Alberta Premier Danielle Smith courted some star power on social media over the weekend.
The premier recently retweeted praise from American actor and comedian Rob Schneider who called her a “real leader.”
Schneider, who has starred in popular movies like Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and Grown Ups, made the comment in response to Smith’s speech at the 2022 United Conservative Party annual general meeting.
In the quoted speech, Smith pledges to stand up to Ottawa by not enforcing any laws that target Alberta’s economy or violate rights.
“When Ottawa announces policies and laws that attack our economy or violate the rights of our people…our UCP government will not enforce those laws and policies in this province, period,” said Smith.
This is not the first time that Schneider has dipped his toes into Canadian politics. In January, Schneider was among numerous celebrities to publicly support the Freedom Convoy.
In response to comments by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the protesters represented a “small fringe minority” of Canadian society, Schneider joked about the prime minister’s label.
“Trudeau may have to redefine what a “small fringe minority” is… It’s stretching from Manitoba to Ontario!” tweeted Schneider on Jan. 27.
In a follow-up tweet, Scheider also joked about Trudeau conveniently contracting Covid-19 and going into isolation as the convoy was arriving in Ottawa.
“Generalissimo Trudump has (conveniently) contracted the truckers-are-coming-for-me variant! Official statement should read… “Staying Safe…avoiding any vehicles with more than 17 wheels!” tweeted Schenider.
Generalissimo Trudump has (conveniently) contracted the truckers-are-coming-for-me variant! Official statement should read… “Staying Safe…avoiding any vehicles with more than 17 wheels!”#TruckersForFreedom2022pic.twitter.com/6L0VHiHGlt
The chief of the Edmonton Police Service told MPs last week that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handgun ban wouldn’t make a dent on violent gun crime and, instead, could actually harm the efforts of law enforcement to tackle gun trafficking.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Chief Dale McFee told the House of Commons public safety committee on Thursday that he has concerns that in the short-term the ban would lead to a spike in smuggling.
“I just want to say I have concerns and certainly the Edmonton Police Service has concerns about the logistics, resources and long term impacts of portions of this proposed handgun freeze,” said McFee.
“In the short term we can expect those wanting to acquire guns will find alternatives including increased incidences of smuggling.”
McFee isn’t the only law enforcement official to recently speak out about the supposed effectiveness of the ban.
“Our problem in Toronto are handguns from the United States,” said Toronto Deputy Police Chief Myron Demkiw in February.
“The issues around investing in what you described is certainly not going to deal with the crime problem we’re facing in Toronto, as it relates to the use of criminal handguns.”
When first announcing the policy earlier this year, Trudeau painted Bill C-21 as a way to tackle gun crime.
“It is our duty to take urgent action to remove these deadly weapons from our communities,” said Trudeau.
“We’re keeping more guns out of our communities and keeping our kids safe.”
The gun ban will go into effect on Nov. 9 and includes bans on the import of handguns, among other things.
Bill C-21 could also “limit (police’s) ability to trace transactions originating in the United States” according to McFee.
“This may also increase the commodity value and motivate individuals including lawful firearms owners to sell their handguns through illegal channels knowing the restrictions drive up monetary value,” explained McFee.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is unlikely to pull out of his party’s coalition deal with the Trudeau Liberals if the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC) rules the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to quash the peaceful Freedom Convoy was not justified.
Speaking to CTV’s Question Period, Singh said, “simply because it was the wrong decision wouldn’t be enough for us to break, or to force the country into an election.”
Jagmeet Singh says that if the Emergencies Act Commission determines Trudeau had no justification to invoke the never-before-used emergency powers, he will still prop up the government to keep Trudeau in power. pic.twitter.com/mdq1YCGR9O
“We’ve always said we want to get to the bottom of if it was the only option, if there was other options, if there were better approaches that could have been taken. And we completely support a full and transparent investigation into that,” Singh said.
In March, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Singh formed a coalition deal, which would see the NDP support the Liberal government until 2025 in exchange for addressing their key priorities such as national pharmacare and dental care.
The POEC hearings are scheduled to run until November 25, with dozens more anticipated witnesses including Freedom Convoy organizers, federal government officials, and eight cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Commissioner Paul Rouleau will provide a report to Parliament by Feb. 20.
Since the POEC hearings began in October, a number of revelations have been made that counter the government’s justification for the never-before-used act.
Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) intelligence officer Pat Morris confirmed that there was no intelligence that indicated the Freedom Convoy met the legal threshold required for the federal government to invoke the Emergencies Act.
In addition, OPP Chief Superintendent Carson Pardy told Commission lawyers that the Emergencies Act invocation wasn’t required to tow vehicles and that existing police strategies in place prior to invoking the act would have been sufficient to clear the protests within the same time period.
Further, acting Deputy Chief of Ottawa Police Service (OPS) Patricia Ferguson testified that tow trucks were already on their way to assist in the clearing of downtown Ottawa prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
Singh has made a number of claims about the Freedom Convoy that have since been called into question, including falsely accusing the convoy of attempting to burn down a downtown Ottawa apartment. The OPS revealed that the accused in that incident had nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy protests.
Singh was the first to introduce the false accusation to the official record of the House of Commons when he pointed to the incident as an “example” of the so-called commonplace violence at the protests.
The Trudeau government’s internet censorship law, Bill C-11, is still a major concern for many Canadians. As the bill is in the final stages of becoming law, as it’s studied in the Senate, more Canadians are speaking out about the controversial bill.
A number of influencers and journalists appeared before the Senate to share their concerns about Bill C-11, including YouTuber JJ McCullough and journalist Jennifer Valentyne. Many of them are worried that the government will be able to direct social media’s algorithms and as a result, dictate what Canadians are able to see online.
True North’s Anthony Furey has the latest developments on the Trudeau government’s internet censorship bill.
More Canadians oppose the idea of cutting ties with the Royal Family than those who support it, a new poll by Nanos Research reveals.
Results show that 50% of respondents opposed the idea of cutting ties with the monarchy and having the prime minister act as Canada’s head of state.
On the other hand, 44% of those polled supported the idea.
“Canadians are marginally more likely to oppose than support Canada cutting ties with the monarchy and having the prime minister become both the head of the government and the head of state,” reads the Nanos release.
“Six out of ten people in the Prairies oppose or somewhat oppose, while only three out of ten people in Quebec oppose or somewhat oppose.”
The survey was conducted by phone and online on Oct. 3 and included 1,037 Canadians.
Just over a third of Canadians – 39% – also opposed withdrawing from the commonwealth while only 20% were in favour of withdrawal. Highest rates of opposition were found in British Columbia, where the rate of Canadians against the idea was 45%.
“Similar to the last wave of research, Canadians are more likely to oppose than support Canada withdrawing from the Commonwealth. Residents of Quebec (45%) are also more likely to support or somewhat support Canada withdrawing from the Commonwealth compared to residents in B.C. (27%),” the document reads.
The survey comes a little over a month after the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8. The late monarch was replaced by her son, King Charles III.
Although he assumed the throne on the death of the Queen, King Charles III is expected to be coronated next summer.
The coronation has been scheduled for May 6, 2023 and will take place at Westminster Abbey. It will be the first coronation in over 70 years.
With the City of Toronto in decline and the school board indoctrinating students with race-based and gender ideologies, voters should be mad as hell and ripe for change.
But I predict the voter turnout will be low – based on the attendance at advanced polls – and there won’t be the kind of sea change we saw on October 15 in Vancouver.
For certain, Toronto won’t be getting a mayor who takes public safety seriously like the newly elected Vancouver mayor Ken Sim.
Mayor John Tory, who is seeking his third term despite promising only to sit for two terms, has been adamant about not bringing back public safety measures like some form of carding.
Despite the shocking increase in gun crimes in Toronto and repeated violence on the TTC, not one word about public safety was mentioned by Tory or the media during the campaign.
It’s as if the increase in violence doesn’t exist.
In fact, the two debates that were held ignored the entire issue, as has most of the media (except for the Toronto Sun). The only mayoralty candidate – retired cop Blake Acton – who has repeatedly raised concerns about violence and the need for a return to carding, was decidedly shut out of the debates and by most of the legacy media.
Tory has run a campaign thin on details except for the need for his experience to bring Toronto back from the economic downturn due to Covid. He has been busy making sure he’s seen around Toronto mostly at bakeries and restaurants with selected councillor candidates, most of them incumbents, carefully selected lapdogs (Jon Burnside and Grant Gonzalves are two examples) and has-beens who will likely give him the support he needs to continue to get his policies through.
During the past eight years those policies – hotel shelters, safe injection sites, bike lanes everywhere, punitive traffic measures and massive condo development – have led to the depressing deterioration of Toronto.
His other main challenger, besides Acton, is Gil Penalosa, formerly of Bogota, Columbia who has promoted his experience developing parks and sustainable transportation (beyond the car). His appeal has been limited to the car-hating left who have embraced his proposals to cancel the Gardiner East and turn the Island airport into a park.
The NDP have also been working overtime on social media and door-to-door to push a slate of one-issue activists for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) — specifically those who are primarily concerned with race-based issues.
NDP MPP Marit Stiles and newly elected MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam have been busy shilling for Alexis Dawson and Debbie King for school trustee and Ausma Malik and Alejandra Bravo for councillor.
In regards to Malik’s past, in 2014 I revealed her appearance at virulent anti-Israel protests – along with several anti-Semites in the labour movement – where she contended that Israel had conducted “state-sanctioned murder” for defending itself against Hezbollah rockets.
At the time Toronto councillor Mike Layton dismissed the criticism as Islamophobic. He is also supporting Malik.
The hugely positive change with this year’s school board elections relates to the number of parents who are speaking up and speaking out, at long last.
Peter Wallace, who is running in Kawartha Lakes, created an informative and thorough website for trustee candidates who are interested in centrist, non-woke policies that focus on academics and not indoctrination. It’s called www.blueprintforcanada.ca.
GTA parent Matt Director and a small group of frustrated parents put together www.VoteagainstWoke.ca — a website with recommendations of trustee candidates who are not interested in ramming gender and critical race theory ideologies down students’ throats.
Not surprisingly their efforts to expose what’s going on in schools have been attacked by the radical left as “transphobic, homophobic and racist.”
There has been much hand wringing by activists and the legacy media, likely because school board elections have never received this kind of attention.
Hopefully parents will pay attention and opt not to vote by rote as has been done in elections gone by.
Toronto may be beyond saving under another Tory government but schoolkids are too precious to ignore.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says the work on drafting her controversial Sovereignty Act has already begun, with the expectation legislation will be ready to be tabled by the time she takes a seat in the legislature.
The new premier made the comments in a speech at the United Conservative Party’s annual general meeting on Saturday — the party’s first following the leadership race which elected Smith earlier this month.
“When Ottawa announces policies and laws that attack our economy or violate the rights of our people or when Ottawa seeks to take control of our sovereign areas of provincial jurisdiction, our UCP government will not enforce those laws and policies in this province, period,” Smith said.
Smith’s proposed Sovereignty Act was a hallmark of her leadership campaign, pitched as a way to assert Alberta’s autonomy in the face of a hostile legislative agenda from Ottawa.
Premier Danielle Smith says work has begun on the Sovereignty Act and she’s asked for it to be ready by the time she takes her seat in the legislature (late next month if/when she wins the Brooks-Medicine Hat by election.) pic.twitter.com/eNBWX5fTko
Smith will run in the Brooks-Medicine Hat by-election, a conservative safe-seat, and could be in the legislature as early as November 29.
Discussion of the proposed Sovereignty Act dominated the UCP leadership race. Former premier Jason Kenney and his finance minister and house leader, Jason Nixon, both criticized the proposal during the leadership campaign — as did all of Smith’s leadership opponents except Todd Loewen.
Nevertheless, those leadership opponents rallied around Smith on Saturday. Runners-up Travis Toews and Brian Jean introduced the premier ahead of her speech and emphasized the UCP caucus’ efforts to unify following the race.
Toews said the party is stronger following the contest, and Jean said the real fight is starting now. The UCP government will face the Alberta NDP in a general election in spring 2023.
“Our party is coming together to prepare an even bigger fight ahead of its time to look to the future,” Toews said.
All Smith’s leadership opponents except Leela Aheer, the first to fall off the ballot in the seven-person contest, were given spots in Smith’s cabinet, announced on Friday. Kenney and Nixon are not in Smith’s cabinet.
Toews will return to his role as finance minister — the portfolio he held under Kenney — and Jean was named the minister of jobs, economy and northern development.
Rebecca Schulz, who placed fourth in the contest, will move over from children’s service to the municipal affairs file, while fifth-place leadership contender Todd Loewen will become the forestry, parks and tourism minister.
Rajan Sawhney, who was second to fall off the leadership ballot, was given the trade, immigration and multiculturalism file.
Speaking to party members on Saturday, Smith said it was difficult to name her caucus, but she believes she got it right.
“We may have been a bit quiet these first 10 days regrouping and bringing this team together, but let me assure you, we won’t be quiet much longer,” Smith said.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s seeking legal advice on granting amnesty to individuals and businesses fined for violating Alberta’s Covid restrictions.
Smith said most charges were administrative fines from Alberta Health Services due to a political decision to “throw out the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
“I think it can be a political decision to make amends and apologize for them and eliminate them,” Smith told the media at the UCP annual general meeting on Saturday.
Smith won the United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership and Alberta premiership earlier this month following a leadership race in which she campaigned on promises never to introduce Covid restrictions again.
She also said churches in Alberta are facing tens of thousands of dollars in fines and the Charter must be respected. Alberta respects the freedoms of mobility and conscience rights, Smith said.
Premier Smith says she’s getting legal advice about rolling back AHS fines related to COVID restrictions. It was a “political decision” to “throw out the Charter” and administer those fines and it can be a “political decision” to apologize and roll them back, she says. #abpolipic.twitter.com/5iaT8JQJvu
On Friday, the Calgary Herald reported that Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping was open to introducing Covid restrictions again.
“You can never say never. If something comes at us we’ll have to look at it and say, ‘OK, what additional tools we may need to put in place at that point in time,’’’ Copping told the Herald.
In response to a question from True North about whether Smith is backtracking on anti-restriction policies she campaigned on, Smith said she’s not. Copping’s comments were “not in regards to COVID-19, it was him imagining sort of a worse-case scenario at some future point,” she said.
Smith also said Copping was imagining a scenario like a meteor hitting Alberta.
Smith said she’s aligned with her health minister who knows a Smith government will not consider reimplementing Covid rules.
“In the context of Covid, we are not having restrictions again,” Smith told True North.
“I know (Copping) is 100% on board with both the reforms for Alberta Health, as well as making sure we do not have restrictions again in the fall.”
At a press conference last week, Smith appeared to suggest Alberta Chief Medical Health Officer Deena Hinshaw would be fired. Smith said she won’t take advice from Hinshaw, and that she’ll be looking for a new team of public health advisors.
The premier also used her wide-ranging press conference on Saturday to offer an apology to Albertans who were discriminated against because of their COVID-19 vaccination status.
“I am deeply sorry for any government employee that lost their job and I welcome them back if they want to come back,” she said.
Premier Danielle Smith has just offered an apology to Albertans who was discriminated against because of their COVID-19 vaccination status.
“I am deeply sorry for any government employee that lost their job and I welcome them back if they want to come back.” pic.twitter.com/eybO19v79n
Federal Conservatives are demanding that the Liberal government explain how nearly 500 wanted criminals on a deportation list went missing.
There are currently nearly 30,000 people who are set to be deported from Canada that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) lists as having unknown whereabouts. 469 of those are wanted “for criminality or criminal convictions” while 30 are wanted for severe crimes like homicide or violent sexual assault.
Conservative critic for public safety Raquel Dancho has called the figures shocking and is demanding that Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino immediately address the issue.
“The Minister of Public Safety needs to explain to Canadians how and why they allowed multiple violent offenders who were serving sentences for murder and sexual offences to be knowingly released into our communities,” said Dancho.
“It is just as concerning that there are almost 30,000 people eligible for deportation that the government has lost track of – and an astounding 500 of them are known or convicted criminals.”
Lost criminals awaiting to be deported include convicted Ethiopian sex offender Abdirahman Moumin Okie.
“This individual is inadmissible to Canada for serious criminality for being convicted of forcible confinement, committing a sexual assault along with another person and conspiracy to commit sexual assault,” a CBSA most wanted list explains.
Conservative Senator Don Plett has since said the situation was unacceptable and that Canadians deserve “serious answers” from the government.
“Dangerous individuals who are here illegally, and no longer under sentence, should be removed from Canada. Period,” Plett told the Globe and Mail.
“Trudeau ministers should stop hiding behind their talking points and instead take the time needed to ensure that dangerous individuals are swiftly removed from the country.”
Concerns about foreign criminals roaming free in Canada are not new. In 2019 it was revealed that the CBSA lost track of 400 suspected Mexican cartel members including notorious hitman Romualdo Lopez-Herrera.
This week on the Alberta Roundup, Rachel Emmanuel picks out the biggest winners and losers from Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet announcement on Friday. Notable appointments include former justice minister Kaycee Madu appointed as Deputy Premier, and leadership contest rival Brian Jean appointed as Minister of Jobs, Economy and Northern Development. Travis Toews is once again the finance minister.
Also on the show, Rachel discusses the latest in the ‘apology wars’ taking over Alberta politics. Smith apologized this week for her past comments on Ukraine, and now the UCP is demanding NDP leader Rachel Notley condemn Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew who was invited to speak at the Alberta NDP convention this weekend. Kinew pled guilty to assaulting a cab driver in 2004.
To wrap up the show, Rachel discusses the latest city of Calgary proposal to spend over $160 million on electric buses.
Tune in to The Alberta Roundup with Rachel Emmanuel.
