Roundup: Danielle Smith will threaten your funding

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Danielle Smith’s Alberta is a place where Smith and her ministers will phone you up and threaten your funding if you have mask or vaccine mandates, it was revealed yesterday. Smith threatened funding for the Arctic Winter Games, and has been phoning film productions to threaten them if they have mandates, because of course she is. It’s an abusive, arbitrary exercise of power that is imposing conditions on these groups or productions that don’t have these obligations in their written agreements, but it’s not like she cares about things like legalities.

It was also revealed that she isn’t moving ahead with her plan to add protection for the unvaccinated in the province’s human rights legislation, and is instead going to focus on her so-called “Sovereignty Act,” but rumour is that it’s going to be something like “Sovereignty Within a United Canada” or some other similar bullshit to make it look like it’s not a full-on separatist movement that will spook investment, not that doing arbitrary things like phoning you up and threatening your funding will make anyone feel like they want to continue doing business in the province. I’m almost surprised that her caucus isn’t revolting already considering the absolute abuse of power on display.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 279:

Ongoing Russian strikes and power disruptions as a result are making it difficult for hospitals in Ukraine to carry out their work, and at times, surgeries are being performed with headlamps and flashlights. The US is expected to announce aid that will help with the restoration of electricity around the country. Meanwhile, 30 settlements in the Kherson region have been shelled 258 times in the past week, and Russia has kept up shelling at Bakhmut and Avdiivka in Donetsk province as they try to make gains there.

https://twitter.com/DavidLametti/status/1597320883441319936

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau visited the James Smith First Nation in Saskatchewan—site of the mass stabbing this summer—and pledged $40 million for a new wellness centre.
  • Mélanie Joly has ordered her department to summon the Russian ambassador over homophobic tweets from the embassy’s Twitter account.
  • Marco Mendicino is calling out Conservative fear-mongering over the assault rifle ban legislation, insisting it’s not about long-guns or hunting rifles.
  • The public inquiry has started its next phase, which is a series of roundtable discussions with legal and constitutional experts.
  • The Indo-Pacific Strategy’s plan to add a third frigate to the Pacific theatre is highlighting the Royal Canadian Navy’s shortage of ships and personnel.
  • Two senior Air Force officers are being charged for failing to stop a group of fighter pilots from assigning an inappropriate call sign to another pilot.
  • Here is an interesting look at the lettuce industry, both in California and the burgeoning vertical farming sector in Canada.
  • A Wisconsin judge wants Enbridge and the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa to come to a compromise around the future of Line 5.
  • Supreme Court of Canada Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin had her formal swearing-in ceremony at the Court, and spoke of inspiring young women to pursue their dreams.
  • Auditor General Karen Hogan appeared at the public accounts committee to drive home the need for Indigenous Services to fix First Nations emergency responses.
  • The Parliamentary Budget Officer was at finance committee to dispute that the government showed fiscal restraint in their fall economic update.
  • BC Premier David Eby announced a plan to open a new medical school in the province to start training the next generation of doctors.
  • Philippe Lagassé discusses the role of executive discretion in our system, as exemplified by the legal interpretation to invoke the Emergencies Act.

Odds and ends:

For Xtra, I profile Senator Kim Pate, Canada’s only openly lesbian senator, and her career of fighting injustice, particularly for women in the prison system.

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One thought on “Roundup: Danielle Smith will threaten your funding”

  1. As former PM Harper once called mature conservatives “old stock,” these aptly named Albertans have been clamoring for decades to have a government and a leader who will as they put it, finally have the “courage” to pander to the mean dictates of this authoritarian right. And so at long last, they have in Danielle Smith their champion who with her populist but misguided stupidity embraces all ignorance and lack of common sense.
    All Albertans are faced a simple choice…kowtow to Ms. Smith’s dictates or lose their funding. Of course they have another path and that is to reject her and her ignorant sycophants in the upcoming election. In the meantime the province of Alberta has achieved its long held wish, they have a moron as premier.

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