The UCP choose the nuclear option versus teachers in strike-breaking legislation

If you don’t get to this newsletter until Tuesday morning, by the time you’re reading this the UCP’s strike-breaking Back To School Act has probably already passed.

That’s because Smith’s people used what are called ‘time allocation’ motions in the Legislature Monday to restrict debate on the law to just one hour.

The Legislature gallery was packed with teachers, parents, and students that afternoon, but the NDP opposition won’t be allowed to tell many of their stories—at least not on the Legislature floor.

The big question for the past few days has been whether or not the UCP will invoke the notwithstanding clause, a loophole written into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that lets provinces opt-out of following our federal human rights laws.

(Canada is nearly unique among constitutional democracies in having this wretched thing.)

The rights in question now: the rights to free speech and free association, which are where your right to organize with other workers and go on strike come from.

Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) says the house of labour in Alberta—or at least the unions employing public employees, which make up most of the Federation—are going to escalate province-wide, and hard. New AUPE president Sandra Azocar says AUPE’s got the teachers’ backs, too.

Does this mean a general strike? I’m skeptical. The teachers enjoy broad public sympathy today, but the AFL’s reach outside of the public sector is not so great, and a general strike really does require mobilizing everybody.

The Alberta NDP’s new-ish leader Naheed Nenshi is finally in the Legislature now, and got a few good words in against the Premier early on. But if you were expecting an intense night of Nenshi versus Smith debate, you’re out of luck. The Premier ducked out to go visit Saudi Arabia.

We’ll be in touch as opportunities for the public to participate in resistance actions arise.

Big changes to the field of play across Alberta

Significant changes to the playing field this fall present new challenges, and new opportunities, for both progressives and the left in Alberta.

In Edmonton, we can happily conclude that the money didn’t win: despite a nearly $1 million budget, the largest campaign spend in a municipal campaign here ever, Tim Cartmell and the UCP-aligned Better Edmonton party secured little purchase on council and lost the mayoral race hard. Cartmell and Sarah Hamilton, Smith’s two most strident allies on council, are out.

Former Edmonton Police Association rep Michael Elliot, a pro-police reactionary of the Thin Blue Line variety, is likely to pick up where they left off. But overall Edmonton ended up with a slightly more progressive council despite all attempts from the right to buy something else.

In Calgary the picture is a bit murkier. Many incumbents there were replaced and mayor Jyoti Gondek is out, herself replaced by Jeromy Farkas. Presently Farkas is a bit of a cipher. Formerly a conservative operative with the Manning Foundation, Farkas was as a councilor from 2017-2021 a firm right-populist and ally of Jason Kenney who opposed the Green Line and COVID prevention measures.

Since then, Farkas has started presenting himself as more of a moderate, and folks in Calgary are apparently buying it. Whether this cat has truly changed its spots remains to be seen.

Of course, there’s been turnover at councils all across the province—in particular I’ll congratulate Lars Hansen, the young new mayor of Leduc, who I had the pleasure of canvassing with years ago.

There’s been a big shake-up on the labour side too: Guy Smith, AUPE president for sixteen years, has been replaced by AUPE’s new president-elect Sandra Azocar. Azocar has been a long-time union executive herself, but folks may know her better from her time with Friends of Medicare.

There’s no polling data on the AUPE membership I can reach towards to support this point, but I think it’s safe to assume that Guy Smith lost the gig over dissatisfaction with the deal AUPE accepted in September to avert a massive strike.

From the Report

• It’s been a quiet month for us as we handle some internal matters, but we have got a podcast episode for you that ANDP supporters are going to enjoy and eco-socialists are going to hate: I spoke with Shannon Phillips about the lingering resentment over the LEAP Manifesto that’s colouring the federal NDP leadership race, which is currently between LEAP advocate Avi Lewis and the ANDP-aligned Heather McPherson. We’ll be following up with an episode on the pro-Lewis perspective soon.

Sundries

• The next United Conservative Party AGM is coming up soon, and David Climenhaga argues that the AGM is really what most of the UCP’s legislative agenda this season is about. I think this argument has merit, and one evidence point is the incoming legislation about election rules which appears to be a sop to party members miffed about the Longest Ballot Committee trolling Pierre Poilieve a few months ago.
  
  
• Alberta’s next big climate mess may be AI data centres. Reporting for the CBC, Jonathan Montpetit and Yvette Brend examine the incredible stress that data centres are poised to put on the province’s water supply. And water is only half the problem—the government has been intimating for years now with the idea of hooking orphaned oil wells up to them to burn off gas for power. Back in March, Jeremy Appel detailed one crypto operation that was caught doing just that.
  
  
• The situation in Alberta hospitals continues to be an absolute disaster, writes Kim Siever, and things aren’t likely to get better as we enter cold and flu season.
  
  
• Municipal workers in Coaldale are still locked out as the town council had kicked the can on negotiations until after the election. The labour board has ordered council to get back to negotiating.
  
  
• New petition campaigns have launched and I’m less skeptical of them than Thomas Lukaszuk’s: a citizen’s initiative calling for an end to public funding to private schools, which should provide a fine opportunity to educate and organize around this issue, and a recall petition targeting Demetrios Nicolaides. There’s some chatter on social media about another recall petition targeting another UCP MLA soon too, but I’ve yet to verify it.

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