure a Special Ballot by:

• Completing the online form at specialballot.elections.ab.ca,

• Writing to info@elections.ab.ca, or

• Contacting the Returning Office for their electoral division starting September 21.

The last day to request a Special Ballot is October 9, 2026. Electors are encouraged to apply earlier enough to ensure they receive it and can return it by the deadline.

Once an application is received, a Vote by Mail package will be mailed to the address provided by the elector, which will include a prepaid return envelope. Special Ballot packages will begin mailing to electors on September 1, 2026.

Special ballots may also be picked up in person at:

• Elections Alberta’s head office in Edmonton starting September 1, or

• The elector’s electoral division Returning Office starting September 21.

A designate may pick up a package on the elector’s behalf. A person may apply for a Special Ballot on behalf of an elector only when the elector requires assistance due to disability or illness.

If an elector does not wish to be added to the List of Electors, they can request a secure Special Ballot.

Completing your Vote by Mail
Once electors receive their package, they can complete it at a time that suits them. Elections Alberta must receive completed packages by mail before 5 p.m. on October 16, 2026.

Electors voting by mail must sign a declaration and provide identification to prove their name and address. Please note: electors are required to include copies of their accepted ID with their Special Ballot. Please do not send Elections Alberta original forms of ID.

Let’s get ready to send a message that Alberta is a lot better and a lot more united than some want to believe.

Take care and see you out there.

-Brad

For the next few months until October 19th, basically all of my energy will be focused on one big question: how can we come together through the referendum to tell a different story for Alberta’s future?

Based on initial conversations over the past two weeks, I think it’s clear that many of us know the answer. We come together by doing two things at the same time. We reject the division in all ten referendum questions, and we unite to send a clear alternative message: that we are better and stronger, together.

That starts with committing to vote “No” in the entire referendum, and then seeking as many neighbours, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and everyone else we can talk to, to do the same.

No to division, no to distraction, no to waste, no to political games, and no to separation.

I know there’s a lot of conventional wisdom out there to ignore the other 9 questions. Some of you have heard the reasons, and may share them. But for me, that’s not possible and I’ll tell you why.

1. Alberta is better than this. We don’t actually want to allow Danielle Smith to take away access to education for thousands of students, for example.

2. The other 9 questions are part of the same agenda. scapegoating newcomers is about separation and division. And silly constitutional whims is about separation and division. These policies and ideas all come from the same place and they all need to be dealt with in the same way.

3. Albertans know this exercise is a waste of time and money, and they know it’s distracting from real issues like affordability and healthcare.

4. We have an opportunity to unify and organize across so many different communities in opposition to this whole exercise. Not only is this organizing GOLD, it’s also fun and creative and exciting.

5. If we can come together to say “No!” and to vote "remain”, then we can build a truly alternative vision for Alberta. And we will have the relationships, infrastructure, energy and confidence to do it.

As I’ve been meeting with many community leaders across the province, it’s clear that this whole referendum is about one side of the equation. It’s not about building Alberta, it’s not about the economy, it’s definitely not about the future of our eastern slopes and Rocky Mountains (shout out to Corb and the 3,000 Albertans who pounded pavement on the Water Not Coal campaign, and it’s definitely not about bringing Albertans together.

It’s about distraction and division. It’s about taking the easiest, laziest and most boring narrative in politics (“Everything is someone else’s fault!”) and turning it into an agenda to do nothing productive. Frankly, it’s pathetic.

So instead of falling for it, or even tacitly endorsing it by ignoring the other 9 questions, we need to reject the entire exercise, altogether!

Why? There are so many reasons.

Because it’s a waste of money. It’s full of lies about the cost of newcomers to services and the economy. We have real problems to focus on. And because most Albertans see this entire referendum as a frustrating, tiresome waste of money.

We all know the referendum is going to cost us a lot of money, and that is deeply frustrating and ridiculous. When Albertans are struggling to make ends meet and access a family doctor, it seems really obvious that the last thing we need is a referendum that will cost us over 100 Million dollars, but that’s exactly how much it’s going to cost you and me as taxpayers, at least!

What is the province doing here, seriously.? Clearly that money could be better used for healthcare, schools, communities. Literally ANYTHING other than a political exercise that insults our intelligence. But as they say in our work, every surprise or challenge is an opportunity to organize and build.

So that’s why we’re doing our part. What’s our part, exactly? We’re going to train hundreds of volunteers this summer, knock on tens of thousands of doors, and make many more phone calls and connections at events all over the province. And we’re going to put the facts out there alongside a clear message to Vote No and Vote Remain.

Because we really need to take back the story of Alberta and chart a new course. And this is exactly the moment to start doing it! Let’s not acquiesce to the divide and conquer logic of the provincial government. Let’s reject it entirely! Let’s reject it and start talking again about how Alberta can be strong, welcoming and prosperous. Let’s start talking about how Alberta can be the leader Canada needs when it comes to finding a new path through uncertainty. Let’s start talking about how we rebuild healthcare and education and services, because we know that we can!

We’ve got the research, the data, the organization, the people and the plan to do something really important in October. And it’s going to be a lot of fun. A real David and Goliath exercise.

Coming out of the mess of the last few years on separation, it’s clear there’s no real appetite for Alberta to leave Canada. And we will make that extremely clear on October 19th.

And if we have anything to do with it, we will also make it very clear together we say “No!” to division, waste and distraction.

This is going to be a gargantuan effort for us at Public Interest Alberta, and we truly need your help, your ideas, your time, and your belief in a better future.

But, seriously, enough is enough. The Albertans I meet with across the province in my work are not interested in expensive political games. They're not really interested in punishing people by denying them services they pay for with their taxes.

When I was visiting Lethbridge for a speaking event recently, the most common thing I heard from people across the political spectrum was “let’s focus on what really matters for Albertans instead of these weird distractions.”

What an idea! Focus on real problems. Stop scapegoating different communities in our province and get back to what really matters: good jobs, good services, and communities that we can all be proud of.

Because that’s the thing, we’re are all legitimately worried about healthcare, affordability, jobs, and the future of our communities. Let’s send a clear message on October 19th:

Enough is enough.

Vote NO. Vote Remain.

Let’s build a different vision.

(Opening of the CUPE SK Convention with Smudge beside the red dress commemorating MMIWG.)

Remarks:

Scott Moe will use the notwithstanding clause again. And this time he will take away *your* rights. 

That is my firm belief. Why? Because a government made up of big, fat cats does not care for our rights – to hearken back to a great speech by a great Saskatchewan Premier. 

What they do care about is paving the way for their triple “C” agenda of cuts, chaos and control. I’m sure you all feel it in your lives and in your workplaces here in Saskatchewan. We certainly feel it in Alberta. 

Your President, Kent, who kindly invited me to speak with you this morning, asked that I reflect on the experience we are having in Alberta currently, and I must begin by saying: it’s not a fun time!

Surely, we can all agree that watching a democratically-elected government strip away the rights of any group is unnerving. Individual and collective rights taken away based on backroom conversations between premiers Doug Ford, Danielle Smith, and Scott Moe make us uneasy, uncertain and angry.

It makes us feel hopeless because we have been told, since the 6th grade in most provinces and territories (and even in Alberta, for now!), that the Canadian Charter protects our individual and collective rights and freedoms. 

Currently, in my work I wake up every morning wondering “What’s next?” as I prepare to receive calls from workers and activists desperately trying to make ends meet AND protect their communities from the onslaught of Danielle Smith’s government. 

It is true that we are tired and we are angry…but we are not broken.

(Offering remarks to the convention delegates and guests about the threat Danielle Smith and Scott Moe pose to our individual and collective rights.)

No, it is not all doom and gloom. We have the power to effectively resist and overcome these challenges. And that is also what Kent has mercifully invited me to think about with you today.

In my time as an organizer and advocate within the Alberta labour movement, and now at Public Interest Alberta, which represents a broad-coalition of organizations whose membership make up more than 300,000 Albertans, I have learned one enduring lesson…which keeps beating me over the head again, again, and again.

And it is this…

We can either move forward, or we can move back. 

There is no standing still when it comes to democracy, labour rights, equity, and justice. 

There is only forwards, or there is backwards.

When I travel outside Alberta to give talks like this the question I’m often asked is “What is it like living in Alberta right now?” and “What are you doing to fight back?” 

I hope I can shed some light on those questions today, if not give you the perfect answers.

As I was checking in yesterday, I asked the worker at the front desk if she liked Saskatoon, and told her that it was my hometown, expecting that she would agree it’s the best city in Canada…

Instead, much to my disappointment, she said she would prefer to be in Edmonton or Calgary, but that she is hearing of “things going on there” that she doesn’t like. I can’t blame her. 

The uncertainty in the air is palpable these days. It seems that no matter how loudly and strongly we tell Premier Smith we want to remain in Canada, we want stronger PUBLIC services and we want her to respect democratic norms and institutions…she does…well, the opposite. 

(me with CUPE SK President, Kent Peterson)

Even as more than half a million Albertans signed a petition to remain in Canada, she has refused to put down the seditious, fringe efforts of a small, reckless minority. 

Even as desperate separatists travel to DC to meet with the US State Department and propose a 500 Billion dollar line of credit to stand up an independent Alberta or Alberta as the 51st state, she refuses to denounce these actions.

Even as hate crimes and violence and expressions of neo-fascism rear their ugly heads in our streets and along our highways, the Premier moves ahead to blame newcomers and immigrants for her fiscal malfeasance.

It would be funny, if it weren’t for Danielle Smith’s despicable way of talking out of both sides of her mouth, further sowing division, fear, and delusion: feeding the alt-right sentiment with one provincial speech and playing naive on the national stage with the next.

Premier Smith has made it clear that she is an absolutely committed privatizer, and that not only is she committed to privatization of healthcare and education, as were previous conservative premiers, but all other public services, as well. Including addictions and mental health care, recovery, and childcare, and all other forms of social support in our province.

On top of this accelerated privatization, there is the mounting concern over alleged corruption that would make Grant Devine blush.

On top of all this, Danielle Smith and the UCP have a clear disdain for governing itself. She is so ideologically beholden to the anti-democratic corporatist ideology of Ayn Rand that she has set up special economic zones in the province which are exempt from virtually all regulatory process and oversight. Yes, we literally have our own Galt’s Gulch in Alberta now.

And she is prepared to do all this at a time when we have a rabid imperialist in the White House, posing a real risk to the future sovereignty of Canada. Not only is this foolish, it is treasonous.

So who is Danielle Smith? 

If you take all the worst things about Scott Moe, add separatist tendencies, MAGA principles, a personal affection for Trump, Noem, and DeSantis, at least one visit to Mar-A-Lago, and a whole bunch of right wing populist steroids – then you get closer to Danielle Smith.

We have taken to calling our province Ala-berta-bama.

That being said, Scott Moe, Doug Ford, and Danielle Smith are certainly reading each other’s homework…Moe successfully stripped rights away from queer and trans folks and Smith loved what she saw. So she did the same.

Now I want to test you a little this morning. Who do you think said this?

“The notwithstanding clause is part of the constitution that Premiers like Alberta’s Peter Lougheed and Saskatchewan’s Allan Blakeney fought to have included, because they understood that when there is a “collision of rights,” the will of the duly elected legislature, not the courts, should prevail.”

And this:

"I think everybody can agree we need to do what we can to ensure that [students] are in class and, unfortunately, the notwithstanding clause needs to be utilized in this case.”

Apparently, Moe has not read his charter history, his law, or the reasons for Premier Blakeney’s support for the insertion of the notwithstanding clause into the Charter.

Within this context there is no going back, and there is no standing still. Because allowing for governments to legislate away our individual and collective rights is the same thing as going backwards. 

As an aside, I hope you can excuse my occasional allusions to Premier Douglas, as I grew up here and have a fond affinity for feisty Scots, and I am a strong believer in pragmatic, prairie democratic socialism. 

It is no secret that Tommy himself, and many smart democratic socialists since his time, have been very, very, wary of anti-democratic overreach, whether by courts or corporations, and for good reason! No backroom deals impacting our very rights and freedoms should be imposed on us without our say!

But, at the same time, the current weaponization of the notwithstanding clause is being used to take away worker rights and human rights, and conservatives, so far, have largely learned that they can get away with it.

I want to share a short story about what I have come to believe that it means to “go forward.” This is a lesson that I learned, or finally had etched into my heart last year, when education assistants and support staff across Alberta went on strike to demand fair wages and investments in the classroom.

I received a call one day from a very experienced and battle-proven Canadian labour leader who expressed anxiety that CUPE EAs and support staff had made the wrong move by going on strike: “They can’t win. Danielle Smith will let them freeze.”

I received that call about 6 days after the Edmonton Public Local went out. It was the middle of January. I can tell you this was demoralizing to hear, but you and I know that we hear it all too often: from voices within our own head, or from demoralized allies and friends who have suffered one too many defeats.

(Me with SKNDP Leader, Carla Beck)

But, what actually happened almost felt inevitable, despite 2 or 3 long winter months… the government finally accepted these workers were not backing down.

What happened was that these workers from across Alberta knew that they were going to win, and so they did. 

“As long as it takes” was what I heard, over and over and over again.

Now, I have a new name that I don’t brag about because it’s equal parts silly and sacred to me. But I will share it with you all. It is “soup guy.” I was given the name by the striking workers at Ross Shep High School in Edmonton because I made about 200 servings of soup every morning for 66 days while that local was on strike. 

During those mornings on the line, I witnessed humour, strength, uncertainty, pain, cold, music, singing, solidarity, and love…

I received daily donations from STRIKING, underpaid workers so that I could make my Beet the Cuts Borscht, and Green Machine recipes every day…I received hundreds of hand written letters and cards of gratitude, and I cherished every single one of them.

That experience meant so much to me because it was an exercise in labour power and collective action and solidarity that couldn't be anything but successful.

And it was. These workers broke the awful austerity pattern set forth by the Smith government, and got raises of up to 29% for EAs and support staff and changes that will lead to improved classroom conditions.

It was and is a historic victory for workers, for students, and for public education!

I wanted to share this story because it is what it means to go forward. You go forward because it is necessary. Because there is no standing still when our rights, dignity and quality of life as workers is on the line.

I know you know this because I can see and feel it in this room. 

Now, although these CUPE education workers didn’t incur the wrath of the Danielle Smith government via the weaponization of the notwithstanding clause, teachers did.

When I was working with teachers to help organize and coordinate daily “walks” in the absence of traditional pickets at worksites, it was clear the mood of the government was different. Not only were they embarrassed by CUPE’s provincewide, coordinated strike by education workers, but they were once again on the wrong side of public sentiment.

And, so they took very little time to bring down the “nuclear option” which is beginning to create a nation-wide nuclear winter these past 8 years…

When I was organizing and speaking with colleagues – shop stewards, labour lawyers, past and current presidents from various unions – all of them questioned me when I worried aloud about the province proactively using the notwithstanding clause…

“Why would they do that? They don’t need to do that, do they? Can’t they just write “normal” back to work legislation? I think they’ll just wait them out, don’t you?” 

Now, all of these friends and colleagues have much wisdom and experience, but the one element that most of us failed to perceive is that the Danielle Smith government in Alberta is not making plays from the same book as Ralph Klein, just as Scott Moe is not making plays from the same book as Brad Wall.

I think these premiers see the notwithstanding clause as the natural extension of their political agendas, not as a safety against federal overreach, and I think their use is intended to see whether workers and citizens will accept it when they write laws to take away our individual and collective human and charter rights.

Some people wonder why someone might use a sledgehammer when a normal hammer one will do…I think the answer is clear: the purpose is not to finish a nail, but to crack the very foundation upon which our democratic and social contracts are built.

Now, the teachers in Alberta, on the advice of their central leadership, ultimately decided to return to the classroom, when legislation containing the notwithstanding clause was tabled.

This was a decision that teachers did not take lightly. It was agonizing, I’m sure. But I always abide by the adage that “workers know best the right course of action.”

Their experience is a lesson to all of us today. We must be ready and we must be willing to protect our rights. If not the labour movement, then who?

What we have unfolding now, in the past 8 years, in the name of “provincial rights and independence”..is equally lazy, anti-democratic, and, in my view, treacherous.

It’s obvious that the charter’s grand compromise is being manufactured and administered as a poison pill. And that the protection of our individual and collective rights depends on our collective ability to organize and, indeed, defy the stripping of our rights. This is more critical now than it ever has been before in the nearly 44 year history of the Canadian Charter.

Indeed, the notwithstanding clause, or section 33 in our Charter has moved from being used very, very sparingly, excluding the reactive wave in Quebec in the 1980s to new and pitched abuses in Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Alberta.

The clause was only invoked a small number of times between 1990 and 2018.

In fact, aside from being invoked, but never put to use, in the Yukon in 1982 to shield government from “equality” principles for Indigenous nominations to agencies, boards, and commissions; being invoked against workers by Grant Devine and his infamous band of fraudsters in 1986 to protect them from the potential overturning of back-to-work legislation; and being invoked in my province of Alberta against couples to protest the federal legalization of same-sex marriage, it was not used.

To any right-minded Canadian, it’s clear to read two themes developing in this middle period. While the clause was used sparingly…it was distinctly used in a way that did, or was intended to have harmful effects on groups whose rights have always been at risk…namely, Indigenous Canadians, unionized workers, and same-sex couples.

Now, the process to develop our Charter began 4 years before before I was born, so I have to confess I can’t speak directly to the dynamics between Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Pierre Elliot Trudeau, or, for that matter, those between Prime Minister Trudeau and then Justice Minister Jean Chretien and the likes of premiers Allan Blakeney, Peter Lougheed, and Rene Levesque. But from what I have learned from studying this moment in our history and from talking to constitutional scholars and lawyers, these negotiations were not the subject of the violent agreement we sometimes experience on the floor of CUPE conventions!

No, this was tough stuff and the kind of thing that has become  mythologized with the story of the “night of the long knives” and Leveque’s flying of the Quebec flag at half mast as the Queen signed the Charter on April 17th.

To all the bargaining reps in the room, here is an important lesson that you all understand: never leave the bargaining table early during active bargaining – whether it’s to go to sleep or for any other reason.. You might end up with an agreement that you don’t like at breakfast the next morning!

This is an important point. Based on our experience in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, it’s clear that the current lazy and cruel brandishing of the notwithstanding clause must be addressed, but returning to a period where it was “used appropriately” simply doesn’t work, because that period didn’t exist. Not really. We cannot make the use of the notwithstanding clause “Great Again.” This is a reckoning that I expect will take years and years to unfold.

However, friends, it is very clear that we have a more imminent crisis on our hands because of the political weaponization of the notwithstanding clause.

Now, I think it’s important to remember that between 2005 and 2018 it was invoked a grand total of 0 times. 0. Despite tense labour negotiations, occasional job action, human rights challenges and progressions, the truth and reconciliation commission and some, if damnably meagre, progress on land and title rights and consent….the notwithstanding clause was not invoked one single time.

So what has changed?

I think what has changed is fundamental but also complicated. I would some it up as the conservative turn away from democracy and towards authoritarianism. 

Since the surfacing of simple but dangerous diatribes such as “The Dark Enlightenment”, which casts a shadow across silicon valley, it has become very trendy for powerful people, even here in Canada to whisper that democracy is a failed project.

We have all heard of Project 2025, and how it lays out the process to very urgently transform the United States into an authoritarian one.

Some of you may have heard of Alberta’s version: the Free Alberta Strategy, which was written by Danielle Smith’s right hand man, former WIldrose MLA, Rob Anderson, and advocates for Alberta to leave the CPP, start its own provincial police force, collect its own taxes, and appoint ALL of its own judges. 

Now some people call these playbooks a fantasy that will never exist outside the small minds of the likes of Danielle Smith and Rob Anderson, but I think these fantasies are well on their way to becoming normalized and very real living terrors. 

Democracy, public services, and rights are not secretly being eroded, they are being taken away before our very eyes, and the lesson I fear we are teaching Danielle Smith, and Scott Moe and Doug Ford, is that we will let them…

Because they have written the public strategies, they have invoked the notwithstanding clause, they have come after queer and trans folks, and workers, and they have begun scapegoating immigrants and set out their agenda to hunt them down and eliminate their access to healthcare and education…So what do we collectively do?

I think the answer is simple, and I think the answer is uncomfortable. And I think we all know what it is.

I think it is this: we need to engage in full, permanent, and aggressive education, organization and mobilization so that when the time comes to ask ourselves: will we defy those who are taking away our rights and those of our vulnerable neighbours…that the answer inevitably yes.

There is an appetite for mass collective resistance in Alberta. There is an appetite for resistance in this room. There is also hesitance in Alberta, and I’m sure there is hesitance in this room.

I can say, with confidence, that these aggressively ideological conservative governments will not stop at dismantling public education because teachers went back to work; they will not stop selling off our healthcare because they reached negotiated settlements with healthcare bargaining units. They won’t stop attacking newcomers and queer Albertans because we wrote letters while they cut off their healthcare and education.

They will only stop when we move forward to stop them. Let me say that one more time, in a slightly different way: it is up to you to move forward to stop them.

With the inevitability of the workers who have come before us. With their strength, humility, respect, solidarity, love, and resolve. 

We will overcome these attacks on our rights because we simply must. 

Because, and we need to remind ourselves of this, over and over again: they can write legislation that says our rights no longer exist, but they are only truly gone once we give them away. 

Do you remember that old saying: that there’s no such thing as an illegal strike, just a failed one? 

I think it’s high time we got back to that spirit. 

Alberta teachers got the notwithstanding clause, an imposed contract, and no bargaining for several years.

Albertans who hold progressive views, care deeply about public services, and are absolutely committed to democracy are very resilient, and we are fighting back in determined ways.

Always remember that fighting back makes a difference, and fighting back in smart and sustained ways makes a big difference. 

We are working on a triple AAA

Process in Alberta - get more Active, get more Angry, and get more Allies.

We also need to remember a timeless labour adage: “Don’t agonize - organize!”

That’s what is going to make us successful in Alberta - labour and civil society, organizing to bring about the kinds of changes that we need and deserve. 

And I know that’s the foundation for the successes that you will be having in Saskatchewan as well. 

(PIA logo in the CUPE SK convention hall)

When it comes to resource management, the public interest, prosperity, democracy and security of every kind, AI and data centres should be the first thing that comes to mind. Frighteningly, it is often the very last.

Not surprising since the AI tech bubble and itinerant shell game is equally obnoxious and confusing to think about.

You have extremely lost and haunted souls, like the increasingly zealous tech. villain Peter Thiel, trying to find their elixir vitae in data scraping AI and synthetic biology.

You have a nebulous constellation of Nvidia, Open AI, ChatGPT, Microsoft, Azure, Palantir, several big funds and others providing the capital, infrastructure, and technology in a sort of chaotic dance of technological integration and expansion.

You have images floating around of tech. Oligarchs breaking bread with Jeffrey Epstein.

Then there’s Kevin O’Leary, too.

It’s a grim set of players making for some really, really bad theatre. And basically they’re all riding the same pocked and fetid leviathan.

(Antichrist on Leviathan, Liber Floridus, 1120 C.E.)

More important than the aesthetics of the awful scene is the moral vapidity underpinning it all. The basic problem with this whole fucking mess is that nobody can tell us what AI is really supposed to be for. No one can say, with any convincing certainty anyway, whether it actually has any intrinsic, or even imagined, value.

In my experience and observation, all it’s given us very shitty AI “art”; chat bots that coddle our most basic and infantile projections by telling us anything we want to hear; and surveillance technology making it easier for our neighbours in America to be kidnapped by their own neighbours in ICE.

It hasn’t given us safer, more affordable, more accessible health care. It hasn’t enhanced educational attainment – in fact there’s very, very good research to show that 1:1 technological hard/software integration in the classroom is vastly inhibiting human learning.

It hasn’t reduced the workday. It hasn’t given us the 4 day work week.

It hasn’t brought down grocery prices or my power bill.

Maybe that’s all that good stuff is coming down the pike, just as soon as we suspend our legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks, and our human rights…maybe.

In the meantime, it’s no wonder more people are asking themselves: Why again do I want more of a technological disruption that steals my creativity, fails to challenge my ideas, and helps fascist thugs kidnap my friends? Can anyone tell me why?

Because when you add it all up, that spiritual gut feeling that all of this is bullshit is probably part of why even market fundamentalists and major market actors are increasingly acknowledging the whole thing may be a massive bubble. Of course, my more neoliberal and materialist colleagues will say it’s actually the energy supply “hurdle” that’s causing uncertainty and spasms in the market, but I believe there’s more to it than that.

More and more “normal” people are becoming annoyed with the current bullshit, household applications of AI, and, when they start to think about it, more and more concerned with the broader systemic implications of its forceful insemination into everything.

But more demystification of this entire moment needs to occur. And, while I deeply hope that I’m deeply wrong about this, I am more and more convinced that it’s probably far, far too late.

In toto, when you look at the major projects office in Canada, when you hear the razzle dazzle conversations in Alberta about data centres, when you look at the new federal AI ministry’s RFP being headed by former art dealer Evan Solomon, or when you read the new Water Act amendments in Alberta that allow for corporations to take water from one river and basin to use wherever they want…the dice seem to be cast.

(Prime Minister Mark Carney and Minister Evan Solomon before they got their new jobs.)

I believe it’s still important to think out loud about the implications of the coming AI-Antichrist, to riff on a Thiel’s bizarre lectures this past week.

Because, since Nvidia – currently the biggest bubble in a field of AI bubbles – started lobbying the Government of Canada in 2021, data centre mania has hit new heights.

Most recently, with the announcement by the Government of Canada that it is seeking proposals to support the MASSIVE acceleration of large-scale “sovereign” data centre development.

Anyway, the broader scene for me is the fact that our entire, human-made fabric of laws, policies, regulations, processes, and legal precedents can — apparently — be run over completely for non-human centered ‘progress’ based on the flimsy, flimsy promise of “economic opportunities for millions” and “digital services and products”.

While the current Prime Minister’s pièce de résistance, the so-called “Major Projects Office”, has not yet announced any AI-centered projects, all proposals from Solomon’s ministry “may be” shared with the office. And I expect they will be.

In addition to that, one of the current “national interest” projects being touted by the Office is a massive carbon capture project called “Pathways Plus”, and though the technology is largely unproved at scale, it’s being spoken about as the answer to offsetting astronomical emissions that will be caused by the proposed data centres in Alberta.

Carney’s Office, headquartered in Calgary, empowered by the so-called “Building Canada Act”, and co-led by former CEO of Transalta, Dawn Farrell, has been given authority to effectively rubber stamp any projects deemed to be in the “national interest”, arguably overriding existing Treaty, legislation, legal precedent, regulations and policies in the process. Or, grinding down any teeth they may have had, at least.

You can read the Building Canada Act yourself for a real doozy in the creative use of language and referentiality via legislative drafting, but it effectively translates to:

“The GoC will decide, on behalf of you all (citizens, provinces, territories and Indigenous nations and communities) what big shit we’re going allow big corporations to build.

“Once we’ve decided what big shit they can build we will write something that explains to you all how it meets our bare minimum constitutional requirements and why it must be built– even though we’re ignoring our own laws, regs, and policies on consultation, climate, energy transition, and genuine nation-to-nation decision-making.

“Once this deeming and justification exercise has occurred, nothing is getting in the way of the project being built.

P.S. This is for ‘Canada’s’ own good, and we don’t want to talk about the public interest, labour standards, environmental sustainability, or Treaty and reconciliation. Sorry (not sorry).”

After all, why have burdensome and slow regulatory processes?

Unless, of course, you want to consider complex and life-giving systems and relationships like water cycles, biome balance, and access to resources for sustainable human and animal life and health.

Why have stringent and specific legislation and a system of referential legal precedence?

Unless, of course, you want to form a more just, humane, respectful nation (of nations) and society?

To me, and call me human and naive I suppose, scrutiny through democracy is the price we willingly pay to uphold all our relations.

Now, for its part, the GoC continues to say it wants air tight control over our data and data infrastructure, even as they blow up our system of regulatory processes.

Sovereign clouds, but built by foreign investors and operating via foreign hardware and software, presumably. Ok?

At the very same time as the GoC is talking about standards that are supposed to pass the sniff test, it’s being reported by our very own national broadcaster, the mighty CBC, that the GoC is also in talks with Open AI about the massive and urgent build out of data centres.

Is rhetorical sovereignty preserved, while real sovereignty is sacrificed?

(The UCP Government in Alberta, via Invest Alberta, touts its “abundant” water supplies as one reason this Canadian province should be the “premier” destination for foreign investment by the likes of Open AI and others: https://investalberta.ca/data-centres-alberta/.)

Are we comfortable with the ethical implications of opening our doors for potential investment by corporations indirectly linked with the current oppression of American and Palestinian citizens, and people in general?

For now, I think the move is to start making some noise. I think the move is to get our elected officials to start thinking about the broader, potential legal and moral implications here.

I think the move is to ask them if they understand the constellation of interests between AI players in the market and the current applications of these technologies “in the field”.

Do they know Cohere has just recently, in August of 2025, signed an MOU with Canada to “transform the public sector”? Have they considered the labour, legal, and ethical implications for this transformation?

Do they know Open AI wants to build Stargate in Canada? Do they know what Stargate is, even? Will they dig into it?

Do they have any idea how data security and data sovereignty will be protected with keen oversight, human-in-the-loop flows, and responsive enforcement of the law, if and when these standards and protocols are breached?

Will data processed on Canadian soil, using Canadian water and energy, directly assist oppressive or violent operations around the world that contravene our international commitments and conventions? How will we know?

If it looks like snake oil, if it smells like snake oil, then it’s probably not going to cure what ails you. Hell, it might not even be actual snake oil…

(Clark Stanley was fined $20 dollars in 1916 or 1917 for selling turpentine, beef fat, chili peppers, and camphor as “snake oil”. Loosely based on folk and traditional medicine made from Chinese Water Snakes, Stanley sold his fake “snake oil” by the crateful all over America, starting in 1879. It wasn’t until passage in 1906 of the Pure Food and Health Act, that his bunk product started to face real scrutiny. Imagine that, regulations for the public interest.)

A lift…a flicker?

For an alternative to Peter Thiel and company’s “dark enlightenment”, and so-called “middle powers” enabling their conquests, my strong sense is we need to continue to germinate, and let bloom examples of restoration economies; economic measurements that prioritize human, animal, and ecosystem health over GDP; as well ways to value – not valuate – actual ways of being in relation to one another and the world that is brave, humble, respectful, loving, honest, kind, and truthful.

Tioradh!

Today, I was made aware of the fact ICE has 5 offices in Canada: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary.

(“Yes, yes,” some will say, “but they are in consulate offices and their mandate within these offices is almost certainly limited.”)

Ok, but, why doesn’t that give me any fucking comfort?

It’s likely because Carney himself has said that convenient lies can no longer be tolerated for the sake of “going along to get along”.

And because when ICE was stood up in 2003 in post 9/11 America, its mandate and violence weren’t anywhere near what they are today. In the past two weeks, they killed two of their own citizens in broad daylight, and these are one that have been confirmed.

I know it’s hard to imagine things appearing any more dire than they already are, and that we want to believe it’s ok that ICE is in our cities because they’re in the consulates and because we are Canada and we are immune and that they’re not in the streets like they are in Minnesota…But it’s very, very clear to people who have read their history that we are on a very, very dangerous path. And while we didn’t lay the stones, we are being marched down them, nonetheless.

Danielle Smith won’t renounce separatism. Rogue Albertans are meeting with the U.S. State Department to discuss separation. Reservists in the U.S. are being called in. U.S. Treasury Security Scott Bessent is openly coveting Alberta and its resources.

So, It’s pretty obvious why Albertans and Canadians like myself are asking for an accounting as to the scope, scale, and jurisdiction of ICE operations in Canada today, so it doesn’t become much worse tomorrow.

It’s also no wonder that many Canadians are saying there’s no justification for their operations north of the 49th whatsoever — regardless of any new or updated agreements between Canada and the U.S.

All this supposed “grey area” of consulates and customs and jurisdictions is designed to scramble our grey matter. And it likely means Canadians will be asked to tight with their rising anxiety over the erosion of peace and security in our communities, on top of their deepening economic anxiety, for just a little while longer.

The trouble with that is it immediately begins to erode trust, and so many Canadians are on the edge of breaking open.

Sure, leaders are talking about a new, ethical world order, but how’s any average Albertan or Canadian supposed to feel comforted when we wake up to the knowledge that the same agency that killed Alex Pretti is operating out of the U.S. Consulate in downtown Calgary?

So…

We’ve got tin hat cowboys meeting with the state department officials in D.C. to “negotiate” on behalf of Alberta and Canada.

We’ve got Danielle Smith speaking out of every side of her mouth on the unity question.

We’ve got a healthcare and education system in absolute free fall due to cuts, chaos and privatization.

And now we’ve got ICE operating in 5 of Canada’s major cities because, as ICE says, “crime doesn’t stop at our borders, neither do we.”

(Image from Official US Government site: https://www.ice.gov/contact/international-offices)

So what do we do?

In my view, we can’t normalize this as the cost of doing business. It’s not complicated.

We either stand up to fascism, or we don’t. We either articulate a vision in the public interest that is for the common good and we build it, or we don’t. We either call out the threats to our long-term community safety, or we don’t.

I will never believe in appeasement. I’ve read my history. There are reasons I was born in Canada and not in the Pale of Settlement, or in Antrim on the shores of Lough Neagh. Many of you have read your history, too. And all of you have your histories.

Appeasement is a strategy that might work a little bit, for a little while, but only for a small number of elites.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are forced into the streets with whistles and real window signs and other strategies to keep our neighbours safe. Just like we’re witnessing in Minnesota right now.

The time is now to resist the creeping fascism that has burrowed itself in legal loopholes and discursive nuances.

It’s time to put people, communities, safety and connection first.

Fuck fascism. Praise the pink Axolotl.

Safe travels.

(View from south Waterfowl Lake looking West. Summer 2025)

The woman who owns Northback Mining— the Australian company that wants to do open pit mining in Alberta’s Rockies like it’s the 1920’s again — had a really rich and infamous father who once said this of Indigenous rights in Australia:

“Nothing should be sacred from mining whether it's your ground, my ground, the blackfellow's ground or anybody else's. So the question of Aboriginal land rights and things of this nature shouldn't exist."

Nice.

Well, that family’s company is the one whose proposed Terms of Reference are out for public comment until today.

I need to make it really clear. I have nothing against the responsible use of resources and materials. We need to interact with the land in order to survive. But there’s a difference between ripping and shipping for shareholder profits and learning how to harvest, hunt and live sustainably.

I love the mountains. The mountains are where I am most myself. At ease but engaged. That’s why I can’t stand idly by while some billionaire who doesn’t give a shit about the Rockies runs roughshod over our provincial government, weak as they UCP government is.

(Grizzly cub with Mama on the way to Cadomin. Summer 2024)

(On my way into the Pipestone Valley. Summer 2025)

For my part at this stage of the process, I wrote a response that focused on three areas to add or change to the woefully substandard current proposed Terms:

1. Indigenous and Metis engagement

2. Selenium

3. Public and federal government engagement

Here it is in full… (if you don’t want to read my best efforts to sound like the mirror image of a snotty, foreign CEO, the brass tacks are that this project isn’t worth the risk and will only serve billionaires from Australia):

Director, Environmental Assessment Regulatory Applications Alberta Energy Regulator

Suite 1000, 250-5th Street SW, Calgary, AB T2P 0R4 AEREnvironmental.Assessment@aer.ca Delivered by Email

To the Director of Environmental Assessment Regulatory Applications of the Alberta Energy Regulator:

Thank-you for the opportunity to submit comments on the Proposed Terms of Reference for the Environmental Impact Assessment Report for Northback Holdings Corporation’s proposed Grassy Mountain Project. At Public Interest Alberta (PIA), we strongly believe that democratic institutions and processes must include rigorous engagement of interested parties, organizations, communications, nations, and all Albertans.

My submission on behalf of PIA, will focus, briefly, on three areas of concern. Each of these three areas are fundamental to any meaningful process in consideration of Northback’s (formerly Benga Mining) submission of a revised proposal for large-scale open pit mining at Grassy Mountain.

Since the reintroduction of the proposal by Northback, we have become increasingly concerned by the lack of rigour in the engagement process, intimating, in our view, an attempt to circumvent the standards of assessment built over decades between governments, regulators, courts, and Indigenous and Metis nations and communities.

At this stage and within this context, the current proposed terms of reference by Northback are significantly flawed with respect to Indigenous and Metis engagement, the lack of consideration of the very likely impacts of selenium contamination to wildlife and humans, as well as the omission of adequate engagement with federal jurisdictional processes, regulations, and legislation and the public.

Indigenous engagement:

The proposed terms of reference do not adhere to the principle of free, prior and informed consent, but insinuate the proposed project will be developed and proceed as though traditional knowledge is to be extracted from Indigenous and Metis elders and knowledge keepers. The following suggestions for reform are based on the idea that consultation must be authentic and acknowledge that a corporation’s perceived interests do not supersede or override those of Indigenous and Metis peoples. Therefore:

● The terms of reference must explicitly consider and detail how engagement with elders and knowledge keepers is to take place to develop a culturally and historically accurate map of traditional land use. This map must be developed prior to any exploration or production.

● The terms of reference must explicitly consider how it will determine, in consultation with elders and knowledge keepers, whether the proposal would likely impede or restrict traditional land use. This consideration must reference relevant case law from British Columbia, Alberta and Canada with respect to the transmission and veracity of oral traditional knowledge.

● The terms of reference must explicitly consider how it will determine, in consultation with elders and knowledge keepers, whether the proposed project would likely result in adverse effects on the physical and cultural heritage of three Treaty 7 First Nations, as well as other nations who have a connection to the land and water impacted by the proposed site (eg. Ktunaxa and Blackfoot).

● The terms of reference must explicitly acknowledge how likely or potential impacts will be understood and felt differently by different nations, and therefore, the terms of reference should include details of how and when engagement, consultation, and nation-to-nation decision making would be made to ensure Treaty and Indigenous rights are upheld to the highest level, if the project were to proceed. The following nations that should be included in a revised terms of reference are included here, as they had been included in the 2021 Joint Review Panel’s Final Report, as they have a stake and interest based on current and traditional land use and practice:

• Káínai First Nation (Treaty 7) • Piikani Nation (Treaty 7) • Siksika Nation (Treaty 7) • Stoney Nakoda Nations (Treaty 7) • Tsuut’ina Nation (Treaty 7) • Métis Nation of Alberta • Ktunaxa Nation • Shuswap Indian Band • Samson Cree Nation (Treaty 6) • Louis Bull Tribe (Treaty 6) • Ermineskin Cree Nation (Treaty 6) • Montana First Nation (Treaty 6) • Métis Nation British Columbia • Foothills Oj

ibway First Nation

Selenium:

The release of Selenium continues to be a major, widespread and legitimate public concern for communities downstream of the proposed project. Despite these legitimate concerns, based on previously public reports and research, Northback does not adequately address the likelihood of Selenium contamination within its proposed terms of reference. The high likelihood of Selenium contamination would affect Westslope Cutthroat Trout, and the overly-simplistic and optimistic assumptions by the company are cause for significant concern to the public interest. Therefore:

● The terms of reference must explicitly refer to existing, mining-scale technology that is successfully and reliably removing adequate amounts of Selenium from waters that interact with wildlife and human populations. These references must be in peer-reviewed and widely regarded publications, and verifiable by Canada’s and Alberta’s own scientists.

● The terms of reference must explicitly commit to reviewing the Selenium contamination experience in British Columbia, from ecological, public health, economic, and international relations perspectives. To date, the estimated cost due to Selenium poisoning from one single coal project is approximately $4.6 Billion dollars.

Federal Involvement and Engagement with other groups

In closing, a word on engagement is required. A proposed project of this scale and which has been subject to such public, regulatory, and government scrutiny simply must be subject to the most stringent and rigorous public engagement requirements under the law, and also within the public interest. In Canada, corporations refer to the hopeful outcome as “social license”.

The proposed terms of reference are woefully inadequate with respect to consideration of engagement with federal legislative, regulatory, and policy standards and processes. This is not acceptable. The proponent’s parent company, Hancock Prospecting, has a long history of working within a federal system of governance in Australia and should understand that proposals require multi-lateral engagement. Therefore:

● The proposed terms of reference must include a rigorous and separate section on how it is committed to fulsome engagement with the federal legislative, regulatory and policy frameworks.

Additionally, It is simply not satisfactory that the Chief Executive Officer performs a media tour while Albertans, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are denied the opportunity for fulsome and public engagement. Therefore:

● The proposed terms of reference must also include a fulsome engagement plan, which would include diverse and low-barrier pathways to engagement for all individuals, organizations, and nations who are concerned about the project proposal.

The initial proposal put forth by Northback’s predecessor, Benga Mining, was rejected by the Joint Review Panel on June 17, 2021 for substantive and legitimate reasons, and in our estimation, the currently proposed terms of reference omit or greatly reduce the importance of whether or not to move forward with this project.

Particularly, this proposed open pit mine remains of grave concern to the public interest on the subjects of:

● Indigenous and Metis nations engagement and impacts;

● the risk to fish, wildlife, humans, and water of selenium contamination; and

● the quality and legitimate involvement of the federal government of Canada.

The introduction of an Australian mining company to the culturally, economically, and environmentally rich but sensitive region of the Rockies and eastern slopes of Alberta demands the most rigorous scrutiny. Anything less would be an affront to Albertans, Indigenous and Metis peoples, and, indeed, to the mountains and waters themselves.

Northback’s Canadian CEO, Ian Young, said himself that Canada’s processes are more rigorous than those he is more experienced with in Australia. Rightly so. There is a reason why, up to now, we have largely protected the Rockies and eastern slopes from more open pit coal mining.

The currently proposed terms of reference reflect a certain casual disregard for this regulatory and democratic process. We are hopeful our intervention will yield positive results and result in a more rigorous, just, and science-based process.

Thank-you for your consideration.

Bradley Lafortune

Executive Director

Public Interest Alberta

(Rufio, my 5 year old Heeler at Waterfowl Lakes. Summer 2025)

Like many of you, I am not sad to leave 2025 behind. In my work and travels, this has been a year of continual hope and action, but it’s been commingled with loss, desperation, and fear as well.

As advocates for the public interest, we have witnessed an acceleration and intensification of the attacks on our democracy, our public services, our mountains and waters, and on our deepest values of caring for eachother.

When we started this year, we all knew it would be a year of challenges made worse by the current government’s chaotic style of “ungoverning”. When our province most needed leadership, Danielle Smith and the UCP doubled down on their unique brand of authoritarian libertarianism – tinted as it was by shades of fascism and corruption.

Truly, the only winners this past year were friends and insiders of the current government.

On the other hand, the attacks on families, communities, and anyone who dares question the UCP became more erratic and intense.

It’s clear the center cannot hold. Danielle Smith has no program for governing; she only has a program for power.

That’s why we saw growing unrest and dissent. From union action and recall efforts to the crafty and spirited efforts of Forever Canadian, Albertans are resisting.

For 2026, those tactical efforts must continue to deepen and grow through education, organizing and mobilization. Ultimately, it’s clear that we need a change in government.

That is not a partisan position. It is a democratic one. Too many of my friends, colleagues and fellow advocates have been under attack for too long. We are watching a government manufacture a housing crisis, deepen an affordability crisis, and attack healthcare and education at exactly the time that we need it. We’ve also seen them personally attack Albertans who dare stand up to them.

We can’t let them get away with that. Our government works for us, and they are not our masters.

Some people in my travels have argued that while the UCP might struggle on the social front, that’s because their focus is jobs and affordability. But if it were really about jobs wouldn’t they invest in education and public services? Wouldn’t they make it easier for working families to access public services and to maintain a quality of life conducive to happy, healthy, and productive working conditions? Wouldn’t they would promote a flourishing of diversity and democracy, not restrict it.

If it were truly about jobs and the economy, they would. But for the UCP, it’s all about control.

And that’s why they despise us at PIA. That’s why they despise unions. That’s why they despise harm reduction workers, artists, migrant alliances, teachers, nurses and doctors too. Hell, they even despise the raging grannies.

Yes, our economy requires urgent attention, but it needs to be focused on Albertans. We need continued diversification, more investment in post-secondary education not less, and a quality of life that includes a strong CPP and retirement security.

The economy requires people to be at its center. We have a province rich in renewable and sustainable resources, and we can partner, truly partner, with Indigenous and Métis knowledge keepers to build prosperity that can last. We have a province full of bright, imaginative, and strong people – diverse in culture and ability – and we can create opportunities for every last one of us.

The public interest demands we become more engaged, more thoughtful, more generous, more compassionate, and, yes, more brave.

This year, we will rise up and create the alternative out of our shared resistance. That’s a given.

Because as much as 2025 may have bent us, we did not break.

Take care of eachother out there and travel well. See you in 2026.

“When it comes to coal mining, people do not want to see mountaintop removal,” she said. “People do not want to see strip mining.

“They’re concerned that when you do that, it exposes the rock face to when it rains and selenium gets into the water system -- so we’ve put a policy into place.

“You can’t do these things,” she said. “You can’t do open pit mining and you can’t do strip mining -- but if you can find techniques that allow you to do new underground mining, then we’re going to be open to approving those projects.”

-Danielle Smith

Maybe she was confused. Maybe she doesn’t understand technical processes, just like she didn’t understand the very real risk of selenium and other contaminants entering the water supply downstream of Northback’s plan to re-open a massive coal-mining operation.

Or maybe she just didn’t mind lying to hundreds of folks in Fort Macleod at her coal townhall this past June.

(Proposed terms of reference Public Notice submitted on November 5th, 2025 to Alberta Environment)

Any way you want to look at it, the fact is Northback’s Grassy Mountain coal mine will be an open pit mine, even though Smith promised Albertans it won’t be.

Here’s Northback, in their own words, in their proposed Terms of Reference, filed on November 5th, 2025:

”The Project will involve the construction and operation of an open pit metallurgical coal mine. Infrastructure associated with the Project will include mine pit areas, rock disposal areas, a coal processing plant, an access road and conveyor, rail load-out facility, stockpile pads, water treatment plant, and associated water management systems.”

-Northback proposed terms of reference, submitted as a Public Notice on November 5, 2025

How big are we talking here, Northback? Well, in their submission to the Alberta Energy Regulator the total “footprint” will be about 2,000 hectares within an overall project area of more than 6,000 hectares.

That means that the area will get a giant scar the size of Toronto Pearson Airport if the Aussie billionaire and one of the world’s richest humans, Gina Rhineheart, gets her way.

In 2021, the federal and provincial governments and the Alberta Energy Regulator rejected the proposal to strip mine this area.

So, what did Danielle Smith and Brian Jean do? They completely rewrote the rules to allow for so-called “advanced” projects to proceed despite the very well-document risks to human health, water, trees, soil, wildlife and the future sustainability of these areas and their economy.

For those interested in a primer, I highly recommend revisiting the Alberta Wildnerness Association’s submission to the Alberta Energy Regulator in 2023.

As with all the things I try to do, I like to end on an active note. If hope is a moral imperative, it’s got to run on something, and for me it runs on action and movement.

So, head on over to Corb Lund’s efforts on his Facebook page and keep up to date on next steps to say “NO” to new coal mining in the province.

Stay safe, healthy and awake.

The mood in Winnipeg, and across the prairies was tense, to put it as mildly as possible. Miserable of most is more accurate: A devastating war, a global pandemic, rampant poverty and no signs of improvement. In addition to material conditions, a widening and very apparent gap between those few who were benefitting from the chaos and upheaval and the majority of people being left behind.

So, with all the conversation in the air, from AFL President Gil McGowan to former PC Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk, about the potential for a general strike, it’s worthwhile to start talking about:

“Who started Canada’s last general strike?”

These moments always place pressure on leaders in our movements. It’s inevitable and it’s challenging, but there is hope for broad-based movement building here, and real material and at-scale action, where every day Albertans civil society, and labour unions come together to build power organically.

And 1919 is instructive for us.

The last general strike started and was built and executed by workers and families and supporters of workers. It began in earnest when telephone operators (90% women) began organizing and ultimately did not arrive at work at 7am on May 15th.

This escalating election came on the heels of Winnipeg’s building and metal workers went on strike for better pay two weeks prior on May 1st.

And the general action continued to gain strength when the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council appealed to all affiliate members to withdraw their labour, culminating in more than 30,000 workers striking at the same time for common goals and shared interests.

It began for so many reasons, as a result of thousands of organizing conversations among rank-and-file union members and grassroots workers and organizers.

And those 500 telephone operators? The ones referred to at the time as “Hello Girls” and paid bottom dollar wages to keep a new and critical service connected for Manitobans?

The ones who were the first to answer the call at 7am on May 15th?

And they weren’t even unionized at the time!

They changed the trajectory of that strike and the shape of the labour movement in Winnipeg and Canada, forever.

As a side note, I really have to say the strike coordinators also taught us how important feeding each other is. As someone who loves a good picket line soup, it’s incredible thinking about how the Women’s Labour League coordinated 3 free meals a day for thousands of strikers, each and every day. Truly amazing.

So what does this moment call for?

For me it means showing up every day and following the organic leadership of workers and activists and civil society. It means being flexible and fluid, and bolstering support where support is needed.

Tomorrow, that means attending a rally at NAIT in Edmonton where 100 academic staff are holding a rally to raise attention to the UCP government’s underhanded approach to their bargaining. I hope to see you there, and everywhere this moment’s ‘telephone operators’ decide to take up the call.

Solidarity forever. Fascism never.

“Strike - en masse.”

This is a snippet of a conversation I had this morning with someone whose opinion on labour relations might be worth more than anyone else’s in Canada. And I’m not only referring to what they bill out at.

(“Danielle Smith invokes the notwithstanding clause to win argument with spouse”, The Beaverton.)

(Rally at the Legislature for education support staff, October 24, 2024.)

In a democratic society, the right to strike is sacred. To me it represents the human rights and fundamental freedom of association and assembly—both of which are explicitly protected charter rights in Canada. These rights are also deeply connected to my personal belief in freedom of speech or expression, and the right to due process under the law.

In a word: if the right to strike is taken away, then so much else is taken too.

That is why many advocates and workers are thinking aloud about whether Danielle Smith will again expose herself as the true Authoritarian of Alberta as the legislature resumes in earnest on October 27th.

To me the scenario seems very likely. Teachers have been pushed to the brink. They are fighting for the future of public education and for the future of democracy in Alberta, and both sides seem very dug in.

Yesterday, the government desperately tried to manipulate teachers back to the bargaining table with enhanced mediation that would have required a return to work before an agreement was reached.

Of course, that’s not how any of this works, but Danielle Smith doesn’t care. This is her strike and she acts as if she believes she is above the law.

That’s why I fear the notwithstanding clause is likely the first thing we’ll see in the fall siting of the legislature after the speech from the throne. Rather than look at the ailing public education system and follow the example of other provinces who have begun to address class sizes and classroom complexity in earnest, Smith has cynically attacked teachers, the profession, and advocates who support preserving and strengthening our public education system.

(AFL President Gil McGowan and Secretary-Treasurer Cori Longo stand with CUPE education workers in 2024.)

There are about 450,000 unionized workers in Alberta from every single sector of the economy. Alberta’s public sector has 249,000 unionized workers, ranging from healthcare, K-12 education, post-secondary, and all other government services.

If Danielle Smith takes away the right to strike from teachers during this current dispute, she will be attacking the right to strike of about a half a million other unionized workers. She will also be indirectly threatening the right to strike of millions of unionized workers across the country.

She will also be signalling that she is willing to ignore the Canadian Charter or Rights and Freedoms of any Albertans if they get in the way of her agenda to dismantle, defund, and destroy public institutions, public services, and democratic rights.

If that gives you a chill, you’re not alone.

(Dowloadable digital copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.)

In 2015, the right to strike was etched right into the bones of the Canadian shield by the Supreme Court of Canada.

This came about thanks to the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL). (Shout out to past President Larry Hubich for his brave leadership in this regard.)

Now, I’m not a lawyer, it’s been a few years since I read the decision, and I fundamentally believe that there’s a dynamic conversation between democratic expression, legislation, and decisions from on high. In my view, the right to assemble and act collectively always exists, but laws and courts ink the book, enshrining those natural rights and laws. The true poets and writers are the workers.

With apologies to all the comic book inkers out there. I know you’re more than tracers. Lawyers and judges, too. You’re poets in your own way!

Anyway, sorry, the right to strike…

This year, Saskatchewan labour celebrated “the big win”. In the mid 2000s, another faux-populist, petro-bully government decided to write a law that unilaterally took the right to strike away from thousands of Saskatchewan workers through the so-called The Public Service Essential Service Act.

Although the original trial judge agreed with the workers and the SFL, basically ruling that the law infringed on fundamental rights protected Charter, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal allowed an appeal to the Government of Saskatchewan saying that the original ruling was not warranted.

Ultimately, however, at the Supreme Court of Canada, Justice Abella wrote a majority decision (5-2), with such sweet, sweet clarity, that gave all workers in Canada “the big win”:

[96] Given the breadth of essential services that the employer is entitled to designate unilaterally without an independent review process, and the absence of an adequate, impartial and effective alternative mechanism for resolving collective bargaining impasses, there can be little doubt that the trial judge was right to conclude that the scheme was not minimally impairing. Quite simply, it impairs the s. 2(d) rights of designated employees much more widely and deeply than is necessary to achieve its objective of ensuring the continued delivery of essential services.

[97] The Public Service Essential Services Act is therefore unconstitutional.

As a result of this decision, provinces and territories were obliged to rewrite much of their workplace legislation to include rules and processes for essential services agreements, which require employers and employees to work together to ensure a base level provision of essential public services in the event of a labour dispute.

In Alberta, this work was masterfully undertaken by Andy Sims, who worked painstakingly and delicately to derive a system that was acceptable to all parties: the employer, the employees, and the public.

The agreements that arise from this new system make it crystal clear that critical, life-and-death services will operate sufficiently, if more minimally, in the event of a strike or lockout.

Many of my friends will groan reading this, especially those who have ever had to work on a more complex essential services agreement, but labour relations can be sticky work. After all, lives and livelihoods are at stake.

So, if Smith takes our court-tested, Charter-protected rights away in a little over a week, what do we do?

The question hangs in the still, cool autumn air like an uncertain whisper.

After all an attack on one is an attack on all…right?

(Smith, Trump, and O’Leary in Florida — the leading American jurisdiction of education privatization)

Much has been said about the current moment in Alberta where 51,000 teachers have been on strike for the past week. The UCP government says they want to invest in schools, complex classrooms and reasonable salary increases for teachers. The ATA says the same. Twice now, teachers have rejected offers from the UCP government via the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA), the corporation that represents all Alberta school boards in the public, separate and francophone school divisions.

What’s really happening here?

If both sides want a deal, and both sides say they want to address the same issues to maintain and strengthen public education, then why is there a province-wide strike and lockout?

The answer is Danielle Smith. This is Danielle Smith’s strike, and she’s wanted it for years.

Defunding public education. Announcing school builds but never breaking ground. Stopping all reporting on class sizes in schools. Siphoning billions of dollars to private schools since 2019. Building private schools for the first time in Alberta’s history. De-professionalizing teaching. Maintaining the lowest per student funding for public education in the country. Banning books in public schools and eroding trust in teachers and education staff. A multi-million dollar ad campaign to bargain in bad faith via the public.

Her new mandate letter to Nicolaides (a minister with no authority whatsoever in a parliamentary sense) is a step-by-step directive to control public education as she ends it:.

• Establishing policies for preserving choice for children and youth in schools.

• Bringing forward amendments to the Education Act on key areas including teacher

discipline processes and trustee accountability.

• Fast tracking more school projects through the Schools Now program by committing $8.6

billion to create over 200,000 new and updated student spaces across Alberta over the

next 7 years.

• Establishing standards for school authorities to implement policies related to school literary materials that include a publicly accessible list of materials.

Smith’s authoritarian-libertarian ideology leads her to believe that the current chaos and disruption will further her “Free Alberta” agenda, making Albertans and our democratic institutions more susceptible to the privatization of social assets and services. Absent the promise and reproduction of an educated populace capable of working together to build a future for the common good of all, Danielle Smith and her supporters will have a much easier time implementing their anti-democratic agenda.

If the agenda is so nefarious, then why has it fallen to teachers now, and education assistants earlier this year to fight for public education? Why hasn’t the line been drawn before this?

(Smith pictured in Vulcan, Alberta, attempting a “live long and prosper” salute. Ironically for Smith, Vulcans of the Star Trek universe believe in universal, high quality education.)

I think it’s for two main reasons. First, Smith will say anything to avoid direct responsibility and engagement. She is a polished and hardened political mercenary with decades of experience obfuscating her true agenda by using the language of the public interest to attempt to convince Albertans her intentions are good. There’s no doubt she is a talented ideologue. Many former progressive conservatives still support her, hanging on her words instead of her actions and stated agenda. I don’t blame them. The second reason is connected to the first: the state of political discourse in North America since Trump and in the era of the swamp of Meta, AI, and other tech giants has made it more and more challenging to separate reality from the slop of simulacra.

Over the years Smith has exploited Albertans over and over again. But now that she has power, she is actively attacking them.

In 2012, she stood with the AISH community decrying PC cuts, and promised to increase AISH payments.. That same year before the election, she attended ATA forums touting the value of education and teachers, and respecting school board autonomy. In 2013, she attended AUPE rallies in Red Deer to save Michener and called out the PCs for “breaking their promise” to residents and families.

During the most recent election, she promised not to privatize healthcare. Now we have a completely disastrous new healthcare reorganization, mass privatization, and, allegedly, the largest political scandal in Alberta’s history unfolding before our eyes. She touts partnerships with First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities, but wants to open our Eastern Slopes up to Australian billionaire’s mines, putting Niitsitapi lands and water at risk and ignoring their legal and moral positions.

She is the worst kind of political grifter. It’s not just that she’ll show up for the rally for the photo op and then disappear when the fight gets hard. It’s that she’ll get the photo, and then sell them out. Every single time.

In education, she is no different. Smith has been angling for a disruption in education for years. Why? Because she wants public education to fail so that her friends and insiders can profit, and her authoritarian-libertarian agenda can flourish.

Smith’s favourite book is Atlas Shrugged. Just weeks ago, she openly mused that it should be mandatory reading in Alberta’s education system. To me, it’s not controversial because it includes “sexually explicit content” as defined by the original UCP ministerial order. No, it’s controversial and downright reprehensible because of its insipid, anti-social ideology.

Rand wanted to end public education and make private education mandatory, leaving education in the hands of private interests whose primary goal was private profit.

Smith, like her mentor, also wants to end public education. In 2018, she penned an article, now widely shared, which included this Randian idea:

“Maybe every independent school needs to be fully funded and we need to phase out every government-run, union-controlled public school more interested in indoctrinating students than teaching them critical thinking skills. We are spending billions of dollars to graduate students that have no capacity to think. When are public schools going to be held accountable for that?”

Smith parrots Rand to the letter. In Smith’s mind, private monopolies with no democratic standards, should rule education and control what reaches children and their developing minds.

And, so, this strike is a perfect opportunity for her to further her Randian dream of market, profit-controlled education where there are no standards, where curriculum is written by the highest bidder, teachers are deprofessionalized, and poorer families don’t have access to education at all.

Why is she like this? I don’t have the fortitude to dwell on the question. What I do know is that her agenda is hastened by this strike.

Within hours of the strike action, the government announced a suite of measures, revealed a flashy website with instructions for parents to “unenroll” their children from public school,, and a multi-million dollar advertising campaign implying that teachers are in it for themselves.

Smith has been planning for this strike for months, and for this dismantling of public education for years.

It’s a tragic story, really. After all, Smith’s education is the product of fine Calgary schools with a proud history of high quality education:: Queen’s Park and Bishop Carroll, which are both part of the publicly-funded, publicly-delivered education system. She even decided to serve on the Calgary School Board, though the quality of her time there has been thoroughly examined by many commentators.

(Smith, representing Ward 6 and 7 for the Calgary School Board pictured in 1998)

Now, teachers, supportive parents, families, business owners and Albertans are in a fight for a future where high-quality, accessible, and public education is on the line.

For my part, I am spending every spare moment I have, at work and at home, to talk to my daughter, my friends, neighbours and colleagues about what’s at stake.

Because where this is all headed, if Smith has her way, is the way of Florida, where the Governor there has siphoned 4 Billion dollars in vouchers to private schools, starving the public system and making education less accessible for working families, or Galt’s Gulch where misled and desperate citizens are led to believe billionaires will save them..

Despite Smith saying she wants a deal, what she’s really after is the complete end to public education in Alberta. The only thing stopping her right now is teachers, education staff, families, students, and civically-minded Albertans.

The stakes are too high to sit out this test.

(2022 at Edmonton’s “Nerd Nite” talking about advocacy…little did I know!)

1. This morning I was speaking with a close friend and ally…

“I am scared.”

This is someone I trust with all the expressions of my often duelling parts. The generous and the reactive parts. The confused and assured. Tired and energized. Scattered and focused. Defeated and hopeful.

Their fear is our fear in this moment.

Over the past several days, I have resisted the impulse to react with a take. The world has enough takes to cook a small planet, and many of the more thoughtful ones already gesture toward how I think about political violence; the alacrity of reactionary politics; the absence of deep analysis of right-wing factions and their shifting borderlines; and the naive desire for comprehensive understanding of events that feel earth-shattering this week, but will all but disappear by the next.

The only soft touch I feel compelled to try to make within this context comes in the form of an invitation to political vulnerability.

I spend most of my time thinking about strategies to organize for political, social and community change.

The presumptive mode is engagement in the intersecting and competing social, legal, political, and social planes. What is our theory of change? What resources do we have? Who are our allies? What are they willing to contribute? How might we use inspiring narratives to ignite more emergent energy than seems available at first glance?

Most of this work takes for granted a whole, rational, regulated subject who is, or will be committed to a common end if given the requisite information. Of course, it also presupposes detractors and neutral actors, but fundamentally it can be very, very two-dimensional.

And, so, why am I getting so many messages this week from activists who are confused? Why is my close friend and ally so scared? Why am I so unsure how to respond to issues so obviously connected to advocacy, democracy, and movement building?

Part of what is true is that I am scared, too. I am scared that political leaders in Canada lack the resources and capacity to respond to this current political moment with humanity. Instead, what we are seeing from politicians and individuals with a platform is reactionary and seemingly intended to entrench division and engender rage and frustration. Where does that energy go, ultimately?

I am afraid to imagine the many possible ways things can go…

Over ten years ago now, our political ally and friend, Yanis Varoufakis articulated his sense that things in Europe would likely get worse rather than better (Apologies to Yanis for the gross oversimplification). Reactionary politics have more resonant “answers” as democracy is strangled by the billionaire class and their democratically elected helpers. It is easier to blame the other than to become more hospitable and more vulnerable to your neighbour, your fellow worker and human. We have seen this occur at the political level in many states recently.

I don’t know how hold this contradiction, between the need for justice and fervently held boundaries on the one hand, and the need to recognize the obvious need to diffuse the violent energy within ourselves and political expressions.

2. I have found myself the target of unwanted online political attention in the past, as I know many of us have.

Once it was for attending an anti-fascist rally in St. Albert in response to masked individuals brandishing anti-immigrant signs with very provocative messaging. It put my family at potential risk. It was scary and for weeks I was worried that some upset person would act out of delusion, fear, and desperation and that one of my loved ones would be harmed…

Once it was for supporting affordable housing in a mature neighbourhood in Edmonton. I was accused of attempting to fight seniors (this is not true, I love older persons. haha). And I was also accused of being a junkie. The evidence offered was a photo taken of me sitting cross-legged on a patch of grass across from the affordable housing complex. To them, I must have been using a substance because I was sitting there not “doing” anything. What I was doing was trying to ground my energy and mediate after a very awful interaction...

Once it was for questioning the impact of the Alberta government’s Ministerial Order regarding reading materials in public schools, which led to individuals online suggesting I want to distribute pornography to children. One of these individuals happens to be the current Executive Director to the Premier of Alberta. This reaction puts me, my family, and my community at risk. Not only are the responses defamatory, but they can potentially incite expressions of physical violence…

I always thought that I was above being shouted down. In these times, we learn that it is important and necessary for those who have voice and relative safety (ie. privilege) to use that positionality to defend, distract, champion, and hold space. Now? I’m not so sure.

I am weary and confused. I don’t agree with celebrating public executions. Nor do I agree with the post-religious canonization of any individual, and certainly not someone who questioned the validity of civil rights, equity, universal human rights, and anti-racist futures.

All I know today is that my nervous system is shattered. I haven’t really slept in days. And I know that I can’t get away from this struggling utopianism that is deeply rooted in me.

I keep having wispy ideas of hosting anti-debates on campuses. Conversations that would demand vulnerability, humanity and commitment from all participants. A theatre with no audience. A community with no outside. A conversation I really can’t imagine fully in my little activist brain, let alone actually existing in the real world.

This makes me feel very sad and fills my heart with a heaviness that swells and crashes over me.

3. “People think that dealing with emotions is secondary to activism and politics.”

My friend and ally’s poignant observation. I know this is true for me. I prepare key messages for interviews. I refine strategic plans, priority documents, campaign plans and media buys. I pretend to know what the fuck I’m doing. But, I don’t. My body is shattered, I’m scared about my more vulnerable loved ones and friends who are already the targets of confused rage and fearful hate.

We have climate grief circles within climate justice and environmentalist spaces. I have been to political retreats where elected representatives have hosted optional evening sessions for people who wish to discuss the more psychologically challenging aspects of their role. I have held space for countless conversations with volunteers in our movement at Public Interest Alberta about the toll it takes to engage in social movementism.

But, to me, (and perhaps I’m doing it wrong) all these interventions feel generally hived off from the expression of activism itself. The space for humane support happens after the zoom call. The introductions and check-ins at the beginning of the movement call often feel formulaic. And being vulnerable feels like a risk that one must calculate. Even in so-called “safer spaces”.

But, how can we be more politically and personally vulnerable in this moment? Is the way out, actually, actually in?

In these moments, I find comfort in return. So, I am returning to texts, phrases, words, and books that have guided me to my current reality. It is cliche, but I return to French continental philosophy, which to me invites vulnerability and beautiful potential. From Anne Dufourmanatelle’s invitation to Jacques Derrida in his Of Hospitality (Stanford University Press, 200)…

Name it, name it, name it. And call things by their real names. Difference, strangers, anxiety, fear. Name it.

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

-Please Call Me By My True Names, Thay

4. An invitation for today…

Today, my wish for all of us is a little more peace than you believe you can access. And moments of clarity where generosity of spirit and humanity overrides our baser instincts to escalate.

And, if anyone has energy or ideas further to how we might engage, responsibly, in vulnerability in our politics, please leave a comment.

Thank you for engaging and reading.

(Photo by David Bloom PHOTO BY DAVID BLOOM /Postmedia)

Books are being stripped from school libraries. Alberta’s healthcare and education workforces are on the brink. Kids are being taught curriculum straight from the MAGA minds south of the border.

Margaret Atwood’s shortest, but arguably most timely and politically powerful, dystopian work bounces down the halls of the fake astral plane on Meta.

The air quality is off the charts bad, and the particles hanging in the air burn eyes and coat skin – Who knows which fires they’re from? Would it make a difference at this point?

It makes me wonder whether we need any more fiction? Maybe that’s Smith’s dark genius, really. She’s written the perfect Canadian dystopian thriller, and we don’t need to fantasize about what might happen because it’s already here.

She’s written it on the backs of workers, on the hearts of disabled Albertans, on the bodies of trans Albertans,

Public sector workers and workers in energy and construction, all feeling the impacts of an economy lurching from uncertainty.

Teachers, nurses, allied healthcare workers, minimum wage earners, people experiencing homelessness, and Albertans struggling with substance use. All of us bear the marks of her crass but powerful story etched into our collective experience as pain, anger, frustration, and resistance…

Yes, even resistance. Because there are promising flickers of heat and light – yes, seriously. These flickers are more frequent lately and remind me of those tense moments before you know your campfire doesn’t need your watchful eye any longer, but will continue to grow without too much concern beside the occasional poking and shaping.

I truly believe that Smith’s days as Premier are numbered. There are more grievances and more factions within her so-called base to adequately discipline and/or appease. The healthcare scandal, while less frequently referred to in mainstream media, continues to close in on Danielle Smith’s closest allies and confidantes. The separatist narrative and agenda is falling flat just like her book ban.

And on this Labour Day 2025, what’s all the more powerful is the fact that teachers are expressing their power as workers, and the public is with them. I have had conversations with teachers, EAs, support staff, administrators, school board candidates, and Albertans from all walks of life and I always ask them what they think about the way the government is treating teachers. You know what the number one response I get is? Teachers deserve respect, and they’re not getting it. They’re asking for enough, and they should get enough.

Finance Minister Horner’s desperate bravado, as if he were playing in some sort of anti-union fantasy, is embarrassing for him. These are not greedy union bosses (as if that offensive trope were ever real), these are teachers, who are also parents, who are also Albertans, who are also Canadians. That’s the thing about attacking groups that you think are isolated and vulnerable. As it turns out, community and connections unite us, and we know how to band together.

That is exactly what’s happening this Labour Day, and beyond. And while as Margaret Atwood recently said it best: this government thinks we are “stupid babies”; we are not. We are advocates. We are workers. We are Albertans. We are Canadians.

And we are going to bring this government down.

Where one burns books, one will soon burn people.

-Heinrich Heine, 1821

Banning books makes you look stupid and it will make you stupid.

-me, 2025

Banning books always gets the most attention, and rightfully so. Taking books away from people because someone in power says they’re immoral or dangerous is deeply upsetting and exposes their true desire to coerce, control and limit our very creative faculties.

The American Library Association (ALA) does incredible work documenting the trends in book challenges in the U.S. and what they’re showing from 2024 is unsurprising but deeply disturbing…organized groups, including elected officials, school boards, and administrators are now leading the charge as the biggest perpetrators of book bans. In fact, only 16% per cent were brought forward directly by parents. 

Sound familiar? 

Sure, Danielle Smith’s  education minister is saying the original complaint about four books in Alberta schools came to Nicolaides from an astro-turf “parent group”, but the actual challenge to school boards in Alberta came DIRECTLY from a provincial Ministerial Order to ban books with sexually explicit content. Think about that for a second, our own provincial government is demanding book bans from our school boards interfering in affairs outside their jurisdiction, running roughshod over the professional autonomy of teachers, dictating what our kids can access, in consultation with teacher librarians and teachers…what is this if not creeping authoritarianism? I know the “F” word makes us squeamish, but if it walks like a duck...

With Danielle Smith’s botched book ban making international headlines and evoking the righteous wrath of none other than the Canadian oracle herself, Margaret Atwood, I thought I’d turn my attention to my top five biggest  botched “book” bans of all time. Because though there have been many bans over the years, there are also wonderful examples of resistance, creativity, and humour that saved many works.

If you have any examples that you think should crack this top five list, let me know! Oh, and keep reading! The UCP government hates that shit.

5. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Witches, extremists, and strong women…

“You must be a great sorceress.”

Let’s face it, most children know Wicked instead of The Wizard of Oz by now and when parents share the 1939 classic, it’s as much for the olds as it is for the littles. But the original novel’s history is tied up with a fascinating case of a vicious troupe of christian fundamentalists’s failure in the courts.

But first, let’s discuss the arguments against the book over time. They’re darkly funny, and show that it’s always, always oppressive and reactionary forces who are afraid of others getting rights they enjoy that prompts moral panic. Even prior to 1986, the book was attacked and removed from shelves for “depicting women in strong leadership roles.” The fucking horror! Apparently, this was an un-Christian concept and ministers continued to use this line of attack on the novel across America in the 1950s and 1960s.

The argument by the Tennessee fundies is even…better? They went theological and philosophical on the book! …and they unloaded the full-fundy arsenal: “occultism, secular humanism, evolution, disobedience to parents, pacifism, and feminism” were all clearly on display in the book! All of it! Even feminism…

But the funniest part of their case was the argument that the book was not theologically sound due to the fact that witches (real ones!) are all bad, ergo it was “theologically impossible” for Glinda to exist. They really hated, HATED Glinda...because she was an independent woman and didn’t need a man (ie. God) for her salvation. 

Well, despite their high-faluting theological logic, the presiding federal judge wasn’t having it. He said parents could opt-out their kids of lessons that had strong women witches, or strong women in general for that matter, and promptly told them to get lost. To the parents' credit, they weren’t giving up. They weren’t satisfied that OTHER people’s kids would still be exposed to feminism and humanism, so they applied to the U.S. Supreme Court for the case to be heard, and the court said, “naw, we’re good” and sent them packing too.

Fast forward to 2024..and we now have Wicked, the highest grossing musical film adaption of all time. And not only is the good witch “good”, but Elphaba, the “wicked” witch, is fully human, too. Fuck, now society is telling us all witches are legitimate and worthy of love!

I love this example for how strong women make extremists go nuts. The overlap between what’s happening in Alberta today and Tennessee in 1986 is not lost on me, and I know it’s not lost on you. Thankfully, in this case, the courts did their job to blunt the pitchforks of Tennessee.

4. The Nazi Book Burnings of 1933

An absolute massacre and tragic assault on ideas, people and humanity. In May of 1933, Nazi university students held ritual book burnings across the country that included the now infamous feuerespruche “fire oath”. Different versions were circulated to member groups. Here’s one that was published in Badische Press: 

1. Against class struggle and materialism,For national community [Volksgemeinschaft] and an ideal way of life,I consign to the flames the writings of Marx and Kautsky.

2. Against decadence and moral decay,For discipline and decency in family and state,I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Gläser, and Erich Kästner.

3. Against ideological unscrupulousness and political betrayal,For devotion to nation [Volk] and state,I consign to the flames the writings of Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster.

4. Against soul-shredding overvaluation of base human instincts,For the nobility of the human soul,I consign to the flames the writings of Sigmund Freud.

5. Against the falsification of our history and disparagement of its great figures,For reverence for our past,I consign to the flames the writings of Emil Ludwig and Werner Hegemann.

6. Against journalism that is alien to the nation because of its democratic-Jewish character,For responsible collaboration on the work of national construction,I consign to the flames the writings of Theodor Wolff and Georg Bernhard.

7. Against literary betrayal of the soldiers of the World War,For the education of the nation in the spirit of battle readiness,I consign to the flames the writings of Erich Maria Remarque.

8. Against the arrogant corruption of the German language,For the fostering of the most precious assets of our nation,I consign to the flames the writings of Alfred Kerr.

9. Against impudence and presumption,For respect and reverence for the immortal German national spirit,I consign to the flames the writings of Tucholsky and Ossietzky.

Pretty grim stuff. And I’ll give you one guess what many of these authors had in common. HINT: it’s not that they were attacking the “national spirit” of the fatherland…

Anyway, it’s a small silver lining in the almost complete horror of this moment, but almost exactly one year after the burning in Berlin’s Opera Square, members at the Brooklyn Jewish Center announced their library of Nazi-banned books in The Brooklyn Jewish Center Review:

In the Center’s own words, the library was intended to “serve the cause of intellect and literary freedom; emphasize man's duty to protect honest fame; help expose the vicious doctrines and acts of the Nazi Government; and make available the banned books in a readily accessible collection.”

By that fall, the Library was rolling with Einstein, Theodore Dreiser, and Upton Sinclair on the Board and as champions of the little library of resistance. By 1945, the library had hundreds of Nazi-banned titles all available to the public in a dedicated section of the Brooklyn Jewish Center Library. 

The American Library of Nazi-banned books in Brooklyn served as an example of creativity, determination and audacity. It also gives ideas to those interested in preservation and resistance.

Hmmm…What about tiny libraries in your neighbourhood? Book reading challenges? Non-profit libraries in Alberta? All you need is a couple shelves and a few good books…

3. And Tango Makes Three

This ridiculously adorable children’s book just celebrated its 20th anniversary, and despite endless challenges over the years, it remains a top-seller. And, I mean c’mon! Central Park Zoo, Penguins, and a healthy baby penguin raised by two loving adults. What could be more adorable than that!?

Well, because it featured a real-life “non-traditional” family (lol!), it quickly became THE MOST challenged book in America in 2010 (nobody tell Danielle Smith about it, please), and sat near the top of the most banned book lists in the first two decades of the century. 

Why? Because two male penguins decided to sit on the same rock…in an alternating series of shifts…sharing labour…and pretending that a rock was an egg. Apparently, this real world example of zoological behaviour  is grooming in American christo-fascist circles. Because it depicts queer joy, healthy parenting and a NON-FICTIONAL ACCOUNT of pro-social behaviour at the Central Park Zoo. 

For those who haven’t heard of this beloved story of healthy relationships, bonding, and parenting, it’s a story about two REAL male penguins who decided to raise a real chick together. After Roy and Silo (how fuckin’ cute is that?) were observed trying to hatch a rock, they were given their own egg, which subsequently hatched. The chick “Tango” was successfully raised by the two mature penguins.

Despite being subject to several bans since its publication in 2005, the book continues to be a best seller. It has won numerous prestigious literary award. 

But the most important of all, hands down and absolutely? That award came a couple years after the book was published when 5th graders from NYC gave the Living the Dream Award. The students spent the year talking about what book best carried the spirit of MLK Jr.’s life and philosophy.

Kids know what love and joy is all about and they know what MLK Jr. was all about. And they gave the MLK Jr. award to a book about a couple of gay penguins from NYC who had their dreams come true. Fuck, I love literature. 

2. Howl and the backfiring obscenity trial 

Beat Poets Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.  via Wikimedia Commons

“The asshole is holy!” is an admittedly provocative line from Alan Ginsberg’s Howl that likely sent zealous shockwaves through Chester MacPhee’s entire being prompting him on his quixotic mission to stop obscenity from entering San Francisco in the late 50’s. It makes me wonder whether he’d been to the city before… but in any event, on March 25, 1957, U.S. Customs seized more than 500 copies of Howl and Other Poems as they were coming into San Francisco. 

Fast forward to the spectacle of the Howl trial itself, and it became very clear, very quickly that while it was acknowledged that Howl included idioms, phrases, descriptions, and vignettes that exposed the reality of modern America, just like a lint roller used to clean under your couch, it was not the substance of the masterpiece and it was not obscene. Instead, the poem explored the depths of modern America, and for any thinking person, it was unquestionably a modern masterpiece.

Ultimately, MacPhee’s theft of Howl and Other Poems was a botched attempt at censorship. The judge’s verdict reinforced freedom of expression and even recognized the particular literary significance of Howl, saying that if it were censored even in part that the integrity of the work would be compromised.  

The trial was a monumental backfire on all the “MacPhees” of America (with apologies to that most noble of Scottish clan of the real MacPhees of the Hebrides). Not only did it make Howl incredibly famous as an avatar for free expression, the decision was referenced in cases that ultimately led to the American publication of previously banned books like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover. 

Perhaps more importantly, the trial marked a shift in attitudes toward censorship more broadly. Sure, Ginsberg associating a certain lesser-loved orifice with the divine rather than the profane may not be for everyone, but if God doesn’t make mistakes, then some random zealot in the customs office shouldn’t be stealing books. 

From the trial, many Americans engaged in the question of art and expression in a new light, and a cultural revolution had the floodgates opened wide!

1. Banning entire fucking langauges!

What do you do when you encounter a culture steeped in oral tradition without too many books to ban? You ban an entire fucking language! The British crown are the original colonizers, and they perfected their strategies and tactics in Scotland and Ireland and exported them to turtle island.

So, while in Scotland there was no single, total ban on Gaelic, there have been centuries of suppression via legislation, policies, and entire pogroms and massive relocations of communities to stamp out the culture. Why didn’t they do it with books? Well, my theory is because the Scots, those loveable and glorious glen dwellers, LOVED to tell stories aloud. Scholars would train in laws, stories, culture and spirituality for decades to MEMORIZE entire canons of sacred works of art. 

Over the centuries, the people in Scotland developed intricate transmissions to weave story, language, and nature together in seasonal cycles, daily rituals, and epochal tectonic shifts. 

In an oral-based culture, you can’t kill ideas if you can’t kill the language, so what did the Crown tried to kill the entire language. Sound familiar, Canada? 

After the battle of Culloden the government intensified its efforts to suppress Gaelic being spoken in new crown towns (example: Newtonmore) that were built as part of the Highland Clearnances. 

And then in 1872, the so-called Education Act came into force to strangle the Gaelic language. Students were physically and emotionally punished for speaking Gaelic and all teaching was conducted in the language of the foreign colonizer. Whereas at the beginning of the 18th century about 30% of the population spoke Gaelic, by 1981 the Scottish census shows there were no monolingual Gaelic speakers living in Scotland and only 1.6% of the population that could speak both Gaelic and English. Chilling.

The reason I really wanted to talk about Gaelic and killing language in the context of killing books is because it’s all deeply connected to authoritarianism, colonialism, and extractivism. 

Book bans are never about protecting young children. They are about controlling their thoughts and critical faculties. The most frustrating thing about these people, like Danielle Smith, Rob Anderson and her Nicolaides is that they keep cropping up. No matter how hard they fail throughout history, they just keep cropping up. It’s really quite annoying, truly. Because they’re so humourless and boring…sigh.

But, back to the books…just as books are the living expression of ideas, Gaelic is the living expression of a people. Neither will be silenced. 

Our living history speaks to us.

In 2022, in Scotland the census showed the first increase in percentage of Gaelic speakers in over 130 years since the records were being kept. In Canada? According to Statistics Canada, the number and share of Indigenous language speakers who learned their language as a second language continue to rise. Over one-quarter (27.7%) of Indigenous language speakers in 2021 learned it as their second language, up from 24.8% in 2016.

Sláinte and hay hay!