Twenty eight separate Alberta Muslim organizations, including nearly every major mosque in the province, are demanding the resignation of Alberta Human Rights Commission chief Collin May in a letter sent to Justice Minister Tyler Shandro.

Law professor Martin Olszynski joins Duncan Kinney to talk about the unique danger Danielle Smith and her proposed Alberta Sovereignty Act poses to democracy.  

In a move that is sure to degrade my mental health I’m going to write a weekly (maybe biweekly!) power ranking of the UCP leadership race. The rules will be made up and the points won’t matter but I will do my best to catalogue who’s up, who’s down and to track the big narratives of the race to crown the next leader of the UCP and Alberta’s next premier, at least until the next election. 

The Edmonton Police Service are proposing to convert jail cells in their downtown headquarters to provide “integrated addiction support for individuals that are potentially banned from shelters and are in a position of harm to themselves or members of the community,” according to the business plan for the recently-funded Chinatown Healthy Streets Operation Centre. 

In the summer of 2020, after public demands to reform or defund the police including a Black Lives Matter petition with over 13,000 signatories, Edmonton City Council voted to allocate roughly $11 million a year in funding from the Edmonton Police Service budget to social programs and to end homelessness. Now, 40 per cent of that money is going right back to the police in 2023 and 2024.

The podcast is back from its summer break with an extended conversation with Angus Quinton with Get Your Drugs Tested. This Vancouver based organization has done the most testing of the illicit drug supply of anyone in the world and it's a model that has huge public health implications in dealing with the drug poisoning crisis. 

The terrible surge in fatalities among people who use drugs in the last decade is called a drug poisoning crisis for a reason: the iron law of prohibition means more concentrated, more dangerous drugs keep making their way into the drug supply with tragic results.

The Calgary Police Commission’s recently released report on how the Calgary Police Service investigated an alleged sexual assault by councillor Sean Chu of a 16-year old girl is bringing little comfort to Sean Chu’s victim.

Nine months! A mere three quarters of one year are all that remains for Alberta’s UCP administration, and the governing party is already falling to pieces.

The membership drive ahead of the UCP’s October 6 leadership election has now ended, and if you didn’t buy a membership to vote, I congratulate you on not being scammed out of ten dollars. Travis Toews (formerly Kenney’s finance minister, and the architect of most of the brutal austerity since 2019), former Wildrose party leader Brian Jean, and other former Wildrose party leader Danielle Smith are the only candidates not polling within the margin of error of zero. One will briefly be Premier, from October through to the election scheduled for next May.

I was waiting for the results of a COVID-19 test when the long-term care home called to say my mom didn’t have long to live.