The prospect is that Albertans may re-elect her in spite of her terrible driving. Everybody seems to be looking at the scenery instead of where the damn bus is going.
It's the moderate conservative voters who are the problem. They have been paying so little attention that they think this party is still normal. They'd vote for her again because they still think the Alberta NDP is radical left (a laughable assertion) and they don't like Nenshi's "vibes".
Well, we're cruising to get the government we deserve.
Stephen Bosch: It's more than a gut feeling at this time, but there are cracks in the UCP. Those cracks, or fissures are getting wider. Soon enough, the UCP will fall through.
Hoping like hell that those cracks widen before the next election comes around.
There has been enough drama in the last three months alone to make moderate conservative voters uncomfortable...at least theoretically. When that discomfort starts reflecting in party polling is when we know the splits are happening.
No, I cannot believe the driver will pull over. I believe she’s aiming for a destination well past Referendumtown. She’s headed for Separation Gulch.
Danielle Smith started this journey in university, where she fell under the influence of separatist-wannabe Barry Cooper. Smith’s second act as Premier of Oilberduh (formerly Alberta) was to introduce the Sovereignty Act and try to push it through the Legislature.* Even UCP back-benchers rebelled when they realized Smith was trying to cut them out of the loop, giving cabinet—and Smith herself—control over what to do about federal “interference.”
Since then Smith has tried, with very limited success, to implement the rest of the Free Alberta Fantasy. The Utter Chaos Party has gone full-on lunatic—and the lunatics are impatient. Danielle Smith is apparently realizing that she’s only in charge as long as Sylvestre, Rath, Modry, Parker et al allow her to be. The wannabe-queen has become a sock puppet for the most unreasonable, irresponsible, irrational mob in the province.
I predict that Smith will ignore the courts and put Sylvestre’s unconstitutional referendum question on her fall ballot. (This is like predicting an egg will break, just AFTER you’ve dropped it.) What happens then will be up to the courts, and ultimately, to us.
*Smith’s first act was to interfere—try to interfere—with the court case against Calgary street preacher Artur Palowski, for his actions at the Coutts border blockade.
Mike J Danysh: Good comments. However, something that goes beyond a mere gut feeling tells me that the UCP are on their last legs. They will not make it to 2027. It's also going to fun to watch David Parker get prizes he won't like for playing his stupid games. Danielle Smith can try and put on a brave face, but this joke of a government is going down.
Anonymous: I really hope you're right. But I can't shake the feeling that these guys, even if they hate each other, hate everyone else even more. They'll close ranks again rather than risk being defeated.
(Given all that, I have to add that seeing David Parker lose another round with Alberta Elections would be the cherry on my ice cream sundae....)
Mike J Danysh: Cracks in the UCP are widening. Danielle Smith was blabbering in the Alberta Legislature today, while showing her lack of political knowledge. She's an autocrat, as are the UCP.
And of course she’s calling the Court undemocratic. Laughable. If she wants an elected court the Montana border is a few hours away. She can take those hooligans with her. She says that the “process” was designed to be permissive. So why is the Lukasuk question buried in committee? Chief Allen Adam has done Canada a huge favour. Once again our First Nations are there to rescue us settlers from our folly. The Courts are important guardrails ( I bow to Lisa’s bus analogy)to protect against government over-reach and dishonesty. She laments that the voices of 300,000 Albertans need to be heard, but what about the 456000 Albertans who signed the Forever Canadian petition? We had a steeper hill and longer road. And what of the 70% plus who want Canada. Danny has painted herself into a corner. It’s just a matter of time until her buddies David Parker and Mitch Silverster bring out the knives. Et tu Brutae?
All this noise to keep people from asking WHERE IS THE MONEY? Pumping 5 million bpd and we have $10 billion deficit and $109 billion in debt and untold environmental cleanup bills. All the profits going straight south. Nothing staying in Alberta. WTF
Well if this bus does pull over before I move to sunny Manitoba we had best have our wits about us and introduce some policies or laws to reign in any future knuckle draggers looking to waste millions of taxpayer dollars. Freedom of speech does not mean we have to continually defend the fact the sky is anything other than blue at the public expense.
Thanks for putting this together so succinctly. It is unbelievable. Seems to me the federal government has gone out of its way to give DS and her party the leverage she needs to work within Canada. Thanks to Thomas Lukaszuk and his hard work, she does have the data to proceed in ways that the NON separatist Albertans would support.
If Alberta can separate, I vote to separate from Alberta -- I am with the First Nations on this one. Thank you, Lisa Young, for making what is happening here plain even if I wish it wasn't.
Much like the racist backlash against two terms of Barack Obama, the Alberta right has gotten into bed with extremists as a response to an NDP government.
The cracks are showing, but things will have to get a lot worse before this coalition disintegrates.
An NDP party, that Rachel Notley ran a bit further to the center than Peter Lougheed. Had she been a white male with a giant “C” beside her name, you’d have been falling all over yourselves lauding her. She did a great job under much less positive circumstances than Danielle Fucking Smith.
That most Albertans still don't know....or are willing to acknowledge that........is part of why we are where we are.
Hard to find a safe, and progressive party given the current global rush to war for oil....
And at the bottom of that well......there is the dirty truth that doubling down on dirty fossils is a short term fix, though the only one many in Alberta can imagine.
Absolutely agree. The mantra is forever conflating socialism with communism - and even that is off the wall, because none of them understand what each is, and that there hasn’t EVER been a communist run country. They also wouldn’t recognise that the best arcs of time for citizens has been because of socialism. Think FDR - from his policies, the USA for at least two generations, had a strong economy, a strong middle class and prosperity - until Reagan came in and began to trash it all, starting with the very specious “trickle down economics.” And there you go to what we have now. Stupid! Just stupid! Problem - ya can’t fix stupid.
Well.........I taught high school English for a living and have to insist that very few of our children are stupid.............less than 1%.......if they are given half a chance they love to discuss, think, problem solve, collaborate and create.
Unfortunately..........it isn't stupidity so much as a kind of avarice that keeps us where we are. Mean spirits are made, not born...........and in a sanctimonious culture........where hierarchy teaches us all to compete for everything from attention to glass beads........what is created is a kind of meanness of spirit.
My third grandchild had trouble in school.....inspite of my sense that she was perhaps the brightest of the bunch.......she was picked on in grade 4.......but told no one until she was 13, when she told me what being 'left out' felt like, on a camping trip where she imagined the older two didn't want her along for the midnight swim.
She knows the truth of adolescence and late childhood. Already, by that age, the meanness and need to exclude is rising. She's 18 now, pretty, sensitive and doing well in school..........but I can tell you, as a retired teacher.
WE'VE A LONG WAY TO GO UNTIL EVERY CHILD IS VALUED, EDUCATED WELL AND WELCOMED INTO A SOCIETY THAT EXCLUDES NO ONE....right wingers like Danielle and company overload classrooms on purpose.
They honestly don't believe that the majority of children are worth educating.....so yes. Their belief system has made them stupid, while imagining that they are the smartest folks in the province.
We do get what we pay for in the end.....fascists praising free market capitalism and doing what they can to make the rest of us believe Socialism is the evil to be avoided.
Oh my goodness Ingamarie!! Thank you so very much for this wonderful insightful response. I absolutely agree. My comments about stupid come about from engagement with people who are intelligent, but as you pointed out better than me, don't really educate themselves, don’t as a result develop critical thinking skills, yet think they know it all. You said it much better, but that’s what I mean by stupid. And in Danielle Smith’s world of “super funding” private schools, some of the best and brightest are being denied the opportunity that is every child’s right - regardless of wealth and position in society. Which is what I’m hearing you say. More, as well, it’s about intelligent people remaining in a place of ignorance. Hoping that makes sense to you. Thank you again!! 🇨🇦
Yes...we agree....therefore, let's do what we can to engage, without the demonization.....and raise these issues of every child being our real future resource..........we waste so much energy on in fighting........and verbal disagreements..............when we could be building the inclusive world where no child is left behind.
There are so many good people in Canada........if we rallied, there's no telling wht we might not accomplish.,
She has lit my province on fire, so she can keep her job. Self serving, self dealing , trump wannabe. How did my fellow Albertans endorse this failed human, given her life long track record?
We do get what we vote for....and word on the street has it Albertans would elect this government again if the writ was dropped now. Pushing climate disaster forward to our grandchildren is the best idea they have........outright climate denial being a bit hard to swallow given the extreme weather of the last few years.
And in bitumen loving Alberta, that's okay with many. Having the long view being a perspective most don't have, regardless of how open our prairies are to the fires and floods and droughts that are coming.
Separation from Canada??? Tying the knot with the Maga Trumpsters to the south of us, those guys who already own most of our tar???
Looks like a marriage made in Heaven to some of our in resident fossils.
I suspect you're right.....but fear the problem ridden will still double down for more of the same for the next four years. Not having alternatives is a fascist nightmare.
I certainly hope you are right.........but Albertans have proven amazingly stubborn when it comes to holding onto their imagined advantages......and the resentment regime that comes with those advantages.
Particularly now, as the age of oil is ending, charting a new path may be beyond them.
Only if we vote them out my friend..........I've been political all my life........and the number of scandals the conservatives have weathered, buried, moved on from is far larger than most Albertans, just waking up in the last couple of years of so, can imagine.
They've run world experts in medical science out of the province, paid their loyalists to 'check off' farmer's produce obscene salaries, comandeered every public board in the province......sold boondoggles like carbon capture for at least 3 decades...........the scams are legion.
If some reporter had the stomach to give us a list, going back to Lougheed Albertan's would be so outraged they'd refuse to read it. LOL, but its not funny.
Perfect analogy ... and someone has removed the catalytic converter on that bus.
But also - what is PM Carney up to? He must know there is no appeasing the separatist element in UCP 'governance'. When Premier Smith announced the MOU to her base, they booed her and cheered the separatist. LIke TMX, they don't want that pipeline.
And BC is not happy with the changes to carbon pricing. Now, Premier Eby is politically weakened, but he's not out of the picture.
And the First Nations angle feeds an enormous amount of oxygen to bigotry.
No way out but through it would seem, with few leaders on the side of federation, the Constitution and Treaty.
Bring on the spike belt! NOW!!!
Good one Cheryl!!
Oh wo-man, was this ever spot on.
The prospect is that Albertans may re-elect her in spite of her terrible driving. Everybody seems to be looking at the scenery instead of where the damn bus is going.
It's the moderate conservative voters who are the problem. They have been paying so little attention that they think this party is still normal. They'd vote for her again because they still think the Alberta NDP is radical left (a laughable assertion) and they don't like Nenshi's "vibes".
Well, we're cruising to get the government we deserve.
It is very scary.
Stephen Bosch: It's more than a gut feeling at this time, but there are cracks in the UCP. Those cracks, or fissures are getting wider. Soon enough, the UCP will fall through.
Hoping like hell that those cracks widen before the next election comes around.
There has been enough drama in the last three months alone to make moderate conservative voters uncomfortable...at least theoretically. When that discomfort starts reflecting in party polling is when we know the splits are happening.
No, I cannot believe the driver will pull over. I believe she’s aiming for a destination well past Referendumtown. She’s headed for Separation Gulch.
Danielle Smith started this journey in university, where she fell under the influence of separatist-wannabe Barry Cooper. Smith’s second act as Premier of Oilberduh (formerly Alberta) was to introduce the Sovereignty Act and try to push it through the Legislature.* Even UCP back-benchers rebelled when they realized Smith was trying to cut them out of the loop, giving cabinet—and Smith herself—control over what to do about federal “interference.”
Since then Smith has tried, with very limited success, to implement the rest of the Free Alberta Fantasy. The Utter Chaos Party has gone full-on lunatic—and the lunatics are impatient. Danielle Smith is apparently realizing that she’s only in charge as long as Sylvestre, Rath, Modry, Parker et al allow her to be. The wannabe-queen has become a sock puppet for the most unreasonable, irresponsible, irrational mob in the province.
I predict that Smith will ignore the courts and put Sylvestre’s unconstitutional referendum question on her fall ballot. (This is like predicting an egg will break, just AFTER you’ve dropped it.) What happens then will be up to the courts, and ultimately, to us.
*Smith’s first act was to interfere—try to interfere—with the court case against Calgary street preacher Artur Palowski, for his actions at the Coutts border blockade.
Mike J Danysh: Good comments. However, something that goes beyond a mere gut feeling tells me that the UCP are on their last legs. They will not make it to 2027. It's also going to fun to watch David Parker get prizes he won't like for playing his stupid games. Danielle Smith can try and put on a brave face, but this joke of a government is going down.
Anonymous: I really hope you're right. But I can't shake the feeling that these guys, even if they hate each other, hate everyone else even more. They'll close ranks again rather than risk being defeated.
(Given all that, I have to add that seeing David Parker lose another round with Alberta Elections would be the cherry on my ice cream sundae....)
Mike J Danysh: Cracks in the UCP are widening. Danielle Smith was blabbering in the Alberta Legislature today, while showing her lack of political knowledge. She's an autocrat, as are the UCP.
I really want you to be correct.
Kalyrn: I am pretty sure of what will happen.
And of course she’s calling the Court undemocratic. Laughable. If she wants an elected court the Montana border is a few hours away. She can take those hooligans with her. She says that the “process” was designed to be permissive. So why is the Lukasuk question buried in committee? Chief Allen Adam has done Canada a huge favour. Once again our First Nations are there to rescue us settlers from our folly. The Courts are important guardrails ( I bow to Lisa’s bus analogy)to protect against government over-reach and dishonesty. She laments that the voices of 300,000 Albertans need to be heard, but what about the 456000 Albertans who signed the Forever Canadian petition? We had a steeper hill and longer road. And what of the 70% plus who want Canada. Danny has painted herself into a corner. It’s just a matter of time until her buddies David Parker and Mitch Silverster bring out the knives. Et tu Brutae?
Great post, Lisa! All I would add is that with anticipated court challenges, we might be in Limbo for a while
Paul-Nesbitt-Larking: The courts just shot down the separation petition. Danielle Smith wants to appeal it. She's a separatist.
All this noise to keep people from asking WHERE IS THE MONEY? Pumping 5 million bpd and we have $10 billion deficit and $109 billion in debt and untold environmental cleanup bills. All the profits going straight south. Nothing staying in Alberta. WTF
100%.
Well if this bus does pull over before I move to sunny Manitoba we had best have our wits about us and introduce some policies or laws to reign in any future knuckle draggers looking to waste millions of taxpayer dollars. Freedom of speech does not mean we have to continually defend the fact the sky is anything other than blue at the public expense.
Thanks for putting this together so succinctly. It is unbelievable. Seems to me the federal government has gone out of its way to give DS and her party the leverage she needs to work within Canada. Thanks to Thomas Lukaszuk and his hard work, she does have the data to proceed in ways that the NON separatist Albertans would support.
Brilliant! Remember the Wild Rose bus with Danielle’s picture on the side? Same bus?
If Alberta can separate, I vote to separate from Alberta -- I am with the First Nations on this one. Thank you, Lisa Young, for making what is happening here plain even if I wish it wasn't.
This is absolutely brilliant.
Much like the racist backlash against two terms of Barack Obama, the Alberta right has gotten into bed with extremists as a response to an NDP government.
The cracks are showing, but things will have to get a lot worse before this coalition disintegrates.
An NDP party, that Rachel Notley ran a bit further to the center than Peter Lougheed. Had she been a white male with a giant “C” beside her name, you’d have been falling all over yourselves lauding her. She did a great job under much less positive circumstances than Danielle Fucking Smith.
That most Albertans still don't know....or are willing to acknowledge that........is part of why we are where we are.
Hard to find a safe, and progressive party given the current global rush to war for oil....
And at the bottom of that well......there is the dirty truth that doubling down on dirty fossils is a short term fix, though the only one many in Alberta can imagine.
Absolutely agree. The mantra is forever conflating socialism with communism - and even that is off the wall, because none of them understand what each is, and that there hasn’t EVER been a communist run country. They also wouldn’t recognise that the best arcs of time for citizens has been because of socialism. Think FDR - from his policies, the USA for at least two generations, had a strong economy, a strong middle class and prosperity - until Reagan came in and began to trash it all, starting with the very specious “trickle down economics.” And there you go to what we have now. Stupid! Just stupid! Problem - ya can’t fix stupid.
Well.........I taught high school English for a living and have to insist that very few of our children are stupid.............less than 1%.......if they are given half a chance they love to discuss, think, problem solve, collaborate and create.
Unfortunately..........it isn't stupidity so much as a kind of avarice that keeps us where we are. Mean spirits are made, not born...........and in a sanctimonious culture........where hierarchy teaches us all to compete for everything from attention to glass beads........what is created is a kind of meanness of spirit.
My third grandchild had trouble in school.....inspite of my sense that she was perhaps the brightest of the bunch.......she was picked on in grade 4.......but told no one until she was 13, when she told me what being 'left out' felt like, on a camping trip where she imagined the older two didn't want her along for the midnight swim.
She knows the truth of adolescence and late childhood. Already, by that age, the meanness and need to exclude is rising. She's 18 now, pretty, sensitive and doing well in school..........but I can tell you, as a retired teacher.
WE'VE A LONG WAY TO GO UNTIL EVERY CHILD IS VALUED, EDUCATED WELL AND WELCOMED INTO A SOCIETY THAT EXCLUDES NO ONE....right wingers like Danielle and company overload classrooms on purpose.
They honestly don't believe that the majority of children are worth educating.....so yes. Their belief system has made them stupid, while imagining that they are the smartest folks in the province.
We do get what we pay for in the end.....fascists praising free market capitalism and doing what they can to make the rest of us believe Socialism is the evil to be avoided.
Oh my goodness Ingamarie!! Thank you so very much for this wonderful insightful response. I absolutely agree. My comments about stupid come about from engagement with people who are intelligent, but as you pointed out better than me, don't really educate themselves, don’t as a result develop critical thinking skills, yet think they know it all. You said it much better, but that’s what I mean by stupid. And in Danielle Smith’s world of “super funding” private schools, some of the best and brightest are being denied the opportunity that is every child’s right - regardless of wealth and position in society. Which is what I’m hearing you say. More, as well, it’s about intelligent people remaining in a place of ignorance. Hoping that makes sense to you. Thank you again!! 🇨🇦
Yes...we agree....therefore, let's do what we can to engage, without the demonization.....and raise these issues of every child being our real future resource..........we waste so much energy on in fighting........and verbal disagreements..............when we could be building the inclusive world where no child is left behind.
There are so many good people in Canada........if we rallied, there's no telling wht we might not accomplish.,
Stephen Bosch: This coalition is going to disintegrate.
With her new found religion perhaps we’ll get “Take the wheel Jesus”
She has lit my province on fire, so she can keep her job. Self serving, self dealing , trump wannabe. How did my fellow Albertans endorse this failed human, given her life long track record?
We do get what we vote for....and word on the street has it Albertans would elect this government again if the writ was dropped now. Pushing climate disaster forward to our grandchildren is the best idea they have........outright climate denial being a bit hard to swallow given the extreme weather of the last few years.
And in bitumen loving Alberta, that's okay with many. Having the long view being a perspective most don't have, regardless of how open our prairies are to the fires and floods and droughts that are coming.
Separation from Canada??? Tying the knot with the Maga Trumpsters to the south of us, those guys who already own most of our tar???
Looks like a marriage made in Heaven to some of our in resident fossils.
Ingamarie: It doesn't matter what the polls say. There are problems in the UCP camp. Believe me, there is. It's not minor.
I suspect you're right.....but fear the problem ridden will still double down for more of the same for the next four years. Not having alternatives is a fascist nightmare.
Many are living it.
Ingamarie: I believe the UCP are going down. Too many problems they can't avoid.
I certainly hope you are right.........but Albertans have proven amazingly stubborn when it comes to holding onto their imagined advantages......and the resentment regime that comes with those advantages.
Particularly now, as the age of oil is ending, charting a new path may be beyond them.
Ingamarie: Danielle Smith has a very disgusting and pompous look on her face when she speaks. About the UCP going down, that's a big possibility.
https://x.com/TheBreakdownAB/status/2054714656745533444?s=20
Only if we vote them out my friend..........I've been political all my life........and the number of scandals the conservatives have weathered, buried, moved on from is far larger than most Albertans, just waking up in the last couple of years of so, can imagine.
They've run world experts in medical science out of the province, paid their loyalists to 'check off' farmer's produce obscene salaries, comandeered every public board in the province......sold boondoggles like carbon capture for at least 3 decades...........the scams are legion.
If some reporter had the stomach to give us a list, going back to Lougheed Albertan's would be so outraged they'd refuse to read it. LOL, but its not funny.
Perfect analogy ... and someone has removed the catalytic converter on that bus.
But also - what is PM Carney up to? He must know there is no appeasing the separatist element in UCP 'governance'. When Premier Smith announced the MOU to her base, they booed her and cheered the separatist. LIke TMX, they don't want that pipeline.
And BC is not happy with the changes to carbon pricing. Now, Premier Eby is politically weakened, but he's not out of the picture.
And the First Nations angle feeds an enormous amount of oxygen to bigotry.
No way out but through it would seem, with few leaders on the side of federation, the Constitution and Treaty.