#danielle smith

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Alberta's premier shared new details Tuesday about her government's proposed gender legislation. Danielle Smith will introduce it when the Alberta legislature's fall session starts near the end of October. In a six-minute video posted to social media, Smith went over the points of her policy, much of which has already been released. One new detail involves 16- and 17-year-olds choosing to use a different name or pronoun at school. "In those extremely rare circumstances where a teacher feels that a child might be at risk should the parents be notified of a desired name or pronoun change, Alberta Education will provide a protocol to ensure the protection of that child throughout the parental notification process," Smith said in the video.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @abpoli

[terriwriting]

UCP Party Spokeperson: "Yes the premier of Alberta believes that the United States government uses 'chemtrails' to poison and control the population. But she does not believe the US government is spraying chemtrails in Alberta. So that's alright."

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's office says her recent comments about chemtrails don't mean she believes the United States government is spraying them in the province. "The premier was simply sharing what she has heard from some folks over the summer on this issue," Smith's spokesperson Savannah Johannsen said Tuesday in a statement. "She was not saying that she believed the U.S. government was using chemtrails in Alberta." Johannsen added: "The premier has heard concerns from many Albertans about this topic. In response, the provincial government looked into the issue and found no evidence of chemtrails occurring in Alberta."

To be clear, the premier's office just admitted that Danielle Smith used government resources to look into a batshit conspiracy theory.

These people are absolute wackjobs.

[smokeweedeattherich]

I saw this going around on reddit but not tumblr so I figured I'd share it here.

The image was posted by Danielle herself and can be seen here. This symbol is associated with Liberty Fund, a far right American think tank that credits themselves as partially responsible for Ronald Reagans presidential campaign.

Danielle has claimed that it's not related and is the cuneiform symbols for "freedom" and "liberty", but ask yourself, do you really trust her to tell the truth? She's revised her campaign promises multiple times, continues to condone private healthcare despite signing a measure to protect public healthcare. I'm just saying it wouldn't be a stretch to guess she might be funded by them, afterall she has some pretty damn uncanadian ideas that parallel those across the border.

[genzmilf]

PROTECT TRANS KIDS

I live in Alberta, Canada, which you may have heard is the latest province to introduce their version of "parental rights" legislation.

Here are some of the things our premier, Danielle Smith, promised to do on Wednesday;

mandate teachers report to parents (and ask permission if the child is younger than 16) if a child wants to use a different name/different pronouns in class

mandate permission forms anytime a teacher wants to mention gender or sexual orientation

ban children under the age of 16 from accessing hormones or puberty blockers

ban top & bottom surgery for anyone under the age of 18 (bottom, surgery is already illegal for anyone under 18 in Canada)

ban transgender women from competing in womens sports

These laws have been called "draconian" and were not drafted with consideration from medical, pediatric, or LGBT organizations. Danielle Smith is pandering to the social conservative wing of her party and putting queer kids in danger because of it.

"Parental Rights" are a sham that ignores the lived reality of queer kids.

I've spent the past few days feeling angry and heartbroken, and I wanted to spread awareness and share with my American followers because I haven't seen many news outlets outside of Canada covering this.

[not-sure-what-im-feeling]

Can I ask what’s happening in Alberta? In regards to queer laws

Yes you may! So our premier, Danielle Smith, is of the United Conservative Party. She has been trying to put forth a bill dubbed the “Parental Rights Bill”. What it would do would be making children 14 and under unable to use a different name and pronouns at school without parental permission. If they did use a different name and/or pronouns parents will be contacted. 15-18 can use them without permission, but their parents will still be told.

Additionally, gender affirming care for 14 and under will not at all be allowed. 15-18 will still be allowed, but made even more difficult.

On top of that, Alberta is already an extremely blue (conservative) province. It’s pretty homophobic and transphobic already, and giving people like Smith such a platform and power just hurts the queer people living here. Especially when they target the youth under the guise of “protection”.

I’m not completely up to date on the bill as I haven’t received any new info on it, but if anyone does know more about it I would love to listen.

[fireladybuckley]

I don’t usually get too political on this blog, but…

If you’re from Alberta, for the love of all that is good in humanity, please go and VOTE.

Danielle Smith wants to privatize healthcare, remove funding from programs that actively help people, blames late stage cancer diagnosis patients for not noticing their condition sooner, among numerous other terrible things. And true to the usual UCP bull, she cares more about money and oil and trades more than the actual people of the province.

She is a huge admirer of Ron DeSantis and thinks he’s doing a great job, which I’m sure anyone from the US and especially Florida can tell you is NOT a good thing!!

Please… if you want a premier that at least cares about people and not just money, vote NDP.

Rachel Notley is far from perfect, but she is a hell of a lot better than the alternative. She at least actually cares about people, and cares about the marginalized in our society. She may not balance the budget, but she will fund education, healthcare and other important things, rather than funnelling everything into a dying economy and ignoring the citizens struggling.

If you don’t want hate and cold disregard to rule our province for the next 4 years, vote NDP. Liberal, Green and any other party don’t stand a chance. This is UCP vs NDP, period.

Vote orange if you care about the people around you.

Thanks for listening. Let’s all cross our fingers that tonight’s vote isn’t the start of rights being taken away. 🤞🏻🤞🏻

[ppcbug]

Love to see such common sense policies coming from Alberta! These policies will protect children from making decisions that will leave irreversible damage to their bodies.

Even though this is a win we must continue to fight further against this radical gender ideology.

Federally we must repeal bill C-4! The so called “conversion therapy bill” that prevents children suffering from gender dysphoria from getting the professional help that they need in order to accept themselves.

It’s time for a change in Canada 🇨🇦

#voteppc to repeal bill C-4

[the-quotable-alberta-hansard]

May 28, 2024

Ms Smith: Now, let me just say a word about our postsecondary institutions. Ottawa’s priorities are not Alberta’s priorities. Alberta has been funding targeted enrolment expansion based on Alberta’s labour market in order to ensure industry and job creators have the skilled and professional workers that they need. In fact, the Minister of Advanced Education just announced a major expansion in supporting NAIT that will enable them to train 4,200 more new apprentices. That is the approach that we need to take in Alberta. We have massive new projects that are going to need to be built, not the least of which being a Dow Chemical petrochemical plant, which is going to be 6,000 to 8,000 workers that are needed there, plus all of the new workers that we’re going to need to be able to keep up with our housing requirements. This is the priority that we have.

[wuts-good-gatsby]

[doomsayersunited]

Image 1: chart showing that renewable energy sources of electricity are now as-cheaper or cheaper than fossil fuel sources. Image 2: Electricity generation in Alberta, Canada, broken down by fuel source. 90% of electricity generated in Alberta is either by burning coal or fossil fuel gas (aka "natural gas). Alberta's power grid emits more than half of Canada's greenhouse gases from electricity generation, despite the province having just 11% of the country's population. Image 3: map showing which homes & other buildings were destroyed in Jasper, Alberta this week by the convergence of several wildfires, which themselves were created by perfect fire conditions such as bone-dry forests teeming with pine trees that had been killed by the mountain pine beetle, which Alberta has in far larger numbers than ever before because of climate change/global warming. Approximately a third of the town was destroyed. Image 4: What Jasper looked like on the ground, once the smoke had cleared. It's not even a question of economics anymore. Doing the right thing and taking measures to prevent further climate change disasters, like switching to green energy production, is a better deal economically. Those who refuse to do so are death cultists. We can save ourselves (or, more likely, stave off our horrific deaths by a few more years) by electing politicians that will prioritize the environment. Or we can keep electing politicians that will do nothing about climate change or (in Alberta's case) actively block initiatives to prevent/mitigate climate change and watch our communities burn.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A Plains Cree physician who practices family medicine in Alberta says it’s shameful that Conservative Premier Danielle Smith is playing politics with transgender issues.

“It’s really important to know that people don’t do this [gender affirmation] lightly,” said Dr. James Makokis, who identifies as Two-Spirit and works directly with trans patients. “It is something that they’ve known their entire life.

“And clinicians do thorough assessments of ensuring that people when they say they’re trans, they’re trans and we just ensure that there’s not medical contra-indications to doing so and there is a thorough assessment process of that.”

On Wednesday, Smith announced a number of policy changes on social media that will restrict medical access to those seeking gender affirmation therapy – especially transgender youth.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[terriwriting]

Talk-radio host noted for her ignorance of how Canadian government works and for using social media to spread conspiracy theories is shocked to discover that her supporters are a bunch of ignorant conspiracy theorists.

[andragoras-in-vanity]

https://chng.it/gf7vMBrSm5

so a mother in Alberta started a petition to stop the premiere from revoking childrens rights to gender affirming care, if youre in canada please sign and if not please share!

[nando161mando]

[panicinthestudio]

Patients are losing Alberta’s public-private medical labs battle, November 1, 2023

Alberta’s medical labs have shifted between public and private delivery for decades, often depending on what party is in government, and now the province’s auditor general is investigating. CBC’s Christine Birak breaks down the medical and political saga that’s cost millions and had a negative impact on patient care. CBC News

@allthecanadianpolitics, @abpoli

I had my own brush with DynaLife three times in the last year, wait times and organization were horrendous at a lab that has always been high volume but was much better managed when they were public.

Their waiting room was not just crammed full, the wait times were so long they were paging people on their cell to return from their cars or from the mall across the way--some simply left without a word. Walk-ins alone were looking at least a hour seated wait time.

The single queue to check in was at least 30 minutes minutes standing, crammed in to the point people had to step out of the way of the doors. It included pregnant people, elderly, and others in need of priority with mobility aids and other conditions. Appointments were not immediately separated out from walk-ins or even simple drop off, the only instruction was for everyone to wait for the one person processing. Even when the line extended outside at the same location because of COVID social distancing it moved more efficiently.

There was clearly no regular process for stopping the line and refusing more patients despite this routinely being the case by the summer. While I was there one poor tech was delegated to end intake for the day early because they simply were overcapacity. After scrambling to make a couple signs to tape to the doors, they were completely ignored.

No one enforced a cutoff, the patients that were told they were the it remained silent or continued to open the door for more people. By the time staff reached what should have been the tail-end there was a a full queue again. I learned later that short of actually closing, policy was to continue to accept everyone in line and there was at least another hour after that to finish work and lock up.

This is one lab and next to one of the largest hospitals in Calgary, hospital internal labs and rural/community tests continued to be run by AHS's Alberta Precision (formerly Public) Labs. Only one instance that was relatively easy was right before the Christmas holiday when the transition to private was still new.

The technicians and phlebotomists were clearly struggling to do their best to keep the patients and their own morale up while understaffed and without the resources to preserve quality of service. I do not envy any of them being thrown the privatization curveball by the UCP and ultimately the people that voted to keep them in power, worse still for people that are depending on these services.

***

There is an entire history of neglect and privatization of Alberta's lab services under Conservative governments. Efforts by the Albertan NDP to consolidate, update, and expand the province's public lab services were quite literally bulldozed by Jason Kenney. Through the pandemic and now under Danielle Smith, the UCP has continued with plans to dismantle and portion off health care services, workers, and the facilities and now buying back our own labs, equipment, and employees less than a year later.