On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Danielle Smith and the self-described United Conservative Party are going to war against the Canadian constitution here. Whether they believe that of what they're doing or not.

I am minded of Timothy Snyder's 17th piece of advice from On Tyranny...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-premier-danielle-smith-sovereignty-act-1.6668175

I was inspired by this entry by autopope on his "home" weblog:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2022/04/behind-the-ukraine-war.html

As we were (rightly) advised to not centre western - including Canadian - political concerns in our comments on the Russian governance situation as Charlie understands it right now (his blog, his rules)...I'm going to post such comments here at my "home" blog where they belong:

I see Jason Kenney's government in the province of Alberta desperately trying to make sure Canada as a whole falls into the same governance trap as you describe Russia having fallen into. There's still a chance he might succeed with the help of a federal Conservative regime run by, say, Pierre Pollievre, Candice Bergen (not the American actor, the Canadian politician), Leslyn Lewis, or a few others I can think of. But the federal Conservatives first have to get a leader chosen this fall, and then that leader and whatever team they end up cobbling together has to have any hope of breaking up the confidence-and-supply agreement now in effect between the Liberals (led by Justin Trudeau) and the New Democrats (led by Jagmeet Singh).

I do worry that the Conservatives - or Maxime Bernier's "People's Party" or worse - will try to further "Putinize"/"Trumpify" Canadian society, worse than Harper already did despite his own personal antipathy to Putin.

Opinions from informed Albertans are definitely welcome here.

I see symptoms of no small concern across my own country...

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh connecting the dots between anti-maskers and the far right. Correctly, based on far too many data points.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-anti-mask-far-right-1.6020777

A pro-racism candidate for mayor of Calgary about to get access to the full list of registered-eligible voters for that city now that Naheed Nenshi has announced that he will not be running for another term. He's already issued threats against employees of Alberta Health Services (AHS) across that province, demanding and insisting to be able to legally "dox" them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kevin-j-johnston-dox-calgary-mayor-voter-list-1.6020029

"People's Party" leader Maxime Bernier accused of shooting off his mouth - at the aforementioned Mr. Singh (among others) - in court.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bernier-kinsella-defamation-lawsuit-1.6015385

Check out this item on the issues facing the one Jason Kenney's setting up in Alberta to protect tarsands money from reality.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kenney-energy-war-room-1.5393010

The thing that Mr. Kenney's trying to get us to ignore is that we can't afford to burn anyone's oil to get the energy we need anymore. Not Putinist Russia's, not the Bakken deposits in the northern prairies of the USA, not the Saudis', nor our own in Alberta or off the Newfoundland Island coast...not anyone's oil from anywhere. But you being my audience-by-choice, you knew this yourselves already. Mr. Kenney probably doesn't like that fact either.

I used to live in Regina. For a decade. Until I graduated high school. So this lead-in-the-water issue matters. Yes, it was decades ago. But I'm not sure that it matters.

Depending on which other cities and towns are affected to what degrees, that problem might be a contributing factor in the "Wexit" mess. Certainly not the only one. I expect international oil industry money has a hand in it, too. And a century or so's worth of cultural conditioning going back to fostering of resentment of Laurier's decision to not allow One Big Province where Alberta and Saskatchewan now stand. You could call Frederick Haultain a political ancestor of Manning, Klein, Kenney and Wall as a result of this 1905 mess.

There's the ongoing transit confusions. More wordage needed than I can spare right now for that. Because I've got to get to work shortly.

Filed by Robson Fletcher with CBC News Calgary:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/parks-canada-abbot-pass-hut-climate-change-access-to-information-1.5192594

There is a Vertigo-branded science-fiction comic book currently published by DC Comics, named for this town in Alberta. I have discussed this series here before. And that town is, so far as I can tell, the end goal of the quest of its protagonists, going by the map updated in each issue.

For some reason, I find this coincidence disturbing.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/high-level-wildfire-1.5142662

As someone with an interest in the history of street names, my thanks to rfmcdonald for putting this story from the Calgary Sprawl forward...

Quoting the author:

"Given these conflicts over roads and development, it’s hard to imagine the city changing its name, as the Stoneys and Piikani requested.

But what if we did? What if Calgary was still Calgary, but also Mohkinstsis (Blackfoot), and Wichispa Oyade (Nakoda), and Guts’ists’i (Tsuut’ina)—officially?"

From David Brin:

https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2018/06/its-not-futile-we-are-making-progress.html

From Alberta, a ruling on gay-straight alliances that should bring some cheer:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/gsa-injunction-overturned-1.4724713

A Tor.com report on SF&F in Nairobi.

From Regina: a story about the consequences of not properly funding the details of international justice...within Canada. (No, I did not make a mistake using "international". There is at least one treaty involved here.)

David Brin asks - and is not alone in asking - when did optimism become Uncool?

Pete Evans at CBC News gets to the heart of the dispute between Canada Post Corp. and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers: the need of workers to avoid starvation in retirement. Even if Evans doesn't frame it with that language.

Also, we note Jason Kenney's quest to save Alberta from civilization. (This is not Mr. Kenney's POV about his goals, to be sure. But as Stephen Colbert once noted, reality does have a certain bias about these matters.)

Congratulations to NASA's Juno team for getting their probe into Jovian orbit yesterday. I won't call what you did "conquering" Jupiter, mind you, because of colonial-mindedness in the undertones of that. But what you did is a positive achievement!