As part of his ongoing fit of pique against the federal government, Alberta premier Jason Kenney has decided to revive one spectacular bit of political bullshit theatre that some of us had hoped was now dead and buried – the sordid practice of Alberta’s “consultative elections” for senators. The whole notion is unconstitutional, and while the Supreme Court didn’t explicitly rule against the provinces setting up their own “elections” as part of the Senate reference, it was certainly implicitly in there, both in the notion that a consultative “election” creates an expectation of legitimacy, but the logic behind it was also completely blasted during the hearing, when Justice Thomas Cromwell asked if a consultative election is fine, why not a consultative auction? Not to mention that the entire election process in past elections has been little more than the electoral equivalent of a show trial – a sham that resembles electoral democracy but is simply designed to return only candidates from a certain party to then form an illegitimate demand that they be appointed. Kenney’s attempt to say that this gives them “accountability” is ludicrous on its face because they don’t face re-election, so there is no actual accountability that can be exercised. The whole farcical exercise has more in common with the sham elections held in communist countries than it does with the actual electoral practices in the rest of Canada, and the fact that Kenney is looking to resurrect this demented kabuki is just more of his campaign of snake oil and lies whose only point is to keep stoking the irrational anger of Albertans and hoping that it won’t blow up in his face. It inevitably will, however, and the whole country will pay the price for Kenney’s arrogance in believing he can manage the monster he created.

In other news of Kenney’s political bullshit theatre, his piece by Chris Turner dismantles the whole raison d’être of Kenney’s so-called “war room,” by pointing to the literal conspiracy theories that underpin the whole thing, and the mythology that Kenney is trying to spin around why capital has left Alberta’s energy sector. And it’s complete myth, but it gets repeated uncritically constantly, and it goes unchallenged by the media, and yet Kenney is creating this $30 million spin machine to further reinforce this mythology and conspiracy theorism, because again, it feeds the anger of his base, telling them that it’s not the fault of the world price of oil that their fortunes have changed, but rather that it’s the sinister forces of dark foreign money that is really behind it all. Without putting too fine of a point on it, this is the kind of thing that fuels the kinds of populist movements that breed fascists. But Kenney doesn’t care, because he thinks he can control it.

Meanwhile, Kenney has suddenly changed his story about the incident where he handed out earplugs during that debate in the Alberta legislature, and it’s gone from it being “light-hearted morale-boosting” to “one of my MLAs has tinnitus and was being shouted at,” which the video clearly didn’t show, and it’s just one more example of Kenney’s smile-and-lie show that he puts on for media interviews, and you can’t help but feel sorry for the interviewers because trying to disentangle his egregious lies is a Sisyphean task.

Wait what? Kenney's now saying he handed out the earplugs to help with a UCP MLA's tinnitus? That's an… interesting departure from the statement his office gave us yesterday. Here's that entire statement… #ableg #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/3ljXBA7vLz

— Emma Graney 🇦🇺🤷🏻‍♀️🇨🇦 (@EmmaLGraney) June 21, 2019

Good reads:

• Twenty-one bills got royal assent yesterday, but the CBSA oversight bill was not among them.
• Among the private members’ bills that died are one about PTSD support for jurors, as well as the creation of a statutory holiday for Indigenous reconciliation.
• The NEB certified the Trans Mountain expansion project, but will be seeking public input as part of the ongoing regulatory process.
• The PBO evaluated the costs of the new surface combatants and said it’s higher than stated. DND says it’s because his figure includes taxes.
• DND is allowing the F-35 to be showcased in an airshow at a Quebec airbase while no competitors in the bidding process for the new fighter fleet will be there.
• The mandatory alcohol screening is getting a well-deserved Charter challenge.
• A number of MPs who aren’t running again this fall cite both partisanship and their frustration with the rules of the Commons as reasons.
• Here is the behind-the-scenes look at Andrew Scheer’s big environmental “plan” announcement, and how surreal the whole event was.
• Maxime Bernier unveiled his GTA candidates yesterday, including Renata Ford, the widow of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
• Andrew Coyne savages the Conservative environmental “plan,” particularly as it is full of things that Conservatives used to dislike, such as cookies for industry.
• Martin Patriquin calls out the relative silence of the federal party leaders over the adoption of the “secularism” bill in Quebec (particularly that of the NDP).
• Kevin Carmichael points out why the reluctance of our national regulators to adopt new technologies is proving a disadvantage to Canadian entrepreneurs.
• Chantal Hébert enumerates some of the many balls in the air that are being juggled as we hurtle toward the next election.
• Colby Cosh asks some fundamental questions about Elections Canada’s cancelled plan to hire social media influencers, including why they didn’t see the problems.

Odds and ends:

Here is the tale of William Francis Butler, who prevented the kind of mass atrocities against Indigenous people the Americans perpetrated from happening in Canada.

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