Let’s Talk About ‘Political Discrimination’

A few months ago, MP Garnett Genuis tabled a bill which would add protections to Canada’s human right legislation for “Political Belief”.  Then, as the Ontario College of Psychologists moved to discipline Jordan Peterson for spreading hatred, he started crying that this was political discrimination, that he was being “persecuted” for his “politics” (spoiler - he’s not).

This concept of “political discrimination” is really little more than another construct to tell the same people who tried to overthrow a government in February 2022 that their grievances are justified.  You will note that Genuis invokes the grievances over COVID, and Peterson tries to globally call his activity on Twitter “political speech”. 

While it is true that politics is always loaded with opinion, we need to recognize that politics can be reasonably informed by facts and evidence. Is Peterson calling a non-binary person “it” a matter of “politics”, or is it simply a mean spirited attack on the person? Are the protests against vaccines based in a sound understanding of the science? I am not going to argue the veracity of those claims here, they are provided to illustrate the issue being raised. 

Politics is a complex space, and it’s no secret that malign actors have been deliberately injecting disinformation and misinformation into our discourse for some time. It’s also not hugely surprising that conservative politicians here are often aligned with the propaganda. 

It is no surprise that it is conservative politicians pushing this narrative now. It’s convenient, it aligns with their ongoing campaign against Trudeau, and it further undermines public confidence in the institutions of democracy. It fits incredibly well with narratives like “the election was stolen”, and the narratives used to justify practices like gerrymandering electoral districts. 

I find it particularly interesting to note that this is coming from an Alberta conservative though.  Political discrimination has been rampant in Alberta for years. Decades of single party conservative rule long ago made it perfectly acceptable for all sorts of activity that could fall under the rubric of “political discrimination”.  

Stories of bosses telling their employees how to vote in elections have been a common occurrence in Alberta for years; an overtly aggressive form of conservatism has long made it very difficult to openly hold perspectives at odds with conservatism (or whatever is wearing that cloak today). Candidates have had their cars sabotaged, and having signs from other parties is also a good way to find your home vandalized.

I’m not saying any of this is good, rather that it is more than passing strange that conservatives are pushing this narrative today, when they’ve actively engaged in creating a political environment in Alberta that supports “political discrimination” for years - without moaning about it once.

Looking at our Charter, an argument could be made that Political Discrimination is in fact protected under a combination of fundamental rights.  In particular, the fundamental rights in S2. I do not think that it could easily be ‘read in’ under S15 because S15 is generally reserved for immutable characteristics of the person, and political perspectives are reasonably subject to change over the course of one’s life. 

To be clear, nobody who lost their job for refusing to be vaccinated did so over “politics”.  They lost their job for failing to comply with a new requirement. Yes, you can moan all you like about whether that’s coercion or not - but it’s not politics.

There are some interesting, and perverse consequences to introducing such a clause into our non-discrimination laws.  For example, political parties (who are employers), would suddenly find it much harder to get rid of an employee whose political beliefs no longer aligned with the direction of the party. Employers would find the murky waters of “political beliefs” being brought up in dismissal suits, and so on. 

In fact, the concept of “Political Discrimination” is so murky that it could be twisted into all sorts of forms.  That means it’s far more of a political weapon today than it is an actual tool. 

An Open Letter To Jason Kenney

 Dear Premier Kenney, 

The time for you to step down has come. 

It actually arrived in July of 2021 when COVID-19 modelling was showing Alberta going into a fourth wave in mid-August. Your government decided to do nothing then, and things got worse than they needed to. 

You disappeared on a "vacation" in August. In doing so, you left the entire government paralyzed. Nobody in your cabinet felt they could make a decision to act without your go ahead. Albertans were treated to the scene of your ministers not answering basic questions, and press conferences being shut down by the "issues managers" (political minders) you assigned to them. 

You, and your government remained fundamentally incommunicado straight through until mid-way through the last week of the federal election campaign, at which time you rolled out a state of emergency declaration and some half-baked "not a vaccine passport, but it's a vaccine passport" policy in response to the obvious fact that the health care system was overwhelmed and collapsing catastrophically.

This isn't just a failure of leadership, Mr. Kenney. No, it's far, far worse than that. It's a failure to carry out the duties that you swore you would bear when you were sworn in as Premier in 2019. You failed to direct your Minister of Health to take steps to mitigate a fourth wave of COVID-19. You failed to direct your Minister of Health to safeguard the functioning of the health care system as a whole. Then, when the crisis became too large to ignore, you and your cabinet came up with a series of non-solutions that had deleterious effects on the health of Albertans. Urgently needed surgeries were delayed indefinitely while ICU wards were overrun with COVID-19 patients who hadn't been vaccinated yet.

Then, when a federal election is in the offing, you conveniently disappear mid-campaign so as not to further damage your federal peers' chances of election. You went radio silence, left your government and the people of Alberta hanging while COVID-19 escalated out of control ... all so that your federal cousins might have a better chance at being elected. Your partisan goals do not supersede the needs of the people you govern, and you allowed that to happen. 

Your tenure as a Premier has been one unmitigated disaster. Your government has lurched from one ham-fisted policy to the next. Then, when it was faced with a monumental crisis called a pandemic, you decided that doing nothing was going to be just fine. Instead of leading with a solid, positive example, you chose to give the braying fools who thought this pandemic was fake a platform. You allowed them to hold demonstrations because it was politically convenient for you to do so. Instead of leading, you cowered before the basest of the base, and let them run amok.

You, sir, have failed the very people you swore to serve to the best of your ability.

It is time to depart. Call an election in Alberta today, and let the adults start cleaning up the mess you have made. 

Signed, 

One Pissed Off Albertan

Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others (The Alberta Edition)

 In KenneyLand (aka Alaberta or Bertabama), it seems that there are two sets of rules at play.  

First, let me introduce you to the saga of GraceLife Church in Parkland County.  This organization has been holding services and ignoring public health orders since Fall of 2020.  The province has seemingly been unwilling to do anything about it until recently - in fact, it took until just after Easter (we'll come back to this point in a moment) for concrete steps to be taken.  Steps that the government had to take if they were going to enforce anything with a rising third wave of the pandemic. 

48 Hrs In Alberta Politics

 The last couple of days in Alberta have been interesting ... not good, but interesting.  

It all starts with a bunch of rural UCP MLAs putting out a joint letter complaining loudly about the return to a much stricter set of restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19. 

In public, Kenney tried to paper this over as "legitimate debate", saying that his party supports differences of opinion.  Then there's what happened behind closed doors.  Not only did Kenney threaten to call a snap election in caucus, but he also threatened to boot out MLAs who violated public health orders - a non-subtle reference to the Christmas travel scandal a few months ago. 

All of this paints a very interesting political picture.

Politics Over Public Health

 I'm no fan of Premier Kenney in Alberta. I didn't like him when he first emerged to run for MP, and his actions as an MP disgusted me most of the time. 

Then there are this morning's revelations of political interference in the Chief Medical Officer of Health's (CMOH) conduct of her duties. The article is lengthy and thorough.  Suffice it to say that Kenney and his Minister of Health, Tyler Shandro have been exerting far more political influence than is justified in the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

I'm not going to spend a lot of time trashing Kenney over this - frankly, if you couldn't see that coming from Kenney the day he set foot in Alberta politics, you probably just haven't been paying attention.  

It's Dr. Deena Hinshaw that I want to pay a little bit of attention to today.

Up to this point, we have suspected that Dr. Hinshaw has found herself being ignored by the Kenney government, but she has been fairly cagey about what's going on behind the scenes.  Perhaps she has even held the belief that she can "change things from within" - frankly I do not know. What I do know is that Dr. Hinshaw now faces a serious ethical quandary.  

Up to this point, many in the public have been willing to grant Dr. Hinshaw the benefit of the doubt.  Saying, in essence "well, she seems to be trying to do the right things, so we'll trust her".  Now we have clear evidence of how Kenney and Shandro have been exerting political control over her actions as CMOH.  

There's an ethical dilemma for Dr. Hinshaw at this point. We now know unequivocally that she hasn't been able to exercise the kind of decision making authority that she should. This blows a giant hole in her credibility as the public face of the government's COVID-19 response. The question so many will ask is simple:  "Is she saying what she believes, or is she being ordered by politicians to say what she is saying?"

In the first case, we have to suspect that she is in fact complicit with the government's political decision making, regardless of its impact on the people of Alberta; in the second case, we have to conclude that she is ineffective because she is essentially hostage to the political interventions of Kenney and Shandro.  

Whether I personally like Dr. Hinshaw or not is immaterial.  She is caught in the ethical morass of trying to juggle political intervention in her work with the more science and data driven aspects of it.  

The civil service is supposed to be non-partisan, and the various Officers of that civil service should be able to operate independently of the political considerations of the minister's wishes. Because Dr. Hinshaw reports not to the Legislature as a whole (as I think should be the case), but reports to the Minister of Health, her ability to act independently is severely curtailed.  

Therefore, Dr. Hinshaw now stands at a precipice in her career. She can resign as CMOH, citing political interference in her work as a confounding problem in her ability to act effectively, or she can stay in place, and becomes seen as complicit in the actions of the Kenney government, no matter how awful they get. 

Ethically, let's remember that which ever direction she chooses to go, her actions will have a serious impact on Albertans.  

If she leaves the post, we are likely to see Kenney appoint someone whose partisan pedigree is more suitable to his way of viewing things.  That could be even more damaging to Alberta than staying - although staying in place has another price to consider.  

If Dr. Hinshaw remains in her post, not only does she end up taking on the personal cost of trying to constantly weigh her duties as a practitioner against the political interference coming from the minister's offices, but she potentially will come to be seen as complicit with the government in their mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. Neither choice is particularly enviable.