Teachers on strike
On Sunday October 5, teachers and supporters gathered in Edmonton, Calgary, and Lethbridge ahead of the strike on Monday, October 6. The UCP has encouraged parents to access a learning portal for students through the myAlberta account, or register their children in alternative programs that are publicly-funded but not required to accept all students. It also came with some fine print that finding an alternative during the strike may make students ineligible to return to their previous school. Because of course they would.
Alberta is the only province in Canada that diverts as much funding from public education. Most other provinces do not fund private schools, and none offer funding at Alberta’s rate of 70 per cent. Despite that, Alberta students have continued to perform well nationally and internationally but promises of staff and space in the future are not addressing issues today.
Thanks to Jason Kenney’s “Alberta is Calling” campaign, which ran in multiple regions across Canada, Alberta saw an influx of over 100,000 new residents within a two-year period. Sure, he was specifically asking for skilled trades workers, but it’s a free country. I’d blame him for not thinking that might come with added pressures to government but by August of 2022, he was on his way out. Danielle Smith, a person who mused that defunding public education might be a good thing, became leader in October of that year. Funding for more schools wasn’t announced until 2024 (and it’s a seven year plan), and budget 2025 included a 10.3 per cent increase in funding for private and charter schools that can refuse students, while public schools that are required to accept every Alberta student received less than half at 4.5 per cent.
Speaking of private schools…
Another referendum question has been approved by Elections Alberta. Alicia Taylor, a high school chemistry teacher, wants to bring a referendum on provincial funding for independent (private) schools.
It asks: “Should the government of Alberta end its current practice of allocating public funds to accredited independent (private) schools?”
This question has come up before, just not by anyone in government, or who wants to form government. My guess is parents of private school kids donate to those who can, and do. There’s always been a reasonable argument for at least some public funding to go to private/independent schools; chances are fair to good that their parents pay education taxes because those dollars are attached to property tax bills.
However, the Calgary teacher shared a really simple counterpoint with CBC.
“I think it’s wrong to have the highest rate of funding for private schools in a province where we have the lowest rate of funding for public schools.”
Bazinga.
Seems like there’s a built in solution for that, UCP.
UCP failures of leadership continue
In 2002, I had my first child in Kansas City, Missouri. I was far away from family and spent a lot of time online when I got bored with window shopping in the Plaza. Jenny McCarthy had become the spokesperson for the quickly debunked “vaccines cause autism” scare, and while I certainly didn’t know what autism was, I don’t think there’s a scarier thing than becoming instantaneously responsible for a helpless human being that is entirely reliant on you to make good decisions all the time so they can remain alive and healthy.
I went through the vaccination “debate” in my head constantly. What if? What if my decision was bad? It was, after all, my decision. What if I got it wrong? Then it’s my fault. The pressure was immense and it felt like it was all on me, all the time. It’s the worst.
Between my own reasoning that I’d been vaccinated and was fine, and a friend adamantly exclaiming there was no “debate” among people who knew what they were talking about, I got my daughter, and then the three boys vaccinated. I really didn’t think too much about it until that first born had my first little g-baby in Alberta’s epicentre of the measles outbreak. What happens when “herd immunity” breaks down? More stress, and more worry, for those who can’t protect themselves.
My happy little g-baby is almost ten months old now and had her first measles vaccine at six months because she lives in southern Alberta. I’m thankful I made sure my daughter was protected when she was young because the outbreak is ongoing and she’s now pregnant with twins who will, a full year later, also manage to be born in the epicentre of Alberta’s worst measles outbreak in two or three generations.
I’d love to just be angry at “wellness influencers” hocking their wares online or the fact that bad actors spread fear for a share of ad revenue, but they aren’t entrusted with the well-being of citizens; no one voted to make public health their responsibility. No, that honour belongs to one group of people: Alberta’s UCP. The fact that this has gone on as long as it has is their failure of leadership. The fact that their constituency associations held multiple disinformation sessions on vaccination is their failure of leadership.
You might notice they’re very loud when it comes to spreading fear and demanding “choice” but very quiet when the fruits of their labour are making headlines. I know I have.
Money well spent?
As political theatre goes, Alberta’s border security buffer hasn’t resulted in much more than a bragging right and a few arrests with a fairly big price tag. If however, we’re only adding up half a year’s worth of work, it’ll probably be seen as more useful than the $14 million Danielle Smith has promised for an exploratory committee on new pipelines.
B.C. Premier David Eby said his province had projects awaiting federal approval that could be fast-tracked rather than starting from scratch on something no private interest has put forward.
Yes, we’ve lost almost $2 billion trying to do more for oil and gas than they’re willing to do themselves, but what’s a few million public dollars between friends of the government?
Unsurprisingly, TC Energy’s claim against the U.S. government on Keystone losses was dismissed last year, though Alberta’s case is still sitting in a pile on someone’s desk collecting billable hours, and Prime Minister Mark Carney brought up its potential revival in a meeting with the U.S. president in a meeting on October 7.
When they throw spaghetti, we pitch pipelines.
I don’t know if any of this is money well spent. On the one hand, Alberta’s beefed up security has accomplished something tangible; for a chapter in a political play, it’s probably more than they expected, really. It’s hard to say whether that added security has had an impact in deterring illegal trafficking — as my statistics teacher was incredibly fond of reminding us, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
One would expect to see an increase in seizures if there are additional staff to do inspections but in the most recent statistics available, the number of seizures are down slightly over the first quarter compared to previous years. However we also know that trips to and from the U.S. have dropped significantly since Mr. Trump was sworn in, so the fact that that these numbers are only slightly decreased may still be indicative of those additional resources.
Unsurprisingly, the number one seizure at the border is an item that is legal in Canada but not the U.S.; cannabis, at 32,000,000 grams. Fentanyl is far down the list at 566 grams.
Oil
A new paper is looking at the jobs per barrel of oil and finding it lacking. This is, of course, no surprise to those who were employed in oil and gas pre-2014. The Pembina Institute is just saying what they already know: there are fewer jobs available in the oil and gas industry.
The paper found that at it’s peak development in 2012, before the downturn in 2014, there were an average of 38 jobs per 1000 barrels while that number has dropped to 22 jobs per 1000 barrels in 2023.
Much of that change comes from reduced investment in developing new sites (which is more capital and labour intensive), with companies opting instead to expand existing sites.
Imperial Oil also announced they will be releasing around 900 staff by the end of 2027 and moving remaining staff out of Calgary to its Strathcona facility outside of Edmonton by the end of 2028. The Alberta premier blamed federal policies over the last 10 years for the proposed layoffs.
Meanwhile, because Justin Trudeau was all-powerful (like his father), oil and gas giants in the U.S. are also being forced to slash thousands of jobs. I kid, of course; I’m not conservative enough to believe either of the Trudeau’s were the most powerful men in the world. Oil and gas giants in the U.S. are cutting jobs due to falling oil prices, tariffs, and corporate consolidations.
Wait… oil is falling again? Way to find out Budget 2026 is going to have another big hole in it.
New spin on an old story
Alberta conservatives really did need to make separatism more relevant for the up and coming rage-muffins. The ones who are still mad about the 1980’s global oil glut are getting really, really old and their stories just don’t have the same zing anymore. They’re talking about a past that only they remember (or just made up).
We don’t remember double-digit interest rates, or the recession. We don’t understand that Alberta used to be better because, for us, it always has been. We didn’t have the National Energy Program and Pierre Trudeau; we had the Alberta Advantage and Ralph bucks. The Chair of Alberta Investment Management Corporation was our Prime Minister, even.
Danielle Smith gets it.
She knows that if Alberta is to remain a safe haven for angry conservatives who could have had so much more if it wasn’t for Liberal governments they can consistently blame their incompetence on, they need an enemy for the next generation. As luck would have it, his name also ends with “Trudeau”. While speaking to a crowd in Toronto at the U.S./Canada relations summit she said she told the Prime Minister that “Justin Trudeau created a separatist movement.”
Yes, this is totally new and definitely never existed in Alberta before. There was no Western Canada Concept, Reform, or “western alienation” before Justin Trudeau. I mean, Preston Manning who?
The observer in me loves to watch a new political mindfuck in the making but the Albertan… inhale eyeroll fucking sigh.
Final thoughts
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Great post. I was collecting signatures the other evening at an election forum. Got 15 signatures in about 30 minutes, which was great. The comments from the folks who didn’t sign were interesting. A couple of observations about the folks who didn’t sign):
1. 90% boomers
2.arrived in nice cars, were very well dressed - looked like they were doing pretty well for themselves (hooray for the oil booms and land prices in the good old days)
3. one group stated they didn’t want to live in a communist country, Mark Carney is a communist , “have you read his book, it is all communist”.
4. the other main theme was about how we need to break free from “the East”. Lots of disparaging comments about the East. Kind of disheartening as I am a maritimer and have family “back east”.
The UCP have managed to rile up the underlying greed and prejudices of this demographic.
"angry conservatives who could have had so much more if it wasn’t for Liberal governments they can consistently blame their incompetence on"
I think I may have met some of these people! :)
Once again, you win the quote of the day.