By now, I’m sure you’ve seen Alberta’s election results. Bad news, eh?

There are a few ways to think about this thing.

The Pacey Dumas case, where an investigation found that an Edmonton cop had assaulted a young Indigenous man but crown prosecutors then refused to press charges showed how crown prosecutors shielded police from accountability. But a recent report from the Edmonton Police Service shows that the police have the power to quash charges from their end, too.

Danielle Smith’s UCP are going hard on ‘law and order’ campaigning this season, riding high on the wave of social disorder that COVID, the war on drugs, and decades of rising inequality have cast across North America. But it isn’t just an election strategy—it’s an opportunity to funnel money and power to key donors and allies of the conservative movement. Recent announcements by the UCP about ankle bracelets and police commissions just revealed a couple of them. 

Edmonton’s transit peace officers are dramatically more likely to issue a transit fine to an Indigenous person than a white person, according to recently released data on ticketing. A local researcher analyzing the most recent numbers—from 2020-2021—finds that an Indigenous person was nearly 19 times more likely to be ticketed by EPS.

Education, healthcare, and jobs are the top issues in Alberta’s spring provincial election—as usual. But there’s one issue that neither of the two big parties seem to want to touch, and it’s a serious and growing problem in Alberta’s cities: police brutality.

Multiple people have died in drug treatment and addiction recovery centres in Alberta, a fact the government of Alberta refused to disclose and took a freedom of information request to reveal. 

The UCP’s big play over the past two weeks to shift attention away from Premier Danielle Smith’s involvement with COVID scofflaw and extremist pastor Artur Pawlowski has been to pivot towards policing.

The pivot hasn’t stopped reporters from asking about the Pawlowski matter, the pitch is full of misleading details, and it’s a campaign stunt that will cost far more than the $15 million that public safety minister Mike Ellis estimates will be spent on the new officers.

This April 19, less than two weeks before Alberta’s provincial election is expected to begin, MacEwan University in Edmonton is spending $15,000 to sponsor a pre-campaign event for three UCP cabinet ministers.  One democratic governance expert is calling it “not only inappropriate but unethical.” 

There’s been a wave of breathless news coverage and anxious think pieces about “time theft” and “quiet quitting” lately—new buzzwords that the business class are shopping around to suggest that workers are unfairly squeezing their employers. But the modest amount that employers say (without a lot of evidence) they’re being cheated out of pales in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars that are being stolen from Alberta workers by employers every year. That’s no buzz word, it’s real: it’s called wage theft and it was actually a crime in Canada from 1935-1955. 

The provincial election this year may well hinge on whether Albertans give a damn about Artur Pawlowski.