In one of my increasingly growing number of cynical moments, I was contemplating when the Saskatchewan  United Party would release its next list of irrelevant “issues” that would rile the good folk of Saskatchewan into a frenzy such as did set wildfires to burn in Lumsden Morse on Aug. 10.

I was almost willing to bet on their following their anti-LGBTQ theme by demanding that the provincial government refuse to allow any confectionary within a two-kilometer radius of a school to sell Chips Ahoy “Rainbow” cookies.

Don’t laugh, because a similar incident occurred in June of 2012 when Kraft Foods (manufacturers of Chips Ahoy) first ran an ad illustrating a seven-layer rainbow Oreo cookie to celebrate LGBT Pride month. Although the cookie was a fictional product (Too difficult to dunk in a glass of milk?), within mere hours following the ad’s publication a Facebook page appeared demanding a consumer boycott of the non-existent product, then later changing the context of the page to recommend that the boycott extend to the entire list of Kraft food products – simply because the company had dared to acknowledge the existence of a large “gay” community in the United States.

In today’s world, the creator of that Facebook page would  probably be elevated to the NHL Board of Governors. Now maybe that comment is a tad “cheesy”, but given the cash-strapped conditions of our current university attendees, were that same boycott option to reappear today how many Millennial-aged students would be willing to forsake their survival supply of twice-a-day Kraft Dinner meals to support the cause?

Here’s my point; ten years ago Canadian pundits chuckled about that page, and Canada would now have a few more internationally renowned comedians in Hollywood who make their living by highlighting stupidities American right-wingers adopt into their political agenda. NOW, however, we’re becoming overrun by malcontents, disinformation specialists, economic know-nothings, scientific illiterates and mirror gazers (“Karens”), who have all decided to evacuate their bat caves to form actual “political” entities supporting such stupidities. How else can you best describe the creation of absurdities such as Nadine Wilson’s Saskatchewan United Party and Alberta’s United Conservative Party, temporarily led by Danielle Smith.

The only difference between Wilson and Smith is that Smith creates her own political agenda, which Wilson AND Premier Moe both feel free to plagiarize. The problem is, after the UCP’s November 4^th annual weekend convention, Ms. Smith’s tenure as premier is now being threatened from within by Take Back Alberta, the creation of reactionary nobody David Parker, who already has had too many “Andy Warhol moments” on the Alberta political stage.

Parker can best be described as “a serious piece of work”. Once a staunch supporter of Smith’s predecessor Jason Kenney, that marriage ended the moment Kenney imposed a mandate for restrictions in social movement due to then disturbing increases in Covid-19 infections paralyzing the health care system. When Alberta Health Care recommended that people might wish to consider going back to wearing masks in October following a similar outbreak of Covid cases, Parker merely echoed University of Calgary’s scientific illiterate PoliSci professor Barry Cooper, claiming even N95 masks don’t work, while maintaining that such a recommendation “again show[ed] that a hostile and communist ideology has taken over our health-care system and is defying the democratic will of the people.”

Parker’s “realities” foresee an Alberta wherein “women ought to be at home having babies, not spending their days working [within a ‘stressful’ environment’]”. Equally “sagacious”, his opinion to “eradicate gender ideology” from schools is nothing more than a backhanded endorsement of Saskatchewan’s Bill 137, the inappropriately named “Parents’ Bill of Rights”. As to his opinion on climate change and global warming, he again takes a position supporting Cooper’s claim that those who “choose” to advance the seriousness of this global concern are nothing more than cultists.

In its November 6^th publication (https://thetyee.ca/Archive/weekly/, “The Tyee” contributors Graham Thomson and David Climenhaga literally did “freak-out” pieces over the range of resolutions that the TBA managed to have passed at the UCP convention. These include such “beauties” as the need to “eradicate diversity and inclusion offices at post-secondary institutions”, refuse to place trans women in women’s prisons (as if the male sexual response mechanism would work after months of taking hormone blockers),”defend the rights of those who chose not to be vaccinated,” “enshrining the right to bear arms”, opposing federal net-zero policies, banning ‘15-minute cities’ (the idea that virtually all amenities and employment opportunities within newer cities can be reached in under 15 minutes, thus allowing for greater population densities combined with less expenditures in infrastructure); banning solar farms, defunding supervised consumption sites, “letting parents censor school libraries;” and “allowing professionals to break ethics rules when they’re not on the clock” (i.e.: allow quack medical practitioners to tout their opinions and products without any scientific substantiation).

Quite naturally, Climenhaga concludes that the TBA would be laying waste to Premier Smith’s hopes of bringing fresh ideas for expanding Alberta’s economic clout by encouraging immigration and investment by these “new Canadians”. Citing political science professor Lisa Young (ironically, a colleague of Barry Cooper), he suggests that “new citizens…aren’t likely to vote for the UCP or anything like it if it advocates what Young calls ‘a heaping side dish of racism and discrimination’” – implying, quite naturally that immigrants that had previously considered settling in Alberta might now even have second thoughts after the province adopts these repressive measures through legislative action.

It is worth noting that even the most extreme of columnists know full well that Parker intends to utilize the TBA’s coup d’état of the UPC to force the party to implement most, if not all of the recommendations passed at convention, or the party, now controlled by TBA, would push her out of her leadership role. This may be good news for Alberta’s NDP, but ONLY if the media does not portray her ouster from leadership as her becoming a martyr to the cause of economic sagacity – a complete reversal of her current image, and a picture that should make even what’s left of Canada’s “traditional conservatives” double over in laughter.

What is certain, however, is that Parker’s binary sister, Nadine Wilson, will incorporate most of the TBA’s resolutions into SUP party’s 2024 platform; this in turn means that Premier Moe will also follow the TBA pathway so as to avoid further hemorrhage of his party base transferring their loyalty and vote to the Uniteds.

It should be obvious by now that the extreme right has no solution to offer the majority of voters who are sickeningly worried about the increasing cost of living, losing their home due to mortgage rate fluctuation, home heating costs or even “climate change” and global warming.

So here’s my question to readership: Do you find that the lack of attention paid to concerns of Saskatchewan’s voters by both the SUP and SP “FUNNY” – or worth their being ridiculed?

As a person who honestly believes in the tenets of “progressiveness” expressed by those who consider themselves forward thinking in their political beliefs, while holding an abiding affection for our country, nothing gets more in our way of trying to promote our ideas than some individual pointing to our history and proclaiming that out thought process is “impure”. In effect they are saying to us, before we can improve our status as a nation or as individuals, we have to first recognize, then correct the errors made by these past generations.

Marxists refer to the papering over of our past excesses as “revisionism”; the “average” individual, however, annoyed at seeing statues of Sir John A. being torn down or feeling “guilty” for harbouring anti-sentiments towards readily identified boundaries that prevent social interaction – whether based upon religion, race or sexual identification –  and not really wanting to rationalize their own feelings on such matters, call it something else – wokeism.

The idea of being “woke” is that someone has obtained both new and useful information respecting the viewing of the human condition; in other words, they are “wiser” for having gained such knowledge. The problem is, most people want to believe that they have “moved on”, and now have a better “understanding” of such issues, often by concluding that things really are “getting better”, even though they really aren’t. 

A classic example of overestimating the progress of societal evolution in general, many Americans were convinced that given the election of a black man to the presidency in Barack Obama, they had forever vanquished the stigma of racism that had overwhelmed their nation since its inception in 1776. In Canada, our national “guilts” do not carry with them the same tone of bitterness, but racism in its purest form is indeed a disease carried by many, whether it’s expressed by the feelings of north-end Haligonians towards their black neighbours in Preston, the disgust felt by Indigenous peoples towards their not being accepted as the founding peoples of this nation, or the confirmed “citizen” having attained the privilege of being called a “Canadian” now seeing an immigrant population forced from their own worlds by conflict now seeking the privileges of citizenry without having to go through the conflicts of survival as did those who emigrated from Europe during the Bolshevik Revolution or Hitler’s genocidal tactics used against minorities. 

In a recent Washington Post article, Yuval Noah Harari, a Jewish historian, attempted to redefine the excesses of wokeism in other terms, by it merely being a derivation of an “unconditional adherence to heavenly standards of purity and justice.” Taken to its extreme, for instance, during the American Civil War, as “peace always involves compromises on what people consider justice, peace must be rejected, and absolute justice must be pursued at any cost” would simply mean that until everyone got it through their thick skulls that racism as personified in slavery and physical or mental debasement was no longer to be tolerated, the war should not have ended as it did.

The Israeli-Hamas “conflict” that is once again exposing the world to “the next phase” of a Middle East struggle for survival is just another skirmish that temporarily sidetracks our attention from the low levels of attack against progressive thought that our right-wing “originalists” seem to believe should dominate our every thought. In their expression of Christian extremism, they demand that all (i.e: the United Nations General Assembly) must “stand beside Israel” against the brutality of a Hamas invasion that slaughtered over 1,400 Israelis. In effect, it is their expression in supporting the concepts of “absolute” justice, a “winner take all” resolution to the conflicts that have torn apart that segment of the world for almost 2,000 years. 

Pragmatists, however, find such support increasingly hypocritical. In describing the need for the American people to support both Israel and Ukraine, President Biden has taken to describe both as being “democratic states” seeking to be overrun by dictatorial fiat. An increasing number of U.S External Affairs experts, however, see this as a fatuous premise and resigning in frustration. They openly question Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to democracy, as he is still seeking to elevate the role of government to subvert the role of the courts, due to his own possibility of being jailed for corruption at some future date. 

What is equally provoking this minor mutiny in External Affairs is that despite President Biden having already met with Premier Netanyahu, he does not appear to have placed any “restraint” upon Israel in how to fight Hamas forces now impregnated in the Gaza Strip by its limiting of arms sales to the regime, even as it continues to prepare for a land invasion. More to the point, it has advised the non-combatants of Gaza to evacuate the region, while providing no direct pathway to allow such a retreat to take place or aid to enter the region, in effect pretty much guaranteeing that thousands of Palestinians in no way, shape or form supporting Hamas or the now emboldened terrorist groups digging in with Hamas will be slaughtered, many in the way that over 500 mostly women and children met their deaths by the bombing of a hospital in which they took refuge, and where both Israeli and its combatants refuse to acknowledge their turpitude or involvement in this sickening affair.

No one is denying Israel the “right” to defend itself, least of all the Palestinian innocents who are effectively saying, “Have at it; just let us get the Hell out of the way first.” As for the rest of the “players” wanting to play a part in this hellacious affair, Iran’s threat to “allow” its other funded minions to enter the fray have other analysts worrying that were that to happen, Israel may resort to utilization of its nuclear weaponry in retaliation. 

Professor Harari has other concerns, not the least of which is whether the Israeli government has even thought about what to do next once their Gaza “invasion” has succeeded in its purpose and despite the potential for mass slaughter. For the past decade he has watched as Netanyahu has “abandoned all serious attempts to make peace with more moderate Palestinian forces, adopted an increasingly hawkish policy regarding the occupation of disputed territory and even embraced the right-wing messianic ideas of Jewish supremacy.”

There is no question that the original intend of Hamas to attack in such ferocious fashion was “to sow seeds of hatred” in both Israel and the Muslim world. A possible peace accord ultimately leading to the creation of an independent Palestinian state, however, is the only solution that would finally rid the world of the issues of hate continuing to bury the Middle East in conflict.

Former general and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, commenting upon the turmoil that resulted from the United Nations creating a Jewish state in the middle of once was Palestine, suggested that Israelis “not be afraid to see the hatred that consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.”

His solution was to seek peace with those whom Israelis currently see as their enemy. That sentiment, it seems, still hasn’t appeared to have sunk into the thoughts of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and as long as the United States government continue to fail at the showing of leadership in this battle, we can only hope saner heads will prevail upon the temporary resolution of this conflict. That’s not “wokeness”; it’s an expression of realism and hope.

Why the increasingly boring and totally irrelevant former Conservative MP Gerry Ritz can’t take a hint and stay “retired” is beyond me; every time he opens his mouth, I am reminded as to the role this has-been played in colluding with Stephen Harper to rid Canada of the Wheat Board, and the subsequent chaos that move made in the grain transportation scheme of things – Big Ag rushing out to sign the “big producers”, pressuring the rain system to prioritize unloading of produce at our export ports, and in the end causing over $17 BILLION in penalties to be assessed against grain producers, or approximately $114,000 EACH on average for the just under 44,000 producers in Saskatchewan at the time of this political philosophy war crime’s undertaking. That’s $5 billion divided by 44,000 – you do the math…

Randy Hoback often referred to Mr. Ritz as the ultimate “friend to farmers”; I’ve never been able to get my mind around whether he meant that in truth or as with some wry sense of regret for even knowing him…

Then we have Nadine Wilson, now leader of the province’s latest addition to party irrelevance and hard right-leaning half-truths and outright lies, the Saskatchewan “United” Party. Wonder how this new “image” goes over with Elders in her riding…

The reason I’m even writing about these two is because of the sideshow they created in Lumsden on Wednesday was exactly of the variety and content I’d expected to come from the Saskatchewan Party. On June 23rd, Minister of Education Dustin Duncan had issued a “directive” to BAN Planned Parenthood from presenting workshops on sexual education, at least until September, because one of its APPROVED presenters brought “age inappropriate” sexual discussion-prompting playing cards to a Grade 9 presentation in Lumsden.

The original reports that the Minister first received respecting this event was that in passing out of these cards to some students following its presentation Planned Parenthood did not take into consideration the fact that SOME of these cards might have contained materials that were “age inappropriate” – and that alone would be a good enough reason for the Sask Party to “Go Ugly!” come the 2024 campaign – and link Planned Parenthood and the NDP together to place them in opposition to the post-“Roe v Wade” crowd of neanderthal Republicans finding unique ways to further the cruelty presented to women wanting only the right to have access to safe medical care and access to abortion proceedings.

Wilson and Ritz, it now seems, would like the upcoming three by-elections in and around Regina to become “workshops” on how such an attack on the NDP would work before channelling them into the knife fight that 2024 will bring out between the Cracker Channel adherents of right-wing “culture”. And so when the Saskatchewan Party decided to call a “Protecting Parents’ Rights Town Hall” this past Wednesday, more than 250 people showed up at the Lumsden Town Hall to listen to Wilson and Ritz try and score some political points showing their party’s “concern” for this alleged abuse of the educational system.

In what would soon become a forum wherein the Saskatchewan United Party would unveil its true reasons for attending this gathering, that being to express their opposition to LGBTQ2+ and transgender health policies and rights. Former Harper shill and Minister of Agriculture Gerry Ritz started his sermon off by noting that “Our families are under attack…THEY think they’re going to win on the family level by sending in the so-called educators from Planned Parenthood”, whom he then proceeded to refer to as “groomers.”

Other than the fact that I’m still trying to find out just WHO were the “they” to which Mr. Ritz was referring, Mr. Ritz’s comments sounded not unlike MTG’s April 2nd televised interview when she referred to Democrats in general as “groomers”. Asked by CBS interviewer Lesley Stahl to explain that comment, MTG went on, maintaining that “Democrats support – even Joe Biden, the president himself – children being sexualized, having transgender surgeries…what pedophiles do to children.”

I would like to point out that oft-companion to Ms. Greene is MAGA Republican Matt Gaetz, a Florida Congressman representing the Tampa Bay area, currently under investigation for allegedly transporting, and having a sexual relationship with a young women of 17 years of age. One might actually see him as fulfilling the role of a true “groomer” for sexual purposes – that is, BUT for the objections of the even “harder” right wing-nuts who prefer to impose such labeling upon “trans” people, whose very doubts as to their personal sexual identity, whether “male” or “female”, have decided to answer this question by imposing on THEMSELVES the decision to re-identify themselves to society as of the opposite sexual persuasion, or perhaps even non-sexual.

Ritz may want to take a trip down this alley to see whether or not it “sells” in this heavily fundamentalist and religious section of the province, but even there parents are all too conscious as to how the past three years of dealing with the traumas induced by Covid-related actions and laws that may or may not have been beneficial in minimizing that disease’s influence upon their behaviours to follow in their children’s pathway to adulthood have contributed themselves towards having their young question almost everything about themselves, including who they truly are, sexually or otherwise.

Still, in pretending that she had no linkage whatsoever with whatever legislation her former colleagues in the Saskatchewan Party had taken in administering Covid-related policies, Wilson again plays the “outrage” card, “a grandmother of 10 beautiful grandchildren…[who]. wouldn’t want them to see…that filth. And we’re going to fight for you.”

To “fight” – and for what – is a really good question to ask here. Were the playing cards that “graphic” that the intent of the Planned Parenthood presentation was despoiled by their presence? I’m not going to provide an answer to that question, simply because as an adult who has had to give similar presentations in class (albeit for people over the age of 18), I had to look up the meaning of some of the terminology myself.

Did the cards include pornographic imagery to even “define” them as being “pornographic”? Not to the best of my knowledge.

And finally, despite by expanding a Grade 9er’s vocabulary in a rather bizarre direction, does anyone believe that the children actually using the cards to answer some of the questions their own parents should have been explaining years ago “traumatized” or permanently and emotionally damaged?

Let me answer that question as a teacher. When you’re doing hall duties during recess or other school events, you see words carved in the elementary school washrooms that you know the kids could only have heard coming from their parents’ lips. When you call in a parent to discuss how he and five of his buddies from Grade 8 were “body surfing” a severely traumatized Grade 6 girl as though they were all having intercourse with her, and the mother accuses you of making this stuff up DESPITE the Principal witnessing the event (and doing nothing to stop it), or worse, having some of your best students reporting the rape of one of their classmates, and knowing that the RCMP aren’t going to even hear about it – what’s worse?

Could this event have been handled better by Mr. Duncan? Of course – but that’s too late now, isn’t it?

Are the “United” party going to bring this incident up again in the near future, just to scare up a few more political points? Probably – but if they do, I might just drop by one of their “rallies”, just to see to whom Mr. Ritz will attribute the word “they”.

He won’t have to yell his answer across the entire hall for me to hear it, either…

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…