Our provincial government is ignoring the advice of doctors, teachers, and law professors. Why? What group is Premier Smith pandering to in Alberta? Parents? Not all parents are “good parents." If they were, we would not have young people running away from their parents or from foster homes every year.
How many children and women are seeking shelters to escape abusive domestic and sometimes violent situations in their homes?
Or are her views and those of the UCP representative of a narrow religious and political group of people who want to impose their religious and political beliefs on others?
Are you threatening to use the not withstanding clause to impose undemocratic legislation?
Are you using the argument that a province has a right to impose legislation in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedom? If so, you are using the same arguments that “slavers” used to impose slavery in the southern states prior to the US Civil War.
The southern states used the same argument (states’ rights) to impose Jim Crow laws (black codes; sundown towns; segregation, etc) to prevent black people and non-white people from having equal rights with white people in the South after they lost the Civil War.
Remember history: Slavery was made legal in the America prior to the U.S. Civll War. Was it right? Segregation and Jim Crow laws were made legal in the southern states? Were they right?
Forcing Indians/indigenous people to live on reservations was legal despite breaking all the treaties US governments made with the native peoples. Were those actions legal? Were they right?
Be careful about going down the “rabbit hole” to authoritarian rule.
George Thatcher,
Olds
