This is the best summary I could come up with:
At the end of January, Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, announced a list of policy changes targeting transgender youth in the Canadian province, including a ban on hormonal treatment, puberty blockers and gender-confirmation surgery for children 15 years old and younger.
A few days later, Doug Ford – the Conservative premier of Ontario, and one of the most influential politicians in Canada – was asked whether his government intended to follow Smith’s policies.
The two conservative leaders’ contrasting views on care for transgender youth highlight the limits of a culture war apparently imported to Canada from the United States.
Gilbert, who specializes in sex education, said Smith’s proposed changes mirror the legislative activism of conservatives in the United States and the burgeoning “parental rights movement”.
Months before Alberta waded into the issue, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan – both led by conservative premiers – announced changes to pronoun policies in schools, the latter using the notwithstanding clause of Canada’s constitution to block any legal challenges.
“The proposals in Alberta would not stand up to court challenges and so Smith would need to invoke the notwithstanding clause to suspend the fundamental rights of trans people if she wants to pass these sorts of policies,” said Gapka.
The original article contains 981 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
“parental rights”. If I approved of my child taking the drugs, would they be allowed? If not, there’d better be a whole lot of law suits
As a USA citizen, I apologize to our neighbors in the North for this bullshit getting exported across the border. I’m very sorry.
As a Canadian I have to wonder how accurate that is - we exported Proud Boys to the USA. This could just be the wave waves rippling back
Tribalist fearmongering horseshit is endemic to humanity. It is our default.
…and that’s ok.
:/
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Anything to keep us arguing so they don’t have to fix the housing crisis
Ford doesn’t have any special tolerance or respect for trans rights, he just knows it’s a cannof worms that doesn’t benefit him to open.
Make no mistake - he’d kneecap a trans person at least as quickly as anyone else for stiffing him on drug payments; and probably add an extra few kicks for being a freak; but that’s personal, and his business dealings (mob-backed government) aren’t helped by declaring war on trans folks.
I just got into a debate with an erstwhile Conservative who assured me that this wasn’t something the political right was going to do, and that they certainly weren’t going to try abortion next.
Heh.
Every day since I left that province has confirmed and reinforced the wisdom of my decision.
I’m proud of you! Where’d you end up going?
BC! Vancouver Island specifically. It seems to fit my ethos and tendencies better here.
You know, for everything that Doug Ford has done that I don’t like, at least he’s not Danielle Smith.
Ford is a mobster, not a religious zealot.
Ontario is also not Alberta: Smith’s cheques are signed by the oil industry, and you have to get deep into denialism to whitewash that industry, and denialism comes with a lot of anti-intellectual and protofascist baggage.
Ford’s are signed by real-estate developers and small-business douchebags (and the Venn with them and organized crime on it, well, has some overlap). They’re a very different crew, and they prefer to operate in the shadows. Shouty religious zealotry results in unwanted attention, which is bad for business.
He’s also sneakier, and lies so well it’s hard to tell the truth from fiction.
If you come in with the baseline that none of them tell the truth, it’s a lot easier to figure out who is lying.
This isn’t at all evidence-based, this is just a gut reaction and being an Ontarian I hear a lot more about what happens in my province that Alberta.
I find Doug Ford much scarier than Danielle Smith because I think he’s more effective at destroying this country, more people would vote for his destructive policies than hers (which are more clearly socially regressive), and I could see him being successful at the federal level.
Higgs scares me too. I’m appalled by the devolution of trans rights in AB and SK, but politicians gunning to increase corporate power, gut the public sector, and reduce labour’s power really unsettles me vis-a-vis the direction we’re heading in.
Higgs scares me too. I’m appalled by the devolution of trans rights in AB and SK, but politicians gunning to increase corporate power, gut the public sector, and reduce labour’s power really unsettles me vis-a-vis the direction we’re heading in.
Trust me, Smith is still taking enough time away from attacking the trans community to destroy healthcare and then sell it to her corporate friends. Same with education. As for unions, the secret wage limits Kenney imposed were just opening the door to Smith’s plans.
more people would vote for his destructive policies than hers
Smith won by just 1300 votes, if you look at the close ridings, and has done nothing but unpopular shit ever since - starting with an attack on CPP, which is a sacred cow to the most vote-y demographic. And it’s still the first few months. So, yeah, she’s not on track to re-election, to put it mildly.
She won by 1300 voices but that’s not something to be proud of or celebrate as her being close to losing because it just shows how fucked first past the post is, she had a majority of the popular vote in the province by a good margin, if those 1300 had voted NDP instead the NDP would have had the power with 44% of the vote while the conservatives would be in the opposition with 52.6% of the vote.
It’s not my preferred system either, but it’s what we have. In this specific case it works to the advantage of progress and stability.
If we had party list (preferably Norway style so there’s not constant snap elections) then the UCP almost certainly wouldn’t exist, and we’d probably have a coalition of centrist parties, with a sizable amount of more radical opposition parties, mostly on the right but also on the left (possibly led by Janis Irwin).
…and yet, she’d get reelected today.
She would, and she will. Rachel Notley has stepped down because she knows she can’t beat the UCP (or any single right-wing party), no matter what deranged psychopath is running it.
Worst of all, Poilievre is courting her hard - and has every intention of copying every one of her policies that can translate to the national arena.
I don’t know, her numbers seem to have gone slightly downwards since the election, and like I said she barely scraped in. Keep in mind this is FPTP and most of the real rednecks are stacked in the same rural ridings.
It’s more like anyone’s game than hopeless.
politicians gunning to increase corporate power, gut the public sector, and reduce labour’s power
That’s been the Blue playbook for decades.
we’re just another state 🤦♂️
