OK, what am I missing here? When I think of what has happened in Alberta since Danielle Smith became premier and her disastrous start to the current election by going from weird to ethically challenged in the wink of a Trudeau eyelash, why is it that days before the provincial election on Monday, we’re still talking about her remaining premier come May 30?

Let me see how this went. First, Smith defeats former Harper clone Jason Kenney as leader of the Uninformed and Corrupt Party, then introduces the Alberta Sovereignty Act to demonstrate her Constitutional illiteracy, only to have that action declared “nuts” and will turn the province into a “laughingstock” by Kenney, who subsequently resigned in disgust.

Next, she gets caught in the middle of an all-out breach of ethics by an alert CBC reporter attempting to influence the Justice Department to tread lightly upon Calgary “pastor” Artur Pawloski, who is charged with inciting violence under Alberta’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act after encouraging American militia members and goon squad supporters of the Carbon Convoy to utilize their skills (and the weaponry they brought to the Coutts border crossing) in helping God’s people expose “anti-Christian persecution and government corruption” in setting forth anti-Covid “mandates” as the starting point within a “communist-controlled Canada” of establishing public health measures [that would inevitably result in] “the mass execution of Christians.”

With wildfires starting near Fort McMurray almost from Day 1 of the campaign, premier Smith and NDP leader Rachel Notley had little choice but to cease their personal campaigning and address provincial concerns about the outbreak. By May 4, the province’s boreal forest and grasslands had reached “cross-over” critical conditions, a scientifically “polite” way of saying temperatures were too high while humidity levels were dangerously low. By May 8, more than 30 fires were already “out of control” and another 70 started, forcing the evacuation of some 30,000 people in Alberta alone, most of whom had been forced to move in similar fashion when the 2019 blazes had turned most of Fort Mac into ashes.

Despite Alberta’s money-printing petroleum wealth having kept the province’s treasury well stocked, it didn’t take long for the people who actually cared about protection of the forestry industry to pick up on the reality that to the UCP, climate change was not a major concern. Firefighters and City Council in Edmonton demanded that cuts to the March budget, some $101 million, be restored. Of that amount, some $500,000 to assist rural Albertans to train volunteer fighters is the part that hurts the most, as this is where the fires are going to be fought, not in downtown Edmonton or Calgary.

However, it was soon back to “business as usual”, with Smith blandly asserting that the province would work its way through the crisis. Since then only one of them – Notley – has brought up the topic again, knowing full well that such a response was depressingly insufficient for a public in dire need of crisis leadership at a time of serious need in Alberta’s UPC-dominated rural regions.

As has been the case for the last 20 years, what fuels Alberta voters supporting the UCP the most is their shameless willingness to tie anything that might go wrong in the province to the presence of Justin Trudeau in the Prime Minister’s office, particularly when it comes to the seemingly endless delays in getting pipelines constructed so as to get bitumen product to market and quickly past the need to expand consultation with Indigenous groups and American eco-terrorists allegedly being funded by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club. 

The problem here is that it was the Harper government with its massive omnibus bills and desire to simply muzzle dissent that only further exacerbated the consultative process, turning large segments of Alberta’s population into Wexit, or western alienation trending voters. 

Interestingly enough, it was Danielle Smith who recognized the reality of that analysis, and knowing full well that if this movement were to continue, there would be no second term for her party, she simply told Albertans not to worry, and that they could still continue to think of themselves as Canadians because the UCP “had the meat” – in this case, the Sovereignty Act, that would make certain that the feds would face considerable legal challenge to any issue that they opposed in the re-transitioning of Alberta’s economy away from “green” and back into the petroleum industry’s controlling dictates.

Temporarily at least, it appears as though that portion of her leadership thought processes resulted in this strategy becoming a correct call for her. However, that still doesn’t explain her spininess in trying to move health policy and poorly constructed health mandates during the Kenney years into a full frontal assault against mRNA second stage vaccines and taking steps to privatize major portions of health care simply because anti-vaxxers couldn’t understand how Bruce Willis could have died “at such a young age” or even now why Teflon, now deemed to be a ”forever chemical” in our drinking water yielding the SAME types of death anti-vaxxers are trying to link to “getting an mRNA produced jab”.

And what’s with this obsession with polling numbers in and around Calgary, wherein Ipsos-Reid is telling us that the NDP were “Up” 3 points in Calgary-Glenmore 30minutes ago, only to be told with grim finality by “338” or Grenier that it’s all over now, folks, and Danielle Smith’s mediocre 37% polling in Oilville, Canada destines her to be the first (sort of) Conservative leader in Canada to be cannibalized or winning?

And then there are the “endorsements” – former, even current UCP members either publicly saying they can’t vote for Smith or are now supporting Notley, with even Pierre Poilievre now not even bothering to put down the shaving kit to tell us he supports Smith’s “Conservative” values? 

Who cares? The only number that’s accurate at the moment is the one that saying 28% of Alberta’s eligible voters have ALREADY voted, and the pollsters have no idea on how to translate that result.

This is starting to sound more like Biden v Trump, isn’t it? I don’t like the unease it’s creating in me, but then were I right ALL of the time, it wouldn’t be any fun writing this stuff in the first place. I’m still taking Notley, though, with less than 0.4% vote differential – and keeping my fingers very well crossed in the process.

Residents in the south-east corner of Bear Paw Crescent on the Muskoday First Nation were rudely awakened at about 5:00 AM on April 1^st to the sound of gun shots from a shotgun and an assault rifle. Three homes were hit, two in which no family members were in gangs.. One home has over 130 pellets embedded in its siding, while in the other a high-power rifle bullet made its way through three walls and a child’s bed before finally burying itself in a fourth wall. While no one was hurt following this incident, a $5,000 reward has been posted for anyone who can come forward with information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individuals so involved.

Furious over the sheer random recklessness under which the shootings took place, community members have asked Chief and Council to seek a resolution to the epidemic of crystal meth and cocaine drug dealing on both reserves and within communities surrounding Prince Albert.

Under normal circumstances individuals are usually fearful that if they come forward to testify or provide information to the police, they may be targeted for future retaliation. However, in this case where a child could have been killed had he not been sleeping in another room, local gang leaders are well aware that this incident’s publicity will inevitably trigger a heightened vigilance in their daily routines, and lead to further arrests, curb ancillary “business activities” and reduce their customer base for as long as pressure is brought to bear to find the shooters. As a result, police are hoping that an “anonymous” source in the gang’s hierarchy will eventually provide them with the information they seek.

Such incidents are becoming almost daily occurrences on reserves around Prince Albert, and the general feeling coming from these communities is that it’s time for strong action to be taken against residents selling mostly crystal meth and cocaine derivatives from reserve-owned homes. Such actions most likely would include immediate eviction; however, other remedial and preventative measures that have been suggested include advising adults with drug addiction issues to either enter into a program or be evicted, or adults who have put their children at risk through such behaviours be referred to Indigenous Family Services. Bands are now rushing to establish Tribal police services, principally as a way of engendering more cooperation in providing information as to current or potential criminal activities on reserve, which would effectively dampen a gang’s ability to threaten “rats” with retaliation.

Due to their smaller population base, members of Council are occasionally caught between the proverbial “rock and a hard place” wherein a family member may be on the agenda as a candidate for eviction and even possibly banishment from the reserve, thereby causing severe headaches in trying to find on what side they should vote in this family’s affairs. However, by far the biggest problem stems from the fact that if a community member is evicted from reserve housing, local communities, especially in Prince Albert, only see such actions being nothing more than the bands “dumping” their criminal issues back onto the doorsteps of the larger communities.

Indigenous leaders see the provincial government’s attitude towards crime on reserves as two-faced, reactionary and completely inadequate. More women’s shelters and “safe” house” investment called for in the latest provincial budget may look great on paper, but rhetoric such as that being provided by Mayor Greg Dionne to “put a stop to the catch-and-release mentality of a justice system that is increasingly ‘soft on crime’” simply ignores the reality that such action do nothing to resolve the issues that created the problem in the first place. Not surprisingly, Indigenous adults take a completely different perspective to these matters. As one resident from Muskoday noted, “We don’t need kids from P.A. coming to the rez to buy their sh*t; [if one of them] gets hurt,” the problem is now “owned” by the reserve. As for the budget calling for increased funding for patrol of rural areas, critics of the soon-to-be created Marshal’s Service are already describing its members as poorly trained “goon cowboy(s)… pretending to be a SWAT team” looking for any reason to “kill our kids.”

Clearly, then, with feelings being elevated to such emotional levels of outburst, a less controversial approach has to be considered in order to get this problem under control. One suggestion being considered is for local reserve leaders and Chiefs, along with the Prince Albert Police Commission, RCMP detachment commanders, reeves from surrounding communities and representatives from the Prince Albert Grand Council to form a special task force and draft a proposal for future and ongoing action to get these activities under control. In so doing, intelligence being gathered regarding criminal activities by provincial police forces in the region will keep these smaller communities apprised of its potential for harm, and thus make them more adequately prepared to respond to future potential crises.

Indigenous leaders see such a task force working only if Prince Albert and surrounding community leaders try to view the importance of Prince Albert to themselves through their own eyes. While the province may describe the city as “the Gateway to the North”, it’s also the first stop in the migration of the homeless and persons seeking meaningful job opportunities coming from northern locations that MLA’s are reluctant to even visit much less fiscally assist. Similar issues of increased criminal activity arose when Weyerhaeuser first attempted to reopen the paper mill facility. Back then, construction of low-cost housing units, apartments, and condominiums built to house the expected surge of persons moving to Prince Albert in anticipation of that opening should have started months in advance of this event even happening. Now, with only months before Paper Excellence opens its doors, nothing has been learned from that lesson nor any parallel apparently drawn by City Council, even though the increasing presence of abandoned shopping carts near our shopping malls indicates the presence of a homeless community the size of which neither police nor Council are prepared to measure. It therefore remains the question as to whether Mayor Dionne might wish to put a hold on his polemic, or as a city Indigenous resident noted, step up and help this task force do its job, or “Just shut up and get out of the way” while others do the job for him.

Even as a Mathematics teacher, governmental budgets are hard to interpret. However, having read a goodly portion of its contents on the provincial web site, I was at least ready to listen as to what points the Minister of Coin, Donna Harpauer, would stress at the Prince Albert and District Chamber of Commerce Luncheon. I might as well have brought the entire document to the luncheon, just so I could check off the points Ms. Harpauer cherry-picked from its contents. When it came to prioritizing concerns for the Prince Albert region and northern Saskatchewan, precise figures were buried in accolades of self-congratulation, such as “growth that works for everyone” – that is, for everyone living south of Saskatchewan’s revised northernmost border, vaguely located somewhere just south of Duck Lake.

No one in the Chamber of Commerce who read my column would have been particularly surprised that when it came time to ask the Minister questions, my particular offering was most likely going to be critical – which wouldn’t have had to be, if she’d at least laid off the usage of so many cliches and questionable tidbits of “fact”.

For instance, when you mention that the Ministry of Health’s budget has increased by some 6.7 per cent over the 2021 figure, then say that much of that increase will be going to try and recruit and/or train more health care workers and doctors, as well as their upgrading of qualifications, but you just fail to mention that the average inflationary factor affecting the purchase of goods and services to run our health care institutions is just over 6%, this means only one thing – health care funding has been CUT. That’s despite the fact that there are still major health concerns in measuring waste water content to show that whatever the public might believe regarding the Covid pandemic, that virus is still creating ill effects within the community. The same can be said for the $161.4 million in funding the three school divisions in Prince Albert, where Saskatchewan Rivers has already been forced to cut back services.

At this point, you might be asking yourself, “didn’t the provinces just get a 10% boost in federal funding to address health care concerns, particularly with respect to the fact that more than a quarter of our population does not have a family physician?” Apparently, these funds have somehow managed to find their way down the rabbit hole that the $400 million the federal government gave the province to clean up abandoned oil drilling sites – that is, unless there’s been another major development on one of Regina’s Jean Drapeau Bypass’s on/off ramps that swallowed another half a billion dollars or so. 

However, the point that finally blew it for me was when the Minister talked about product being shipped to market “increasing” by some 120% in 2022. Consider that in 2021 we were in the midst of a Covid pandemic in which this province’s death per 100,000 population was the worst in Canada and such movement was plagued by manpower shortages and health mandate measures. Just how does that figure compare with 2019? To me, without such a comparison, her even mentioning such questionable “fact” reeks of the Minister simply “blowing smoke”, and hoping we aren’t asthmatic.

My question to the Minister was fairly straightforward, and given by the adverse publicity they’d received since the last provincial election, it should have been obvious. But even then her answers became hesitant, even to the point of asking Premier Moe to clarify aspects of the budget pertaining to road infrastructure in the north. Most of these monies are marked in the budget as being for gravel roads to assist future aggressive forestry harvesting truck movement. Does this mean that Wollaston Lake is still going to have to wait before finally getting its now-promised 24 / 7 / 365 all-weather road finally completed so that the community can resurrect its plans to export fish product to Europe? It DEFINITELY means that La Loche should not be expecting Highway 155 improvements any time soon, much less a road into the new mine sites so that those desperately seeking work in that northern region from Green Lake upward can actually drive to work and come home on their own once their shifts are completed.

And when, pray tell, can Prince Albert expect that BOTH bridges that are now needed to move a more active and heavily freighted product through our northern gateway to aid the increased and properly supported infrastructural need do their jobs in helping this province restore its economic health?

The conclusion of this event was equally farcical, particularly when it came to answering the question posed by one of the more quiet individuals attending the luncheon, that being “When is Prince Albert going to get a member of Cabinet in caucus?”

Irrespective of what Ms. Harpauer might say, Mr. Hargrave’s role when he was a member of Cabinet now appears to have been a strategically placed barrier to criticism with the Chamber. As for Ms. Ross, her particular areas of expertise, social services, are among the most underfunded, and Nicole Rancourt, the former NDP holder of her seat, is again considered to be the best politician capable of doing the tasks assigned them.

Last but not least, I have to worry about Mayor Greg Dionne, kowtowing to the bleating annoyances of the city’s voters as to crime rates within the city, and “keeping track of the postal codes of persons detained by the Prince Albert Police Service.” For the record, he knows full well that the implication of his remarks to me spell out the “reality” that many, even most likely most such records originate from reserve locations. The Mayor fully knows that these communities, including the one in which I live (Muskoday), have the SAME concerns about personal safety as do residents of Prince Albert—that being the increasing proliferation of crystal meth and cocaine derivative trafficking due to a well organized and out-of-province controlled criminal element. 

As a member of the Police Commission, both the Mayor and Chief Jon Bergen might themselves be able to swing this disturbing trend in an opposite direction were they, along with the leaders of reserve and town communities around Prince Albert to form a joint task force so as to provide a more reasonable strategy to eradicating this problem, as opposed to the province’s “solution” to form their “Marshall Service” of provincial officers, who would be useless to act as part of that task force’s policing community, for the simple reason that they have to be FEDERAL officers in order to enter reserve lands. In short, these are the inherent weaknesses of the current budget, at least as I see them. Some members of the Chamber may disagree, and that’s fine; however, instead of continuing to support a government desperate to turn the economy around without even considering the 17% of the population that ultimately has a major effect upon that destiny, stop whining about Justin and the need for Bill 88, when what’s really needed in this time of crisis is the ability of people in power to think of resolutions outside what has become an irritating box of many words.

Some time prior to the 2015 election I attended a public information forum in Saskatoon asking Indigenous peoples whether they should vote federally, provincially or in municipal contests. While I’m fairly certain that hard-core rightist party supporters would have a three-day hangover over that answer being negative, the question does have some validity in that Treaty negotiators, sitting at that table as leaders of “nations within a nation”, should be focusing upon the benefits to be gleaned by their own people through successful negotiation, as opposed to interfering in the cultural practises of others.

When I first heard this premise being presented by a very young Poundmaker Councillor, I was seriously opposed to this hands-off approach – for two reasons. First, it was national Grand Chief Perry Bellegarde who shortly after the Harper government dropped the election writ, TOLD Indigenous voters to NOT vote for a Conservative candidate, as Harper’s recently passed “Fair” Elections Act had the potential to disenfranchise tens of thousands living on reserve lands – a point I was there to argue myself.

In reality the Act had the potential to disenfranchise more than a million Canadians. Originally drafted by now temporary CPC Leader Pierre Poilievre, even its later “toned down” version specifically DEMANDED that if challenged as to your eligibility to vote in a riding, your identity “proof” HAD to show the PHYSICAL location where you resided. To rural voters who think that’s “fair”, pull out your driver’s license and check whether it lists your land description (township, block and lot) in the identity section or merely your mailing address; IF it contains only the latter, you were theoretically ineligible to vote – as were other Conservative “undesirables” – the Indigenous who don’t believe in owning the land, the homeless, the transient, the person of “wrong colour” NOT wearing a Riders jacket, naturalized Canadians from the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent, and women “sporting” facial tattoos.

I’ve included this story about voting rights in 2015 because even hard right Conservative voters understand that voting IS actually a Canadian’s citizen’s “right” once they reach the age of 18, and as such is enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. My premise for tying voting rights with concerns as to the contents of Bill 88 is that it has now created a “keep your bloody Ottawa hands off the affairs that the Constitution has assigned to our province” dangerous meanness between the two levels of government.

It is actually the provincial government that doesn’t seem to understand the duties it’s been assigned, doesn’t perform them for certain “classes” of Canadian citizens (i.e.: Indigenous peoples), and stupidly ignores the premise that their inability to properly manage such duties could have serious fiscally damaging consequences for Saskatchewanians by violating the rights of others NOT living in this province, or Canada itself. Such liability costs would inevitably be borne by taxpayers (including the Indigenous ones) – just because the Sask Party doesn’t “like” Justin Trudeau.

I’d cry in sympathy with their Gen X “sensitivities”, but to be honest, the Moe government isn’t worth the effort to generate tears of rage.

The “standard” duties constitutionally assigned to provinces include health, education, legal and social services, as well as infrastructure. So why are so many roads either leading into or passing reserves either unpaved or in serious need of repair? How did the Wall government’s CANCELLING of monies allocated to build a 24/7/365 roadway into Wollaston Lake NOT adversely affect that community’s efforts to economically develop a fish processing plant that could then see its excellent finished product shipped to its overseas markets? Why wasn’t the bridge just west of La Loche that would have allowed traffic to have a shorter route to the Oil Patch built when it would have only cost $17 million, as opposed to its current $50 million price tag – AND would have provided a transportation route to be used by central Canadian and U.S. manufacturing interests transporting goods to that area with an approximate 900 km “short-cut” that would have almost halved transportation costs – not to mention being a road carrying twice the traffic now passing over Regina’s $2 billion Jean Drapeau Bypass? And what about Prince Albert’s TWO bridges – where even currently the one decrepit version already carries three times the traffic of the “Made in France” bypass that only Regina developers thought was a great idea?

The reduction in welfare costs and policing activities would easily cover the costs of such construction. Don’t stop there. Bands need water treatment facilities built? Have contractors make arrangement to employ community members and build them – it’s the province’s DUTY under our Constitution. So what if Indigenous Affairs is a federally charged responsibility? Would a landlord continue to demand a building manager keep on picking up a tenant’s garbage or just evict the polluter? Send the feds the bill; it was them that assigned the province these janitorial tasks in the first place. Stop whining about Justin. Harper, Mulroney, Diefenbaker and Bennett were also lousy property “managers”.

Ah, but you see, that’s not how the system works, is it? I hear this story all the time: once a Chief is elected, he/she is seldom ever seen in the community. Why’s that? Why, they’re participating in important treaty negotiations where they’re now treated as leaders of “nations within a nation”. The irony here is that this work, were it to attain “breakthrough” in the form of a negotiated settlement, these Chiefs are now so blinded by the flashing of media cameras that they don’t notice that just after the PM has affixed his signature to the document, one of his “assistants” takes it from the desk and delivers it to a government lawyer, whereupon the next time it will be seen is by a Supreme Court justice screening its contents for legal challenges by the same government that just concluded these negotiations.

People are tired of reading about court cases where the victim or the accused (sometimes both) are Indigenous. I want Indigenous leaders to start using their lawyers to bring forward litigation issues of a more “meaningful” consequence, such as challenging the reworking of Section 92, the Natural Resources Transfer Act of 1930, or reopening the overturning of the original Benoit v Canada case.

That Bill 88 is unconstitutional is a “given”, with the areas of its focus potentially posing serious ecological, climatic and economic damage for northern communities and continuing strained relations on the international level of world commerce. We have already been overburdened by stories of the province refusing to sell Crown lands to First Nations seeking economic relief, even as speculators contemplate the building very private, well-fenced vacation homes on the lakes named for our war dead.

Our north is already blighted by clear cutting practices. Add to this a list of new resource harvesting corporations starting mining operations under climate and environmental protection legislation that the province wants to “dumb down”, and the voters who put these Chiefs into office might want to ask them, “WHY couldn’t you stay at home for a while, if only to protect the things that really matter to our communities?”

These same Chiefs might also want to ask themselves why the Athabasca riding, now held by Jim Lemaigre of the Sask Party, supported a candidate whose sole mission was to “sell” Bill 88. The NDP candidate, Georgina Jolibois, is literally considered to be a hero in the rest of Canada’s Indigenous communities for her introducing a private member’s bill to set aside a national holiday to address the need for a “truth of history and need for reconciliation” day for Canadians – and for which the Liberal Party courteously asked for permission to place on the order table as the business of government.

Was that because the Chiefs thought that Indigenous peoples voting in provincial affairs had no consequence in their lives, or was it more likely because Jolibois’ accomplishment could never be challenged in the Supreme Court? My bet is on the latter…

On Jan. 22, 2016, La Loche high school student Randan Fontaine came to school armed. Before the end of the day, four people would die at his hands, and another seven would be seriously wounded. Several days after that, Brad Wall flew into the community for a brief photo “op”, took a few minutes of his time to meet with select members of the community, offered up his “prayers and thoughts” draped in its standard political hypocrisy, then uttered the words, “There are seeds of hope that have been planted even in this week…there need be and can be more support from governments… that will represent seeds of hope.” Less than two hours later, he was gone.

Six years later, what Wall promised back then – the “more support from governments” – can roughly be translated to mean only one “government”, that being the federal one, and even there, the response was slow in coming.

A year after the shooting acting Principal Greg Hatch summarized the community’s feelings towards Wall’s promise to walk with the community with these words: “We feel alone…we feel abandoned.” 

There is little wonder in understanding why his words were laden with profound regret. Three social workers, none of whom are trained in addressing mental health concerns were added to the health region’s work force, while a psychiatric nurse was also recruited to deal with health concerns of all the 3,000 or more residents of the immediate and surrounding communities – this within a health region where the number of children regularly attempting to commit suicide is at extreme levels, the local women’s shelter is almost always full, and gang violence being fueled by resentment, alcohol and drugs dominate community highlights on any given day. 

Given that the Sask Party has done nothing to relieve the economic isolation of the community, one has to wonder why it is that La Loche appears to now be flying the flag of convenience of this political disease. There still is no bank in the village, not even a credit union. The economic centre of oil exploration, Fort McMurray, is less than 80 km away from town, but only accessible by winter road because the government has refused to spend the $17 million necessary to build a bridge spanning a wannabe river to allow access to job opportunities in the oil fields. Most of the businesses in town are either owned by non-resident carpetbaggers or merchants trying to eke out an existence where even to get a bucket of chicken on a Friday night for a kids’ treat starts somewhere just shy of $75 a barrel. 

Given these circumstances, one has to ask the question: WHY in HELL would Athabasca riding elect Sask Party candidate Jim Lemaigre to replace long-serving former MLA Buckley Belanger as their representative?

I have no idea as to what truly drives Mr. Lemaigre to claim any right to represent that riding. Although he is a member of the Clearwater River Dene Nation located on the outskirts of La Loche, he and his family have mostly lived in Prince Albert, and his riding office is in Buffalo Narrows, 100 km to the south of La Loche. During the last election on the CRDN, he ran for Chief, only to be defeated by current incumbent Ted Clarke. More to the point, having retired as an RCMP officer and not even having lived in the region for other large chunks of his life, one wonders how it is that he can even understand the major social concerns of the region?

Throughout his provincial campaign, Mr. Lemaigre constantly described himself as “pro-business”, while maintaining that economic opportunities exist within the north, if people would only take advantage of their occurrence. What he fails to understand, however, is that such “opportunities” have come at the expense of his own people.

For instance, up to and including the Devine years, it was not uncommon for local bars to be up-sold on the basis of the number of units of liquor, mostly beer, consumed on a nightly basis in that establishment. The “problem” there was two-fold; first, many of outlets refused to cut individuals off despite their obvious succumbing to a state of drunkenness, while RCMP officers doing regular tours near these establishments were finding repeat offenders, the majority of abusers behind the wheel of a half-ton, regularly blowing rates of 0.45 or higher, while those leaving the bars without transportation and transported back to either RCMP cells or a hospital bed could blow rates even higher than that. 

Under currently existing legislation such establishments were more carefully policed by the SLGA. Now, however, the SLGA is being downgraded to nothing more than a name on a warehouse where the government stores all liquor and beer prior to outlet sales.

The plan to privatize all liquor outlets is now re-introducing the prospect of going “gung ho” in maximizing sales as merchants put profit before the law by increasing sales to minors and having no restrictions as to “how much” should be sold to whomever, whether they be bootleggers or gang members transporting product into so-called “dry reserves”. These factors can only have adverse effects upon the province’s already overstretched police forces, not to mention creating more social strife on reserves. 

If this is the Sask. Party’s vision in creating “business opportunities” for the north, several of Lemaigre’s fellow Indigenous peoples who have lived through past experiences with alcoholic beverages and dealt with increased violence levels, particularly those inflicted upon women and children, should be seriously disagreeing with the honourable MLA for Athabasca. 

What is truly mind-bending, however, is the almost deadly silence coming from the Indigenous corridors of power. In particular, the FSIN, who waited almost three weeks before releasing a statement condemning the S.F.A..

The sickening aspect of all of this manipulation of public sentiment is that the Moe government, knowing full well that northern municipalities have been among the hardest hit during this pandemic, is waving its new oil wealth derived from the Russia-Ukraine war, all while failing to provide any hope as to creating infrastructural changes in the north that could lead them out of the economic wilderness. And just what is Jim Lemaigre’s stance on these issues? Your guess is as good as mine… 

Regular readers of this column know some of the stories as to why the topic of “racism” overly concerns me, whether it’s an incident in Maple Creek where a future student threw a green apple at me, barely missing my daughter, and calling me a “squaw man” for even carrying her in a child tote harness, or having a Saskatoon police officer try to pull a gun on me for protecting an Indigenous friend from being arrested under false pretenses, the events don’t really matter. The question is, WHY do people, especially the young (INCLUDING that officer) behave in such fashion?
The answer to that question is surprisingly simple: people react to events that affect only them, and in the process blinding them to the distinct probability that the underlying premise feeding such events is a socially ingrained malady being constantly fed by the failure of governments to “find a cure” for such ills – and especially when we, society in general, must pay heavily for the finding of such solutions.
My initial blindness to the effect of racial tension upon today’s society regrettably begins as a student. My own high school years lacked any historical connection to our common sharing of past experiences with Indigenous leadership. Even when I first started my Master’s thesis research in 2004, I had literally no idea as to what people were talking about whenever the phrase, “residential school experience”, was mentioned.
My first Indigenous students in Quebec were almost all academic scholars who could speak four different languages fluently, and whose names took up over half of the school’s Honour Roll. When I took a temporary position at a BC, Nuxalk-run school in 2003, there was no let-up in academic endeavour. Students would flawlessly write exam papers until they obtained a pass mark, fearing that a high mark would get friends calling them a “teacher’s pet.” Grade 12 students regularly destroyed so-called “tough” provincial exams, and attendance issues never surfaced as an “issue” for discussion during staff meetings.
The wake-up call I received next was hard to take. In 2004 I transferred to a public school located on Vancouver Island on Nuu Chah Nulth reserve land. Here was a school without make-up, victimized by its own scarring from the ravages imposed upon it by its adult population having all undergone hideous abuse while attending residential school. 
The Principal, a “born again Christian”, was reviled for his regular abuse of students, with the school board seemingly unwilling or incapable of removing him. The year previous, he’d harassed the former Chief’s daughter to the point where she lashed back in fury, only to have herself expelled for the rest of the year. On the weekend following, she had committed suicide, hanging herself while dressed in what was to be her graduation gown.
It never occurred to me that this event would later have its effect upon my own teaching experiences at the school. Unfortunately, I would later find out that three senior students had, with the ex-Chief’s daughter, signed a “suicide pact” to be honoured on the anniversary of her death. One such student was in my Grade 12 classes, and when she started going through the emotional trauma of readying herself to die, a student begged me to intervene. 
Having taken previous training in suicide prevention programs, I did what I would have assumed any teacher would have done in similar circumstances – I intervened. Two hours later, after having an extended conversation with a sobbing mother thanking me for convincing her daughter to change her mind, I was called to the Principal’s office, where I was handed a disciplinary notice advising that he would seek my dismissal for my having “counselled a student without holding a BC-recognized certificate”. 
The overwhelming majority of my students have always trusted me to listen to their concerns, because from their point of view I was never perceived as the teacher who would shut up, say nothing that was politically incorrect and let administrators do their job – because many have only attained such positions by being highly adept at being politicians themselves, and therefore either don’t – or won’t – perform their duties whenever there is a risk of negative public reaction. 
Several examples stand out in a career spanning some 21 of my last 40 years, such as my propensity to tell “helicopter parents” to stop enabling their kids’ lack of respect for the learning process. Such discussion is usually followed up by my being “visited” by the school’s “concerned” Principal or a school board official that just happened to be a neighbour of that parent.
Reporting an assault on a student, particularly one of a sexual nature, is even more challenging. Despite our teacher’s Code of Conduct requiring us to immediately report such incidents to school authorities and the police, in the three incidents that I personally documented, NO police file was ever opened or even made known to local police.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves; if even educators are hesitant to morally and correctly respond to the problems being created within a population of students whose own social reactions are primarily triggered by worrying about potential violence and a future of economic and social malaise, and they in turn are parented by persons misdirecting their own rage at the school in general instead of the political instrument that created residential regimens, why does the Moe-led government now insist prior to our upcoming 2024 election, upon blaming these kids for their allegedly “creating” the mythical crime wave he’s now introducing as potentially “solvable” by quack legislation such as the Saskatchewan First Act?
The irony here is that so-called “white” kids share the same political concerns as do their Indigenous twins: the increasingly violent weather patterns induced by climate change, wondering why their skin colour is the only factor in determining their eventual social status and employability, or even being able to afford continuing their education beyond the 24 credit “fundamental graduate requirement” so as to be able to compete in emerging and diverse economic markets.
But the Sask Party doesn’t listen to adults, either. Now we’ve reached the point where we’re literally begging him to sit down and consider the ideas formulated by our offspring, but the only reaction we’re getting is that we’re just “forcing” these kids to think as “lefties”, “commies” and worst of all – Libs or Dippers? Good luck, Chicken Little…
Such a transformation of thought that would require the Party’s male leadership to give its head a clear and conscious shake.

Prior to August 26th, if one of my friends had asked me if I’d ever heard of someone named “Elliot McDavid”, I most likely would have said “No”, and followed it up with some cutting wisecrack as to my friend spending too much time on the Edmonton Oilers web site and Ancestry.com tracing the lineage of his favourite players. Now, I not only know who this man is, but am beginning to wonder when Canadians in general are going to realize that, unlike our previous friendly condescension of American politics and values, we now have as many know-nothing “intellectuals” spouting nonsense and assaulting our sense of free speech as does the Donald Trump rendition of the Republican Party.
For those of you not aware of this thug’s “history”, on that very Friday, just as Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was walking into an elevator in Grande Prairie’s City Hall for a meeting with the Mayor, McDavid entered the lobby, shouted her name, then proceeded to verbally abuse her, shouting among other things, “What the f* are you doing in Alberta? You fing traitor; fing bitch; get the f* out of the province.”
Were this to have happened to ANY woman in, say, a sleepy and deeply religious rural community such as Premier Moe’s own Rosthern, this man would now be facing assault charges and possibly being confined to the local Crowbar Hotel until trial. However, this is Alberta, where the currently governing United Conservative Party is having its own leadership race to replace Jason Kenney, whose own jingoistic political verbiage and that of the candidates to replace him, Danielle Smith and Brian Jean, continue to insinuate that Ottawa is the one true enemy of an Alberta striving to attain economic and social justice for its belaboured and constantly harangued citizenry.
“The Tyee” investigative reporter Charles Rusnell recently and brilliantly described this sickening tactic being used by the political right, “rage farming”, to enhance their political standings. Out here in the fly-over province we have a premier busily trolling the fertile waters of the rebranded “Carbon Convoy” thanking them for their continued support in creating humiliating scenarios for the federal government and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Empowered by an increased but temporary oil royalty stream created by the war between Russia and Ukraine, they have now announced that such manna will be shared by all of our “taxpaying” subjects in the form of $500 cheques – bribing us with our own money.
The outcome of our ingesting this nonsense of historical misinterpretation is that now the political process becomes a Petri dish of deviant opportunity to portray those whose thoughts do not follow the same logical pathway as our own in a less favourable continuum. If this platform script does not immediately lead to victory, we now no longer criticize the platform from which we preached its potential value, but instead challenge the sermon that delivered its message – and it is THIS form of inverted and illogical thinking that now leaves Canada’s conservative voices to, for the THIRD time in less than five years, trying to install Pierre Poilievre as the reincarnation of the former, much despised Prime Minister Stephen Harper. 
It was Harper’s “manifest destiny” to turn the Liberal Party of Canada into an irrelevancy. In 2015 he attempted to deliver his coup de grace to an immature and thoroughly unprepared newly elected leader, Justin Trudeau, by ridiculing his potential weakness to not only understand Liberal policy objectives, but implement them to the satisfaction of Canadian voters. He failed – miserably so, simply because the tactic sickened Canadian voters who were growing tired of Harper’s own arrogance. By Poilievre continuing today to preach this message of contempt plagiarized from Harper, he is assuring us that Canada will have NO prime minister in this country for at least the next 10 years that is NOT a Liberal.
From Russnel’s perspective, McDavid is the perfect pawn spreading Poilievre’s message, for he exudes no philosophy to call his own. Ms. Freeland is “selling out the country”. How – by failing to acknowledge the loss of invisible “rights” to which Saskatchewan’s “Karen” Party perceive as incontrovertibly “lost” to Canadians, and whose nonsense Saskatchewan Rivers MLA Nadine Wilson now wants to give voice? And are his thoughts about the alleged thousands upon thousands of children who allegedly are dead from receiving an anti-Covid vaccine more “real” than the actual thousands of such graves being interred on the grounds of Canada’s former residential schools?
Mr. McDavid is no intellectual giant; he merely feeds his mind with the droppings of an extreme right movement that believes “change”, no matter how good for ourselves, our nation or our planet, must be violently opposed. He is not alone, and more to the point, his unhinged “maleness” does not just mean that we should just be focusing our attention upon the violence projected in his attack against Freeland.
Why aren’t we also calling into question the behaviour of the woman who ACCOMPANIED McDavid as he verbally abused Ms. Freeland, ending his diatribe by saying, “You’re not welcome here,” then snapping a picture of the women huddling in fear in the City Hall’s elevator, waiting for someone to rescue them from this ordeal? To many of my women friends, the very idea of this picture eventually ending up on some page of an extremist dark web site – which it will – is as psychologically damaging as intimate pictures of themselves meeting the same end.
McDavid may be all that he is ascribed to be: misogynist, bully, coward, brainwashed, unthinking follower, and contemptuous of the evolution in defining human rights, but the term “incel” does not apply to this couple’s behaviour. He is but part of a movement that feeds on perceived slights, and is supplemented in his violent psychological weaponry by women in a political war about which most Canadians know nothing about and have no idea what its effects may be should this “side” win.
Unfortunately, Mr. Poilievre knows that people aren’t listening to what he is really saying as opposed to what it is that he’s attacking. And unfortunately, that makes him and the soulmates who will vote for this intellectual imposter even more dangerous than either McDavid and his female partner ever could hope to be.

Anyone who is a political junkie now knows that during this past week the FBI conducted an extensive search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The intention was to retrieve government documents that Trump had squirreled away from the White House and Oval Office, and which rightfully should have been turned over to the historical records section of the Library of Congress.
Republicans first reacted to the search as being nothing more than an out-of-control Biden administration deliberately using the American judicial system as a weapon targeting a former political adversary, Donald Trump, who two years later is still peddling the myth that he actually won the 2020 presidential race, and is even now seriously thinking of re-running for the Presidency in 2024. Six weeks ago when inflation was hitting the 8 per cent barrier, gas prices were at a premium, Roe v Wade had just been overturned and there were still widespread delays holding back inventory restocking and product shortages, Republicans held a strategic advantage in political sway over a Biden administration that couldn’t get any reasonable legislation through Congress, and seemed destined to retake the majority in the House of Representatives in the upcoming mid-term elections.
Six weeks ago when Trump was no longer the major headline in virtually every political story in the U.S., Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was gaining traction for a run as a presidential candidate, ironically utilizing the hate-mongering rhetoric of white persecution, critical race theory influence upon historical reality, transgender rights denial and “woke” school teachers failing to teach students about “the real America”. Now he sullenly awaits on the sidelines as the media treats him as an afterthought to Trump, and the various and sundry knuckle dragging members of America’s extremist groups “lock and load” in preparation for what they see as the civil war that must be fought in order for their “rights to be restored.” 
Meanwhile, Biden’s ratings are now soaring, as inflation is now rapidly receding, gas prices are coming down as Russia’s campaign against Ukraine appears to be stalling, and now Congress has passed two bills, one dealing (only on a minor level, though) with strengthening gun control legislation, while the Senate has finally found a majority willing to pass an extensive budget (again, well pared down below progressive membership expectations) to address climate change, prescription drug prices and simple tax reform.
Here in Canada, our conservative factions were using the same weaponry, firearms, inflation and supply chain management issues to pillory the federal Liberals led by PM Justin Trudeau. Here, however, these problems were increasingly being dwarfed by a post-Covid pandemic cataclysm that has seen our health care systems laid to waste by nurse and doctor burn-out, massive resignations and the closures of various medical emergency services that serve as the heartbeat of our health care delivery. Compounding these troubling issues, we have seen the three premiers in Canada who had until recently prioritized the federally implemented “carbon tax” as their number one concern – Ontario’s Doug Ford, Alberta’s Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe – see their systems having crashed the most in attempting to serve public needs. 
In an effort to maintain a foothold in its voter base, the Saskatchewan Party and Premier Moe have further enraged public sentiment by formulating policies that pander to the factions of hard right voters supporting among other things the Freedom Convoy assault upon Ottawa and the self-serving efforts of a still powerful petroleum lobby. Moe and Kenney in particular have been gainfully assisted in their choosing to maintain focus upon the infrastructure of Big Oil by the seemingly endless rising of crude oil prices that have allowed their provincial budgets to increase royalty payment for product extraction. 
Saskatchewan in particular continues to face a future in which the relative value of the petroleum industry will wane as the after-effects of climate change expose our rural community’s inability to adapt agricultural practices necessary to help continue to feed our planet’s now-population of more than 8 billion people. Equally ironic, we continue to embrace an economic system whose level of success is only measured by its ability to expand production levels and resource exploitation, and discrepancy in the distribution of wealth between the richest and poorest among us has only ever attained such a gap during the era of the French Revolution in the late 1700’s.
Voters in Saskatchewan are slowly yet surely turning their attention towards what needs to be done to correct the economic direction of this province, not to mention restore the integrity of a health care system this province helped to shape for the nation. Premier Moe’s popularity is now at a level only moderately better than that of our Prime Minister, of whom Moe desperately continues to point fingers at as being the primary source of our various failings. More to his chagrin, this stubborn unwillingness to change our economic direction is resulting in MLA’s in many regions of this province now considering their futures as politicians as the 2024 election approaches, and none so than here in the Prince Albert region.
Were you to have come into Prince Albert along Highway 3 coming from Birch Hills, Melfort or Muskoday, you would have noticed a change in the billboards advertising for the Saskatchewan Party. A billboard once featuring Prince Albert MLA’s Joe Hargrave and Alana Ross locked in sweet embrace with the premier in a sign of machismo “strength” is gone, replaced by the now lonely features of former Minister of almost everything that could impede economic promise for the north, that being Mr. Hargrave. 
With Hargrave’s “California Dreaming” adventures over last year’s trip during a major Covid crisis, it was already written somewhere that he wasn’t going to be able to sustain another attempt at remaining MLA for Prince Albert Carleton, and has probably already given his notice to the Party’s Executive. Ms. Ross, on the other hand, has never been given any opportunity to project a meaningful presence in the policies being offered by the provincial government.
When combined with Nadine Wilson’s embracing the vote of our “Karen” population, Delbert Kirsch’s continuing invisibility in Batoche issues, and the premier receiving increased censure within his own riding that recently saw Shellbrook hospital facilities momentarily come close to closure, the Saskatchewan Party’s focus upon the actual northern border of the province being some invisible line just north of Rosthern, Carla Beck may not have to wait too long after all before finally becoming the premier that is, like Roy Romanow, having to show the way to the rest of the province in how to govern effectively.
My advice to Premier Moe: Keep blaming Justin, young fellow; that tactic is really paying dividends for you, don’t you think?
Probably not…

I’ve have almost always believed in the idea that the abstract randomness of thought processes is the greatest source of revelation to the soul of man. I don’t know what I mean by that; it sounds “intelligent”, at least, so perhaps going through one of my more recent mulling-over as to what I should be griping about this week might better illustrate the point I’m trying to convey.

As a mathematics teacher, I lean heavily upon Piaget’s theories on the development of cognitive behaviour – the study of actions one takes when encountering a problem whose influence upon one’s personal choices. Without trying to oversimplify its process, it goes something like this. Our learning for the purpose of survival takes place in four distinct stages. First comes the “innate” stage, that knowledge or skill set you bring with you when you are born. This is then followed by the acquisition of “rote” knowledge, facts that don’t really require much effort in the way of learning, sort of like listening to your parents if you want to survive teen-hood without being grounded, and which you can repeat in your sleep – I’d say like learning the Seven-times table, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The latter two stages, however, force us to consider resolving the basic problems of life on our own, or more academically stated as “applying of stored knowledge to the resolution of an existing problem and resolving its difficulties”. Personally speaking, however, I am finding that the selective watering-down of educational objectives, not to mention the influence of “helicopter” parents who believe that their rug-rats must be protected from all manner of evil, including the learning of knowledge application so as to continue to evolve as a species is creating future generations of drones who, as George Orwell predicted, when performing at their selectively acquired skill level as did his elevator operator, seeing the sunlight just as he opens the door to say “Roof”, marvels at the view, only to be perplexed at the lack of fulfillment that settles upon him as the machine again heads towards the lower floors.

I blame this pessimistic perception of reality based upon what I see daily in the actions of those around me, be it in their acceptance of knowledge being delivered in so-called “sound bites” (once being of 30 second duration, now shrinking even further to 15 seconds) and the Facebook Disinformation Network (also known as “Chat” and “social media”) which has shrunk our attention span to that of a gerbil in panic mode.

I can readily cite two such Pavlovian responses I’ve received from Saskatchewan Party “heavyweights” Joe Hargrave and Don Morgan: “tut-tut” rebukes of my perceptions as to the direction provincial politics is taking. To them, IF their wards (we, the voting public) momentarily escape the comfortable domain of our Skinnerian boxes by considering my words, they may be “cured” of the contagion by simply being reminded that I, who returns to the province in which I was born so as to bring this “foreign” knowledge to the masses, am regrettably “infected” with the “NDP “virus”.

This one-line denunciation is often found in lively political conversations on social media, where Skinner outcasts also dare to question the direction in which the Sask Party is dragging us, only to be rebuked by the various trolls defending the Bible of Jason Kenney Worship as preached by Mr. Moe and Co. As well, it is carried forward with even more venom in public, punctuated by acts of incivility and contempt upon those who are trying to understand why we put up with the childish behaviour.

One such incident of note recently came from a participant in a Shellbrook riding coffee klatch – the domain of our own premier. It went something like this: “Ryan Meili was raised in rural Saskatchewan, but still decided to “wash the s**t off his boots and abandon farmers.” I don’t suppose that the creator of that particular gem would care to comment upon the fact that Scott Moe grew up on a farm, but couldn’t even use that life skill to become a success at its practice. But no, when you’re in Opposition to the Sask Party, you either have to be damned, or worse, pitied, as was the tenor of a recent article penned by the Leader Post’s Murray Mandryk focusing upon the alleged “inability” of then-NDP leader Dr. Ryan Meili to deliver the Party’s message to voters.

Dr. Meili has admitted that his failing was that as leader he was almost forced to become the “attack dog” for the NDP. Personally, I think that this self-criticism ignores the reality of a government only too willing to pick on character nits. For instance, he had a women’s caucus to include Prince Albert’s Nicole Rancourt, Cathy Sproule and Danielle Chartier, as well as Nicole Sarauer and Carla Beck only too willing to leave blood and carnage on the Legislature floor; unfortunately, government MLA’s only perceived them as “chihuahuas”, readily excited by the roles they played in public, but perfectly behaved and willing to take notes when attending the Saskatchewan Party’s Executive meetings, as once did Nadine Wilson, or readily disposed of as was Jennifer Campeau, who while being courted by Brad Wall to fulfil a purpose within the Party, was booted when she dared to ask just what that role for her might be.

In Piaget’s scheme, however, there is a fourth dimension to learning, that being the abstract, the capacity to examine a problem for which there has never been a solution, and utilize the knowledge of application to resolve such dilemma. In the two women who seek the leadership of the NDP, Carla Beck and Kaitlyn Harvey, we already have two individuals who have achieved the ability to resolve issues of concern that the Sask Party itself helped to create, in particular those of an educational nature, the environment and climate change, and in the full and complete knowledge that rural Saskatchewan is finally coming to the realization that doing nothing but whine about Justin and his issues, as regularly does Scott Moe, is not helping to solve Saskatchewan-based concerns.

Their bites will be delivered in silence, with only the words of their policy outlines creating havoc for lack of response coming from the Saskatchewan Party remains – especially when both will inevitably be elected to the Legislature in 2024.

Considering my age, my “bark” will only be perceived as a sigh of relief.

I am becoming increasingly buoyed by the reality of some members of the “ruling class” are starting to read my column with increasing regularity – at least, if the phone calls I’ve recently received respecting my rebuttal (Daily Herald, April 30, 2022) to Mr. Joe Hargrave’s contention that the Chamber of Commerce luncheon with the premier and Minister of Finance was preordained to be negative in tone (Daily Herald, April 27, 2022).
I will admit that there weren’t “yet” any endorsements for the NDP (the party for which I am supposed to be some puppet writer being fed story lines, observations and commentary) in those calls. Still, when a realtor calls to thank me for bringing up the lack of housing stock in the city, and the grief that issue caused when Weyerhaeuser acted like it was riding the white horse of economic salvation into the city, I don’t know what to say.
Mr. Hargrave may have seen it his duty to protect the government by writing his April 27th editorial column. Seriously, though, did our P.A. Carleton MLA not foresee that the Saskatchewan Party trying to turn this luncheon into a “Don’t worry, be happy” campaign event and NOT risk bringing out the boo-birds, cynics and individuals hurting from the government’s uninspiring attempts to manage a Covid pandemic?
Were anyone else other than Premier Scott Moe headlining this event with the Minister of Finance, I can see where the luncheon could have had its positive message appreciated – except for the fact that, irrespective of place or circumstance, Moe insists upon pouring gasoline on fires already out of control.
I have long held the belief that the Saskatchewan Party has NO one on the premier’s staff who either advises “caution” when answering certain queries, or simply “taking away the keys” by cutting off question periods when they wander into sensitive areas. Even “that deaf, dumb and blind man” popularized by The Who could have foreseen that someone within the audience at that luncheon would bring up the topic of climate change. Still, the Premier claims that “a lot of folks come to me and say, ‘Hey, you guys have the highest carbon emissions per capita’, I don’t care.”
To say that this is a slap in the face of rural producers having to reduce herd size or sell land so as to provide any opportunity to get a crop into the ground due to last summer’s serious drought conditions is an understatement. When you’re sitting on the sidelines watching the price of fuel rise as a result of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, it’s not hard to think about the approximately $0.11 per litre of fuel that we’re paying that goes to the carbon tax levy.
Four years ago, the Saskatchewan government, along with Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario pretended that there were far more pressing issues to be concerned about than climate change to worry about. Now, even as we are currently being subjected to the influence of the Ukraine conflict affecting fuel prices in general, the Premier now wants us to again believe that the Saskatchewan Party’s asinine argument from the last election maintaining that it was the carbon tax alone that had rural producers struggling to make ends meet is pure Science Fiction.
I am particularly depressed by the incantations of spokespersons from the Agriculture Producers Association of Saskatchewan constantly getting sucked into this sinkhole. Ian Boxall, who is the current president of APAS, recently was quoted in a Canadian Press article (“Pinched Saskatchewan farmers decry carbon tax hike”, April 2, 2022) that farmers are tired of hearing that such costs can be defrayed by tax breaks, and that even before this hike, the average producer was paying approximately $10,000 more in supplementary fuel costs, mostly due to other suppliers inflating the cost of goods, especially transportation, by inserting supplementary line costs highlighting this item as the “reason” for their own inflationary increases in the pricing of goods and services.
Urban voters are seeing the same thing occur with the price increases of food, particularly bread and cereal products, so that Mr. Boxall’s observation has considerable merit. However, when it comes to examining a budgetary response to how climate change can impact a producer’s revenue stream, considering the size of today’s agricultural enterprises, that $10,000 is less than half of one percent of operating costs for the producer.
Many farmers having had to absorb a $10,000 “hit” in crop failure loss from as little as 20 acres (about 8 hectares) yield depreciation, or just over $300,000 per section. When you add to this herd culling costs over selling 20% or more of your inventory so that you can stay in business this year, the carbon tax rates right up there with a mosquito bite on the carcass of a bull elephant. Add to this the fact that SGI rate increases for crop loss – an item that can be controlled by our government – are higher costs to producers, but I don’t see the government caring all that much about farm “costs”.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that APAS spokespersons have been conned. In November of 2018, I wrote an article wherein that organization maintained that a $50 per metric tonne would add $2/acre to nitrogen fertilizer costs. Fertilizer Canada officials were dumbfounded, noting that were the federal government to implement a carbon offset program rewarding farmers for employing the 4R nutrient stewardship program, that move alone would reduce Saskatchewan’s greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 2 metric tonnes per year.
Instead of having his observations misrepresented by Saskatchewan Party politicians, Mr. Boxall could do a lot more for this province’s population, rural and urban, by simply insisting that the government cease its stupidity in attempting to sell climate change as “no big deal”. I know ridings in rural Saskatchewan where, if he were to take such an approach, the local NDP Executive might consider asking him to run as a party candidate in the next election.
Such a move might put APAS’s “neutrality” to a test, but when you have a current government touting nonsense and science fiction as party policy, we need that type of wake-up call from rural Saskatchewan voters.

The Freedom Convoy is now gone, a by-product of minds that questioned the values of our institutions, only to find that their interpretation of what “freedom” truly means could never be reflected in the administration of our own democracy. Most Canadians already had some sense that this would be the end result of the truckers’ mission to Ottawa, even from the convoy’s very beginning. However, those not part of the following of yellow jackets, unemployed oil field workers and constitutional illiterates convinced by our premier that the imposition of a petroleum fuel-based “carbon tax” in Saskatchewan was federal overreach, joined nonetheless.

It is almost impossible to gauge the depth of loathing that the Conservatives, have been able to install, and the  doubt as to our ability to survive as a democracy unless we are following their increasingly extremist principles. Unfortunately, this contempt is itself fueled by the existence of the still very young son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who had little problem telling the unenlightened or boringly uninformed at what stop on the political train’s rigid schedule they could get off, even if that station no longer existed.

Son Justin, unfortunately, while inheriting his father’s stronger intellectual genes, neither exudes his father’s strength nor his “likeability”. These micro-perceived weaknesses have thus allowed western Canadian “conservatives” to ratchet up their levels of personal disdain, already pre-heated by the father’s previous policy implementations. This is particularly true of the National Energy Program, and made even more aggravating by the fact that were it now in place, we would have both our energy independence and ability to distribute our natural petroleum resources on terms favourable to all Canadians.

The emergence of a buffoon U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016 only made the PM seem even weaker when shortly after being elected he demanded that the North American Free Trade Agreement be rewritten to better embrace the isolationist “Buy American” sentiments of his extremist right-wing Republican colleagues. Premier Scott Moe’s vacillating over creating an agenda to have Saskatchewan fight climate change didn’t help, either. Finally growing weary of the Saskatchewan Party’s dithering, the federal government imposed its now infamous “carbon tax” upon our petroleum worshipping populace, and the constitutional war featuring Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario against “overreach” was begun. Trudeau won that battle, but by that time not even buying a pipeline for Alberta’s harried exporters of bitumen could get him out of the cauldron of hate that both Moe and Alberta’s Jason Kenney were now heating with their excessive natural resource.

The behaviour exuded by the very first convoy of blowhards protesting the imposition of the carbon tax should have portended what would happen in excess were the “Covid-19 Pandemic Express” come into being; however, it now seems that people’s ability to extract knowledge from the gibberish spewed by professional disseminators of misinformation such as Pat King. Tamara Lich or Ben Dichter was also impaired by Covid, or rather, the length of time that this pandemic has laid havoc upon our normal patterns of behaviour. Thus, given by the lack of police preparedness the trucker convoy’s participants perceived when they first arrived at the gates of Ottawa, the reign of chaos was inevitable.

It is now obvious that Ontario premier Doug Ford vacated his own responsibilities for protecting the people of Ottawa from the harassment they inevitably received from the thugs among the convoy’s participants. Whether this was a gross misinterpretation of the federal government’s anticipated part in pursuing such a protective role or whether it was a deliberate attempt to further undermine the credibility of the PM will probably never come to light. In the case of the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor being blocked, however, it did not take long for the premier to see the light of lost business and investment light up the economic scoreboard before the OPP and supporting officers from across Ontario had the entire blockade dealt with and dispersed.

By the time Windsor’s population had calmed down, the RCMP in Coutts, AB were cracking open an arms cache. Only then did the Ottawa police commission find some urgency in dispersing an increasingly unruly mob of what were now perceived as insurrectionists from its streets – and even then, there were still parents weaponizing their children to hold the police lines in abeyance as they tried to remove the remaining resisters, and believing that their “cause” – to either eliminate all Covid-related mandates from the provinces, or replace the federal government – were still achievable goals.

Since then, the continuing saga of the convoy’s leaders dealing with authority figures has created a myriad assortment of jokes and “I told you so” stories that, were the Russians not now invading Ukraine might still not be having any effect upon Canadians. Indeed, even here in Prince Albert, Melanie Markling is still trying to organize protests to highlight the “cause and purpose” of the convoy’s originally expected intentions.

In typical fashion, Premier Moe has disavowed any insinuation of his “follow me” actions in sticking to the laissez-faire policies of Alberta’s Jason Kenney. Indeed, his contention that there were no blockades affecting Saskatchewan border crossings should be making people ask the question, “Isn’t that because, thanks to your incompetent handling of our economy, your inability to diversify its roots, or the reality that your mishandling of a dangerous growth in climate change disasters has been further compromised by your obsequious pandering to American petroleum interests and the Wexit faction within your own party, merely means that we haven’t an economy that could be any worse damaged by such a blockade?”

The now diminished mobs of 20 or less persons led by Ms. Markling desire to have our citizens “learn to live” within the constraints of this ongoing pandemic defy reality, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that this province is headed nowhere but down so long as people keep on believing that the Saskatchewan Party “has a plan” to fix everything.

They don’t – and the worst thing about all of this is that it took an attack by Russia upon Ukraine for the majority of us to finally conclude that the only barrier to our own “freedom”, or lack thereof, is for us to actually understand what it’s like should we ever actually lose it.

OPINION

Here we are into Week Four of the so-called “Freedom Convoy” occupation of Ottawa, and the news coming out of Bytown hasn’t changed one iota. Sure, the Ottawa Police Board has a totally new membership, the Chief of Police, Peter Sloly has resigned in disgrace, only to be replaced by Steve Bell, who but for his well-shaved head, could be used as a stunt double for Ontario premier Doug Ford. Then, up on The Hill we have western Canada’s favourite Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau who, by introducing the new Emergency Measures Act, is now in the process of creating what, at least in the Conservative Party of Canada’s brain trust minds, a dangerous threat to our democracy.
To be honest about it, the Ottawa occupation story is starting to sound more and more like some watered-down version of the January 6th insurrection in Washington, DC, where indignant Trump supporters demanded that Mike Pence overturn the November election results and return The Donald to the White House throne room. Here in Canada, Pence is replaced by the Governor General, who is currently still trying to recover from a crippling bout of laughing hysteria at even the suggestion of turning our nation over to a group of unelected thugs. In Washington, a slow response to the riotous conditions that were getting worse at the Capitol is plagiarized by a Chief of Police (Sloly) and a fairly silent but influential coterie of Ottawa police officers and a Police Commission calling for “restraint”, even as some of the officers apparently were diffident with respect to their duty to maintain law and order during the convoy’s occupation of the downtown. And THEN…
Not to be outdone in its lack of originality as a story, we also have our official Party of Hate, the CPC, currently led by Candice Bergen (without her wearing her now-favourite MAGA hat, unfortunately), raging about the Emergency Powers legislation being “overreach”, even as her sidekick, Pierre Poilievre, continues to demand that all Canadian governments cancel their COVID-related mandates and allow the Ottawa lawless hordes to continue their “peaceful” protest and occupation – just not in places where “real” commerce is being practiced and unduly affecting hundreds of thousands of Canadians trying to put bread on the table, as was the case in Windsor, Ont.
The Ottawa scenario is providing some amazing fodder for creative writers, who now see the possibility of churning out an Oscar-winning four-hour comedic thriller starring Saskatchewan’s very own Kim Coates. Consider, if you will, the items of “minor” interest coming to the fore in this debacle: the announcement last week coming from the “Organizing Committee” of the convoy to await the “expose” of intrigue, subterfuge and “Communist” affiliation with the membership of the “Every Child Matters” movement, the arms cache seized by the RCMP near the U.S. border in Alberta, or that truck stolen in Peterborough, ON laden with firearms that no one knows where it went because the shipper was too stupid to wire the shipment with a copious amount of GPS trackers. And then there’s that money being raised at an allegedly “Christian” web site called “GiveSendGo” from anonymous American donors to support the truckers’ freedom march, springing into action after the normally used “GoFundMe” site shut down its own funding mechanism following allegations of fraud and corruption in the money’s utilization by the Freedom Convoy’s “organizers”…
There you have it – a blockbuster that makes the “Godfather” series look like a minor 7-11 hold-up by teenagers using water pistols.
It’s bloody hard for me not to be cynical as to what is now happening in our capital, and threatens to spread even wider as the protest tries to increase its momentum in exacerbating chaos. The participants in this charade are simultaneously trying to feed the Canadian public their own version of the Canadian identity, while dabbling in the time-honoured practice of revisionism. For anyone unfamiliar with the exact meaning of that word, one must remember how it came to be utilized, especially by those professing to be “true Communists”. Leon Trotsky correctly noted that Karl Marx’s economic revolution that would henceforth become known as the rise and “dictatorship of the proletariat” could not possibly have occurred around 1914, because Mother Russia was still a feudal state, not an industrialized one (the same also applies to the Maoist revolution that occurred in China following World War II), so perhaps the party’s attempts to govern by the utilization of work “committees” was a tad premature. Uncle Joe Stalin, not wishing to hear such nonsensical rhetoric, promptly had one of his assassin teams dispatch friend Leon to Workers’ Heaven, leaving our less educated politicians to continue to utilize the word “Communist” as though they knew what the word stands for and actually means in theoretical practice.
This inability of today’s Conservative Party leadership to think for itself, much less articulate policies that sound more “Canadian”, has resulted in the proliferation of hate-spewed rhetoric that their fellow “conservatives” such as Jason Kenney regularly feed our media sources. In that process, their leadership has chosen as their mantra “Blame it all on Justin”, even though it was Pierre Poilievre’s feeble-minded rewriting of the Election Act that spurred Canadians to totally reject the notion of Stephen Harper ever again becoming our duly elected Prime Minister.
So, what does our blessed Party of Hate come up with? Well, now they’re producing their own version of revisionist history by promoting Poilievre as the new Messiah of the party. They are simultaneously burying his past record of having been the one shoving the dagger into the hopes of there ever being another Conservative-led Parliament, and leaving us with the old and stale Natural Governing Party – the Liberals – to rule the federal jurisdictional waves.
The Conservatives will tell you that it is the NDP that is doing the political roll-over act by supporting the declaration of the Emergency Powers Act, when they were once against the imposition of the War Measures Act under the PM’s father, Pierre Trudeau. This ignores the reality of a few hundred trucks honking their horns whenever they feel like it are tactics used by so-called “rebel forces” promoting insurrection and government overthrow to demoralize populations.
Our very own MP, Randy Hoback, claims to support the truckers’ cause, while citing opposition from the provinces (Alberta and Saskatchewan, of course) as cause to reflect upon the potential damage done to our constitutional rights should that Act be proclaimed. He’s wrong about this – dead wrong. The ONLY way to resolve this situation is for ALL parties to stop this asinine bickering and one-upmanship and delivering a solution to the Canadian public that satisfies the majority of all Canadians’ expectations for proper governance.
Based upon the behaviour of Poilievre and Bergen, however, don’t expect that to happen any time soon.

My father’s generation had this rather cute saying for anyone who’d pushed the limits of tolerance in their behavior: “Hanging’s too good for him; he needs a swift kick in the ass.” That, in essence, is how I am feeling about the truckers’ so-called “Freedom Convoy” now turning downtown Ottawa and Windsor into public toilets and lawless districts.

At the risk of sounding obvious, I don’t know of a single friend, relation or down-and-outer who’s NOT sick and tired of the health care mandates; however, an overwhelming majority of Canadians are still prepared to respect such decisions. Nonetheless, neither our exalted premier nor his Alberta friend Jason Kenney, see fit to honour such responsibility, deserting even their once loyal carbon tax ally and Ontario premier Doug Ford in siding with the leaders of this trucker insurrection to impose chaos and anarchy in the cities that this convoy has seen fit to occupy.

Neither Moe nor Kenney are alone in capitulating to this convoy’s leadership and anti-democratic agenda. Leading this parade is none other than Pierre Poilievre, the fluently bilingual Conservative MP for the Ottawa suburb of Carleton and Candice Bergen, MP for Manitoba’s Portage-Lisgar riding. Bergen, only recently appointed as Interim Leader of the Opposition after the Conservative Party caucus finished feasting on the carcass of former leader Erin O’Toole, hides her political opinions under the veil of the MAGA hat she now regularly models, as if the camouflage pattern and colouring masks her more extremist sentiments. Poilievre, on the other hand, is the type of politician that were you to shake his hand, you might want to recount the rings on your fingers after the grip’s release.

Having already tossed his hat into the ring of “contenders” for the deposed O’Toole’s former job, Poilievre is already being acknowledged as the most likely to become the next official party “leader”. Less known about this smooth-talking salesman is that under Stephen Harper, he was specifically chosen to rewrite Canada’s Election Act to address the mythical notion within “conservative” (read as “American Republicans”) circles of the country’s electoral system being plagued by “voter fraud”. He did such a good job in inserting clauses into what would laughingly become the “Fair” Elections Act that it not only had potentially negative effects upon Indigenous individuals living on reserve, transients, apartment dwellers, the homeless, and immigrant families only having recently achieved citizenship, that Harper was forced to have him rewrite large portions of the bill eventually passed by Parliament.

The backlash to Poilievre’s work was so overwhelming that two movements sprang up in opposition: the NDP’s “Stop Harper” campaign, led by Tom Mulcair, acknowledged by virtually all media reporters in Canada as the best leader of the Opposition since John Diefenbaker, and the panic-induced Liberal strategy for having electors strategically vote for “ABC” – Anyone But a Conservative candidate that was the better likely to defeat Mr. Harper’s chosen candidate. In the end, the entire Liberal Party was taken off life support, and Justin Trudeau became our Prime Minister.

Unfortunately, there is also this common phrase that periodically makes its mundane point, namely that “You can’t keep a good man down” – and with former leader Erin O’Toole now fully devoured by caucus, Mr. Poilievre is the frontrunner in a race that may well become a leadership coronation. He has done so by, in the words of one Globe and Mail columnist, ladening his declaration speech with copious references to “freedom” and patriotic commitment to resisting “unnecessary” health mandates and vaccination requirements in the nation’s attempt to rid us of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It would have been nice if the congregation to which Mr. Poilievre was directing this speech understood the meaning of the “F” word they were using as a front for their protest, but they don’t. Were such standards understood, the convoy drivers wouldn’t have left their female companions alone to practice their victory dance routines on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, much less try to break the artificial limb off Ottawa’s statue of cancer cure walker Terry Fox.

As for their own asinine behaviour in honking their air horns at three in the morning, assaulting mostly women wearing masks in public, or revving their diesel engines so as to raise the pollution index to an intolerable level in downtown, the convoy participants’ contempt for fellow citizens (most of whom are also tired of having to live through this pandemic but at least have the intelligence to recognize it not going away unless we take even more serious measures to stop its spread) was held aloft without any sense of embarrassment, much less shame.

Equally sickening was watching one middle-aged male convoy member break into tears on a CBC News piece on Wednesday, lamenting the “loss of freedoms” his family had suffered through since this pandemic alert was declared just under two years ago. Just once I would have liked a World War One survivor of battles on Vimy Ridge to be present to look this tear-stained fake and ask the question, “Are you serious?”

I wonder just how many Canadians know that the Canadian troops’ commanders for that assault, the British, let Canadian brigades into these killing fields to “soften up” the German troops holding the lines immovable before finally having their soldiers do “the real work” – only to see Canadians do what they considered to be the impossible.

More than 500,000 Canadians VOLUNTEERED to fight for freedom during World War Two, with almost half of them coming from the Prairies. The British army used Canadian troops as cannon fodder in the raid on Dieppe, and American commanders assigned the toughest landing zone in the Normandy landing on June 6, 1944 to our troops. Even in Afghanistan, Canadian troops were assigned to “police” the Kandahar region, deemed “uncontrollable” by the American military. THESE are the men and women who understand what fighting for freedom is all about, not a group of race-baiting cretins, anti-Semitic “pastors” quoting encouragement from Genesis or Revelations, con artists that have already absconded with close to $1 million in GoFundMe monies, and western separatists who aren’t even truckers, leading concerned individuals to protest what is most certainly a harsh economic time for them and every other Canadian.

For Poilievre and Bergen, however, it is a quest for power that leads them to seek the friendship and support of those organized this insurrection, and nothing else.

I wonder how many Canadians will remember their behaviour come the next election?

Like millions of other Canadian having had their lives torn apart by this pandemic, I am tired of listening to people whine about “lock-downs”, mask-wearing, or the “questionable” benefit of the three major vaccines currently being used to immunize us to the deadly effects created by the Covid-19 virus.

I sincerely believe that any politician, including our premier, who panders to such bleating should be removed from office. This doesn’t mean that I don’t understand public concern as to their ability to trust Big Pharma and its moral underpinnings of greed. However, this American giant of ethical impurities actually shared research notes with competitors in a fevered attempt to create THREE highly effective products with 85% effectiveness in developing antibodies to this disease.

Moreover, when taken twice, then “boosted”, these products give you a 94% chance or better for living should you still catch this disease. My cynicism notwithstanding, that’s better odds than you get on bar or casino slot machines.

What irks me even more is that only “celebrity” guests on right-wing cable news networks, many without credible medical credentials, question the efficacy of these products – even when they and their host talking heads are fully vaccinated themselves. One doesn’t need a Bill Gates nanobot in my bloodstream to expose the hypocrisy endemic in this Alex Jones / Q-Anon right-wing conspiracy campaign – even if I’m creating this column using Microsoft Word.

Here in Canada our extreme right-wing elements have their own theme for ridiculing the nation’s progress or lack thereof in minimizing the social and emotional side effects of this pandemic – “Blame Justin.” To Scott Moe and Jason Kenney, maintaining the support of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and anti-carbon tax adherents is essential to their remaining in power beyond the next political election. Independent MLA Nadine Wilson’s revised agenda to find some “inclusion of all” in “balancing” governmental action while protecting an ambiguous list of “human rights and privileges” is just a sideshow, and the only survival technique they can see working in Saskatchewan or Alberta is to keep up the hate campaign against the trust fund child of former PM Pierre Trudeau.

So far, the Prime Minister has been able to parry the Moe-Kenney agenda by prying fiscal hawk and Ontario premier Doug Ford away from continuing to support the two prairie premiers, even to the point of accepting an NDP voice in helping to fight this virus. However, here’s the problem with him having to devote so much time to creating effective health policies for Canada – as what occurred when the American media could not produce news broadcasts for four years without first leading with another Donald Trump story, stories that portend a more substantive effect upon our everyday lives are being lost in our coverage of the Covid media freak show.

We are currently facing the prospect of a global war erupting should the Russian army be directed by Vladimir Putin to invade the Ukraine. Are the inane babblings of Koch-funded shills writing economic “treatises” on “inflationary pressures” and a “spiraling federal deficit” more important than the prospect of our armed forces being drawn into a potential war – in partnership with a Trump-weakened American military and NATO partners now doubting the commitment of a nation once glorified as the world’s police force?

Meanwhile, here in Canada we stupidly turn our attention towards a conglomerate of long haul transport drivers intending to send still another “caravan” to Ottawa to “protest” being required to be double-vaccinated prior to crossing our international border with the U.S.A. These truckers aren’t members of a workers’” movement”, but merely recycled participants in Scott Moe’s heated rallies over Ottawa’s “imposition” of a carbon tax for the province. Their message is simple: governments imposing lock-downs, curfews and masking requirements are the weapons of “tyranny” imposed by government to restrict privileges they misrepresent as “rights and freedoms”.

This time around, all Canadians should ridicule the formation of this “truckers’ caravan” making its way towards Ottawa. These are not the same drivers who show courtesy and discipline on our highways – the real truckers interested in both their own safety and the protection of their clients’ healthy work environment saw the writing on the wall and voluntarily went out and got vaccinated when the first lock-downs occurred.

Gas stations should refuse to refuel vehicles associated with the convoy, and restaurant owners should think twice before staff end up being abused by their patrons when attempting to enforce provincial guidelines regarding masking. More to the point the media has to stop portraying their “protest” as some uprising inspired by Covid’s debilitating effects upon societal norms, when it is nothing more than a selfish expression of narcissistic libertarianism.

The fight against governmental actions taken while fighting the issues created by this pandemic are nothing more than a skirmish being fought by right-wing trolls intent upon maintaining control of political power. Issues involving the siege by Russia of the Ukraine, on the other hand, is a fight where once started, real bullets are fired from Russian and NATO guns – which is why you won’t be seeing any Oath-Keepers, Proud Boys, or persons in uniform with last names such as Trump, Gaetz, Taylor-Green, Bezos, or the grandsons of Mitch McConnell on the front lines of this skirmish. Only sons and daughters of minority groups truly believing in the democratic process will be performing those duties.

We do not need a repetition of news items showing our finest soldiers being returned to Canada for a final ride down “The Highway of Heroes” before being interred in a military graveyard. Vietnam and Afghanistan have destroyed whatever feelings remain for Americans to pretend that they are still “the land of the brave and the home of the free.” unfortunately, they are not alone in their cynicism – this has happened only because we’ve failed to realize that true “news” is NOT entertainment, but rather an expression of art pictorializing and narrating the events of history.

When our media again get around to embracing that principle, it will finally see the cessation of the cynicism that has those on both sides of a political narrative questioning its accuracy and worth.

Now might just be a good time for us all to wake up to this reality.