How The UCP Is Lining Up To Steal Your Healthcare (and Rights)

Things are beginning to line up in terms of the UCP's plan and we can see now how they are going to attack health care and Albertans.  There's quite a sequence of things here, but the picture they paint when you draw it all out is quite interesting - and not in a good way interesting.

An Attack On One Is An Attack On All

As we move from the summer doldrums to the fall political season in Alberta (and Canada in general), there are some things we need to talk about.  Specifically, we need to talk about the concept of rights - both as they exist in legislation and the spirit of that legislation in contrast with the legislative plans of certain politicians. 

When we talk about rights, we tend to think about legislation that enumerates those rights for us. In Canada, that is primarily the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (The Charter), although there is also an older Bill of Rights that is now subservient to the Charter, and a range of court rulings that build upon the framework of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Similarly, provincial legislatures have often implemented their own rights legislation frameworks, such as Alberta’s Human Rights Act.

The first point is that these acts all make provision for Individual rights.  That is to say, they set out the boundaries of what we can reasonably assume to be true both in practice and in legislation in terms of our interactions with the state, and to some degree our interactions with each other.  The Charter is an interesting document for several reasons - first, it doesn’t describe “absolute rights”, but instead its first clause stipulates that the rights may be circumscribed by “reasonable limits” as set out in legislation.  In terms of understanding the Charter, this is hugely important because it tells us that rights in Canada have limits and we can expect those limits to be set out in legislation.  Second, it also hints at the idea that our individual rights exist in a degree of tension with each other.  So, for example, while we have a right to “Freedom of Expression”, that right exists only to the degree that its exercise does not unreasonably impinge upon the rights of another individual. 

The Charter does not establish a clear hierarchy of rights.  That is to say, the order in which rights appear in the Charter does not inform us in any way whether any one right supersedes or can override a later right - they are all “equal”.  The only thing the Charter establishes in terms of “hierarchy of rights” is the notion of individual rights being more important than collective or group rights.  

Attacks On Rights

Recently, we have seen numerous proposals to legislatively attack the rights of minorities.  Specifically, transgender youth, and drug addicts here in Alberta.  In January 2024, Premier Smith proposed a sweeping group of policy and legislation that attacks transgender youth on numerous fronts. Further to that, the proposals being made for a “recovery focused” addictions treatment program which includes forced treatment. 

In both cases, you might look and argue that these are “reasonable limits” on rights.  After all, how can a youth or child “consent” to something as life changing as gender reassignment, right?  I have seen arguments that addicts cannot provide consent when they are in the throes of active addiction.  To the extent that such statements are true, one can see them as “reasonable limits”.  The issue is that the extent to which they are true is very limited.  

The fact that the Alberta Government is already talking about using the “Notwithstanding Clause” (S.33) to insulate its legislation from Charter scrutiny is a clue that they already know that it won’t stand up to a court challenge.  Invoking S.33 is essentially an admission that they know that these laws are invalid under The Charter, and they open those who are being targeted by them to discriminatory treatment not merely within the framework of the legislation, but in other aspects of their lives as well. 

What Happens If These Laws Stand?

This is where the slope becomes very slippery indeed.  If provinces (or the Federal Government) are allowed to slap S.33 on anything they please, they will effectively render The Charter moot. It suddenly becomes trivial to revoke or severely restrict rights simply by invoking S.33 to “protect” any piece of legislation that the legislature passes.  

If a legislature decides that it doesn’t like the idea of women being able to vote, they can simply pass a piece of legislation that revokes that right, or makes it much harder for women to meet the criteria to be eligible to vote.  Invoke S.33 to protect it, and presto! Your rights have just disappeared back to the 19th Century.  

It’s easy to set the precedent with small, poorly understood populations like transgender people or drug addicts.  Once the precedent has been set, it’s very easy to extend it to other topics.  Poilievre has already alluded to doing similar things in the realm of criminal justice at the Federal level.  

An attack on the rights of one group can very quickly expand into being the erasure of rights for all.  Just because you aren't affected doesn't mean that you won't be. 

Why I Left Twitter

Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter(1) and renamed it "X", I've been toying with abandoning the platform.  I don't like Musk to begin with, but at the same time the platform is often a firehose of information about politics information that I find useful.  BUT - there are limits, and over the last year or so, I've watched Twitter descend from merely awful into being a cesspool of hostility, disinformation, and outright lies - I've also found myself targeted on the platform by waves of troll bot accounts - we'll come back to that.  

Up to a point, I've been willing to put up with that, but the last few months has been a breaking point for me.  Moderation on Twitter has become a joke.  Right wing hate accounts can get away with calling people pedophiles (and worse), but call them out or react at all to them, and you either get suspended or auto-locked.  Try using the term 'cis' on there, and your post gets auto-flagged.  Meanwhile the harassing accounts get away with virtually fomenting hate.

I've watched as hate mongers like JK Rowling have the red carpet rolled out for their utterances, while accounts who challenge them, or contradict their declarations get suspended, or shadow blocked.  

The uproar over a boxer in the Olympics was astonishing to watch on Twitter.  As soon as someone thought that there was "something odd", accounts associated with anti-trans hate suddenly got promoted, and accounts which were reasonably pointing out that the hate accounts didn't have a single fact on their side just had their views plummet.  

I've watched for some time as a coordinate hate campaign has been gathering steam, attacking trans people and trying to roll back civil rights for that community.  Musk's version of Twitter has played a role in accelerating that campaign, and increasingly I was finding anything I posted was being targeted by troll accounts.  

Some people might think "well, it's just online hate", but I've already had that online hate spill into my real life - and I have had to spend the last couple of years protecting myself and my family.  When there is a band of people who are all convinced that one aspect of your existence makes you some kind of evil, it quickly becomes important that they don't know where you live or who you are in real life. 

When Twitter's "auto moderation" software immediately locked my account for reacting to a hateful post directed at me, I decided "fuck it".  If Musk wants Twitter to become a haven for hate and extremism, then I don't have to spend my time there.  

When he took over Twitter, Musk called himself a "free speech absolutist", but it turns out that he isn't.  He's very much willing to give platform to hate, conspiracy theories, and other malcontents while actively working to suppress those who challenge the hate.  That isn't a neutral position.

I want to be very clear here - the idea that "not intervening in speech" is somehow neutral is false.  It gives equal weight to hate and disinformation while ignoring the corrosive effects of hate.  Elon Musk isn't being neutral - he's handing a megaphone to hate.

(1) Yes, Elon, I'm going to deadname your platform - if you can't find it in your heart to call your daughter by her chosen name, I don't have to respect your choices either).  

About Sex Testing and The Olympics

There's been a whole lot of fuss made over a couple of athletes in the Olympics who don't appear female enough to satisfy some people that they are in fact women.  I'm not going to link to the various stories on the specific incidents in part because I do not wish to contribute further (or in the future) to their harassment.  

A large number of people are running around going "If your chromosomes are XY, you are a man".  This is false - a wide range of variations can result in people having atypical chromosomes and their bodies still being female, or predominantly feminized.  

Letting Your Biases Get In Front Of You

Yesterday, I ran across this essay on X(itter), and it annoyed me because the author makes all kinds of errors of both fact and reason.  Since things on X have a nasty habit of disappearing at random, I will start with a bunch of screen captures of the essay itself.  Then I will delve into the problems with the arguments being made. 

Yes, Andrew, Democracy Is Under Attack In Canada

So, Andrew Coyne muses that Justin Trudeau should just step aside in the wake of a recent by-election defeat.  His reasoning?  Well - it's a bit of a jumble of deflection, redirection and obfuscation.  Oddly enough, he makes a far better summary of his reasoning in one post on X (FKA Twitter):

In his column, Cone opines as follows:  

But there is no equivalent in Canada to Mr. Trump’s attempts, by a combination of force and fraud, to overturn the results of a democratic election, or his threats to use the Justice Department to “go after” his political opponents, or his privately and publicly expressed desires to see some of them executed, or his efforts to intimidate officials in his several criminal trials and otherwise undermine the rule of law.

Is there no equivalent in Canada?  That's very much a matter of perspective.  Can we truly say that there is no Canadian equivalent to Trump's January 6 assault on Capitol Hill?  Not really - because only a year later the so-called "Freedom Convoy" would descend upon Ottawa not only with a demand that the Governor General dissolve Parliament and install the Convoy leadership as some kind of interim junta.  

Likewise, on the matter of going after political enemies, we cannot ignore Pierre Poilievre's recent hints that he would cheerfully invoke the Notwithstanding Clause (S33) of the Charter to insulate his laws from Charter scrutiny.  If you don't think this can be weaponized not only to realize his "tough on crime" agenda, but also to attack perceived and real political enemies, you aren't paying attention - because S33 is essentially a clause that puts Charter Rights in abeyance indefinitely.  Not only does that undermine the concept of "rule of law", but it creates an environment where the rule of law becomes arbitrary, and politicians can rewrite the rules pretty much at will. 

The politicization of nearly every public office – prosecutors, sheriffs, even judges elected on party political lines – has no equivalent here. 

I would ask if Mr. Coyne has been paying attention for the last decade.  Literally every appointment, every official action of the Trudeau government has been attacked and politicized - from committees and judicial appointments to things that have nothing to do with Trudeau himself.  We see a constant stream of invective directed at undermining Trudeau.  Here in Alberta, what is the first thing the UCP has done to attack the newly selected leader of the NDP?  Oh, they try to make him out as "Trudeau's Lackey".  

In fact, in my lifetime, I have never seen a Prime Minister subjected to such a constant stream of attacks - both legitimate and petty.  All of this has been clearly in the name of undermining Trudeau and making it as difficult as possible to govern.  

So it is more than a stretch for the Prime Minister to pretend that his own troubles are part of some worldwide trend to instability, or to insinuate that democracy is on the ballot in the next election. And if it were? If the Conservatives, or Mr. Poilievre, represented the same threat to democracy as Mr. Trump’s Republicans, or the same far-right philosophy as France’s Rassemblement National?

Here we come to the point where Mr. Coyne shows us exactly how wilfully blind he really is.  His position here ignores a whole bunch of facts and factors which are at play. 

As much as I would like to simply point at the Harper-led International Democrat Union (IDU) which really is a central piece of the worldwide movement towards fascism that we are seeing, it's not that simple here at home. 

First, there is a long-standing history of collaboration between conservatives in both Canada and the United States.  Canadian conservative politicians regularly attend major conservative political conventions like Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US; likewise they often attend US-based training at places like Morton Blackwell's "Leadership Institute" (LI).  There are a number of notable Canadian conservative politicians who have attended courses at LI - like Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, and others.  Similarly, in Canada, we have the Canada Strong and Free Network (CSFN) conference, and mysteriously US conservatives attend and speak at it.  

A significant number of Canadian conservative politicians have worked for campaigns in the US - most notably recently being Alberta's Devin Dreeshen who was active in Trump's 2016 campaign, but we can't ignore guys like Rob Anders whose political career starts with being a paid heckler for a Montana GOP candidate in the early 90s.  

All of this is to evidence that there is a long history of collaboration and sharing of ideas, people, and skills between US and Canadian conservatives.  So, it is no reach at all to observe that what is done by conservatives in the US almost always appears in Canada in some form or another. 

So, let's look at the last decade of conservative attacks on the government led by Justin Trudeau for a moment.  From 2008-2016, we watched as the GOP in the US did everything it could to obstruct President Obama.  It was stunning to watch as the GOP basically refused to cooperate with anything that the Democrats attempted to do whether it be legislation or matters like judicial appointments.  

What have we seen in Canada? Exactly all of the same strategies. Either attacking the Prime Minister and his government for any action taken or anything even remotely associated with Trudeau was open to attack.  As has been shown with the WE scandal, no matter how unfounded the attacks, they were persistent to the point of breaking the target - anything to erode the credibility of the government.  While there are clear differences in the particulars, the fundamental strategy is consistent - do anything you can to discredit the target. 

There's no doubt in my mind that the fact that the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) chose Justin Trudeau as their leader that the conservatives lost their collective minds.  The hatred of Pierre Trudeau in the modern day CPC is as ripe today as it was in 1980s Alberta in the wake of anger over the NEP. They just directed all of that anger straight at Justin Trudeau. So, when the government passed a new environmental assessment into law, it was immediately reframed as an attack on Alberta, and the first Convoy protest was assembled.  In many ways, it was the trial run not only for the 2022 Freedom Convoy, but also for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.  Similar messaging, similar organizing techniques were used, and they were refined over time. 

More recently, we have seen the US GOP legislators implementing a vast array of legislation designed to attack transgender people and restrict their rights and ability to move through society.  Is there a parallel happening in Canada?  Absolutely there is.  We have several conservative Premiers who are implementing anti-transgender legislation, complete down to invoking the Notwithstanding Clause to insulate what is obviously a violation of fundamental rights from being challenged in the courts.  While the legislation in states like Florida or Texas is leagues more malevolent than even what Danielle Smith has proposed in Alberta, there is no doubt that the approach is basically figuring out how to impose similar legislation in Canada.  Conservative Premiers like Ford, Moe, and Smith have been more active in invoking S33 to insulate their legislation for some time.  The effect is predictable:  although people get outraged with the legislation initially, over time, they stop paying attention when it doesn't affect their lives directly.  

How does this connect to the Federal picture with Poilievre?  Let's pay some attention here.  Poilievre has already hinted that he is willing to invoke S33 to insulate legislation.  On top of that, he has also indicated that he doesn't think that trans youth should have access to puberty blockers and other medical interventions.  This is not an accident. 

I think it's also important to note here that conservative politicians have long histories of engaging in voter suppression strategies - and Poilievre's one piece of legislation was basically an attack on voting rights, and let's not ignore the history of the Harper era conservatives engaging in all sorts of shenanigans like redirecting voters to incorrect voting stations (Robocalls Scandal).  Where do you think those ideas are being imported from?  If you guessed the GOP, you're partly correct. 

It's easy to dismiss similarities between Trump and Poilievre as simply being "populism", not when it's clear that there are shared tactics and strategies. 

That's a lot of words to point out that Mr. Coyne is profoundly wrong when he suggests that the situation in Canada is not the same as that in the US.  In fact, the increasing alignment of the Trump aligned GOP and the CPC says otherwise.  

Reviewing The Cass Review Report

The subtitle for this should be "How Cass Weaponized Science".

Now that the Cass Review has published their final report, it is possible to look beyond the apparent issues in how the report was assembled, and examine the report, its recommendations, and see just how bad it really is.