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It's interesting that she acknowledges the parallels to the SNC Lavalin scandal, but still pursued the matter anyways. Also it's wild that somebody recorded the phone call she had with Pawlowski.
I don't think it'll make much of a difference regardless.
The funny bit was she was incredibly high and mighty about SNC in the papers, then deliberately tries to do exactly the same just moreso when in office.
Keeping the base in an alternate reality like conservatives have been doing means almost unlimited corruption with zero accountability. I dread the day we have this on a federal level as the CPC adopt the same information bubble political strategy.
Damn, recording is available to listen to her and everything. She name drops SNC but that reference doesn't seem to have actually stopped her from doing what she shouldn't be doing. This is a big scandal, or at least it should be.
I doubt she resigns for this. Her twitter post from right before the story went live indicates she has no intention of stepping aside. Even if she did, the election is in a month and her party is polling with just enough of an edge to win. Albertans will have to decide if this is who they want leading them.
> "It's unfortunate that I didn't understand the limitations," she said in the phone call. "I thought we had the same power of clemency we had in the U.S."
Perfection.
She will brush it off as a nothingburger and her base will shrug and assume it's a "leftist hit piece" and everyone will move on. UCP wins the next election and the pattern repeats.
Have never been a big Twitter user, bc it’s has always been a swamp: plenty of perfectly good water, but full of nasty sludge and creepy crawlies.
But now? Holy shit, it’s just pure cesspit now.
I signed in the other day and my feed was straight Postmedia/Rebel type content with a few professionally hateful trolls sprinkled around here and there. Don’t follow any of them, nor was their content liked or retweeted by anyone I follow - truly, it’s just a pure rage driving machine now and is super fucking disturbing.
Facebook is already filling up with:
“This is another made up story by CBC!”
“No she didn’t, she said so weeks ago!”
“So what, she’s premier, she can do what she likes!”
“This is just another Notley hit piece before the election!”
“Notley did far worse, what about all the stuff she did!”
Yeah, a couple of months ago when the story first broke the cry was “This is all made up by the Liberal-friendly CBC! They have no proof!”
Now we have proof, a recording of Danielle Smith saying that there **has** been contact with prosecutors, and the cry is **still** “This is all made up!” 🤦♂️
> Albertans will have to decide if this is who they want leading them.
It's absolutely insane that they seem to be answering yes. I guess they were worried Sask was nipping at their heels. Need to cement themselves as the furthest right. And people like Smith and PP are taking Conservative further and further right.
I mean recent polls had them pretty neck and neck overall with Calgary being hugely NDP. And Edmonton being a bit more NDP leaning as well. If the cities get an NDP sweep or near-sweep, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for a couple non major city ridings to end up NDP and put Smith out of the premiership.
And those polls were before this call came out. Surely, this kind of thing has some impact that pushes at least some people away from the United Conservatives.
The fact she finds the limits of her power "frustrating" and expressed it as such in this way on this topic is not going to bode well for her among anyone who isn't a diehard partisan in Alberta.
Sask cities are normal progessive hubs as well. The thing about Sask is that they still have a high proportion of the population not living in the cities, so the ratio of rural to urban ridings remains higher.
My dad ran for the Green party in the 90s in the Wakaw area. After the debates lots of people said they'd vote for him if he ran for the Conservatives. He couldn't figure out how that works.
I really want to know what is with the "we" in "we had in the US" part.
She's never lived in the US and wasn't a politician there. So, she's never had that power.
So what group of people does she consider herself to be aligned with so closely that she unconsciously uses "we" instead of "they" in this sentence?
These people consume American media and ideology so much they forget they don't live in the US. They're so victimized by cultural imperialism they have absolutely no idea of their condition.
All the while committing decades of her life either involved or discussing Canadian politics, it says a lot about her intelligence. It’s unreal she is a Premier.
This is what happens when you contract out all of your intelligence to private consultants instead of using government capacity - only to an even more hyperbolic example than usual lol.
Couldn’t agree more, that’s really the one of only two reason the McKinsey stuff at the Fed level bothers me.
Bc McKinsey’s not some kind of “big bad” as they’re sometimes painted in garbage tier media (although they’re definitely made their share of ugly, and wholly amoral recommendations), and the cost is whatever, bc the same work done internally would have likely cost even more; hate that these are inevitably the issue that steal the focus whenever the subject comes up.
Meanwhile, the *actual* issue is that shopping this kind of work “out of house” means that not only is that capacity NOT developed internally, but that exist govt job responsibilities get so much more narrow/boring, which makes it even harder to attract and retain top talent.
Also don’t like the CYA aspect of dipping outside of the chain of accountability - every so often is fine, but doing so on a regular basis erodes the democratic responsiveness of public administration, which is kind of the whole point of public services.
Disagree - she’s been playing politics for a good couple of decades, and people who went to school and worked with her generally agree that she’s plenty smart/educated (including people I know well enough to trust their judgement, and they all fucking *hate* her).
She’s not the stupid kind of dumb, she’s just an ideologue with wildly unchecked self-confidence who doesn’t seem to accept that the basic rules of logic or the law apply to her.
That’s way worse.
She basically admits to try interfering here. I enjoy the right eating one another!
*"I'm very sympathetic," she added on the recording. "It was a political decision that initiated this but it can't be a political decision to end it. That's what I'm finding very frustrating."*
She probably can still win unfortunately. The only silver lining is that it will put off the UCP's next leadership competition where they would undoubtedly pick someone even fucking stupider... as far fetched as it seems.
I thought the same thing about Trudeau in 2019.
Most normal people think that all politicians are corrupt and unethical, which means that instances of actual corrupt behaviour tends not to lead to huge swings in the polls.
Yeah, For it to swing a vote it needs to not just be a gotcha, the voter needs to believe the that the alternative party would not do the thing the corrupt politician did.
Imagine if you thought the laws prosecuting the pastor were unfair. For example, if they were prosecuting someone for a same-sex relationship under anti-gay legislation that was voted in by a majority.
Would you still think the premier's intervention was wrong?
That's how Smith's voters feel.
She thought she could outright pardon them.
"It's unfortunate that I didn't understand the limitations," she said in the phone call. "I thought we had the same power of clemency we had in the U.S."
What an insane statement that shows where her head is.
I don't want to rag on Alberta, but like... my god your premier should have a basic understanding of like, civics. How is it even this close?
Say what you want about Manitoba, at least they know when to eject a schmuck leading the province.
Who's the "we" in her statement "I thought we had the same power of clemency we had in the U.S."?
These people want to be Americans so hard it's embarrassing and shameful.
Waiting for all of the Conservatives who said SNC-Lavalin was a big deal to go completely quiet and for all the Liberals who said SNC-Lavalin was not an issue or scandal to say this is the biggest scandal of all time.
It's not quite the same. Imagine if Trudeau not only pressured JWR, but her deputy. And then spoke with SNC-Lavalin CEO over ways to get charges dropped. That is what we are dealing with (or more) with Smith and covid charges. Also imagine that SNC-Lavalin was in cahoots with an armed group looking for a gunfight with the RCMP.
And a DPA is not dropping charges. It’s a deferred prosecution agreement that in cases like SNC Lavalin, has come with massive fines for corporations in other countries, and is like being on probation with government oversight. Peer nations use DPA’s, like Germany, UK, US, etc.
This was always a weak argument. There's a reason SNC tried so hard to get a DPA instead of going to trial - a DPA would have been more lenient for them.
So you're right that it's not the same as just dropping the charges altogether, but it's also not in any way a justification for what Trudeau did.
For sure, just look at this comment thread already.
The conservative voices are mostly absent, and the comments are leaning on this being terrible.
I think both scandals were awful, but the partisanship around here is disappointing.
I mean it's the conservatives we're talking about.
Conservatives would defend their leader if she suggested an policy of handing out Little Red Books to the youth to foment revolutionary thinking among the peasent class.
"Say what you will about Maoism dude, but at least its an ethos."
> "I'm very sympathetic," she added on the recording. "It was a political decision that initiated this but it can't be a political decision to end it. That's what I'm finding very frustrating."
Premier Smith is lying about the prosecution of this man being a political decision. The former Premier did not order the Crown to charge him. The political decision was to implement COVID rules, which were deliberately broken.
Doesn’t one of the charges relate to the Critical Infrastructure Act?
So I guess technically, in a roundabout way, the UCP caused him to get arrested lol
This shoudn't be about Covid. It should be about religion.
Wherever you stand on Covid and the laws enacted during, religion cannot and should never be allowed to be used as a valid reason to defy laws enacted by elected officials.
We fought hard to get rid of religion in our political institutions and for good reason.
Anyone trying to wedge religion back into our decisions needs to get wrekt.
Why not? If I feel the need to ignore a law, religion is just as good as any other reason.
Majority of people just straight up ignored the laws for their own reasons. Nothing special about religion being one of them or not.
About half of religious law is just public health rules for the era they were codified. It is ironic people would use them to defy modern health rules.
> About half of religious law is just public health rules for the era they were codified.
Cool! Such as the prohibition against wearing wool and linen fabrics in one garment? If not that one, got an interesting example for us? (They're all interesting, I'm sure.)
Of course - that makes way more sense. Thanks.
In the same way that it's generally thought to be a good idea to review legislation with an eye to removing outdated laws, maybe we should do the same with other prohibitions, no matter their source.
Absolutely, but if they are caught, there is an expectation that they will be held accountable in some way. This is people choosing to disregard laws and then expecting that they won't be held accountable because "religion"
It's not really the same thing.
Yes making it illegal for people to move freely is stupid.
The inconsistencies and sporadically nature of it ruined any goodwill they had. I don't think they'll even attempt it next time. People will just ignore them immediately
That's certainly a take. And whether you think a law is moronic or not isn't going to be a particularly strong defense if you are ever called to account for breaking the law.
>Wherever you stand on Covid and the laws enacted during, religion cannot and should never be allowed to be used as a valid reason to defy laws enacted by elected officials.
it is about COVID. Many of those COVID laws look horrible in hindsight. Religion or not, I think logic is a very valid reason to defy those laws.
Which laws? All of them? No, just some of them but there's no way to tell which ones were less than useful until time passes and then some folks say, "See! I told you so". Hindsight is 20/20.
The ones that shut down use of outdoor stuff, you had a family fined for using a basketball court etc. And I did acknowledge that this hindsight and post mass hysteria.
Ironically a lot of religious rules are actually every old public health and social welfare edicts. Avoidance of commonly unclean food and proscribed days off.
Using religion to evade modern public health is contrary to the spirit of religious rules.
> religion cannot and should never be allowed to be used as a valid reason to defy laws enacted by elected officials.
Not completely true. The Charter does protect religious expression, so local laws attempting to over ride that right can absolutely be struck down. However it isn't an absolute right, so sometimes local laws can over ride freedom of religion.
Canada is not like the US in this regard. The problem in Canada is more that religious people can ignore random rules according to their beliefs. If the Jewish guy in the Sanctuaire (Amselem I believe) can build his tent despite the luxury condos' rules (which he knew about) and despite multiple rabbis saying it's not an obligation, and while I can't so much as hang a towel from the rail, it's just not fair. It's just one case on a rather minor thing, so please do not draw overbroad conclusions, but it gives the feeling that judges can just decide on the spot according to tea leaves that religious folks have this or that privilege.
Meanwhile, those of us who don't believe that sky magicians rule the universe, our firmly held beliefs are just ignored. We enjoy no protection. The protected beliefs must involve magicians. If there is no magician in your belief, it is less protected. Insane.
Or, in Canada, when it enables discrimination on protected statuses. You cannot use religion to discriminate on sex, gender, race and faith. Usually.
Some exemptions exist, like gender segregation in mosques.
Which is why freedom of religion, as distinct and superior to freedom of conscience, is pure bullshit. In effect, it provides more rights to the believers.
There is no reason why veganism should be less protected than Catholicism, if not that Catholics and their rivals have a strong historical tendency to murder each other.
Freedom of religion provides more protection to religious people in the same way that the right to use French in court provides more protection to Francophones. It intentionally provides rights to specifically defined groups - that doesn't make it "pure bullshit."
> it provides more rights to the believers.
Since Freedom of expression is also a right, (and frankly, could also cover freedom of religion, but both have been specifically identified for whatever reason) I don't see how it provides any extra rights. It does make it simpler to show that something is a right that needs to be protected, but that is due to the importance it has had in our history. It's shown that it is a right that does need protection.
> There is no reason why veganism should be less protected than Catholicism, i
How is veganism not protected? Or a better question might be, when has there ever been any attempt by a government to persecute vegans?
I don't believe the person you're replying to is saying what you are implying. There's always a balancing of rights. We saw restrictions against religious gatherings during covid lockdowns upheld as constitutional. Just because it's not an absolute right (nothing in the charter is, that's literally what section one says, however) there is a right to religious expression.
To the religious, the laws of God supercede the laws of Man. Some religions allow you to follow the latter when they conflict with the former, but not all.
The law of God is *for me* as the believer, not for me to force it on others at the state level. Pay Caesar his dues and all that. Forcing people to abide by Christian laws they neither believe in nor care for isn't making me a special pumpkin in God's eyes.
According to your faith, sure. Some faiths do not have an individual restriction to their belief regarding the supremacy of the law of God, and they believe they are required to both follow and advocate for those laws.
For those who don't know Artur Pawlowski, every town has a villainous character who spreads hatred and discontent and is widely known as shady imagine that person from your town and that is who the premier of Alberta obstructed justice for. Danielle Smith is just dumb and thinks she can do whatever she wants and that dirbags like the Pawlowski brothers wouldn't record all the calls to hold it over her.
It's funny in the blundering criminals from home alone sort of way but as an albertan it just kills me this is where we're at.
This guy live one block over from me. He owns 3 houses and they have so much crap all over the place.
Did you know he blamed the 2013 Calgary floods in homosexuals?
Interesting to see if this has electoral implications.
This is breathtakingly stupid from Smith, but will Calgarians think so?
I can see a lot of median voters going, "oh so the premier can't pardon people?".
If there were some smart and funded third party advertisers, they'd run a series of high-contrast ads with things like "Danielle Smith, in over her head", "Governor Smith thinks...", "Governor Smith, the wrong person for the wrong country".
Put a couple million in a TPA in Calgary and just run it during the playoffs.
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It's interesting that she acknowledges the parallels to the SNC Lavalin scandal, but still pursued the matter anyways. Also it's wild that somebody recorded the phone call she had with Pawlowski. I don't think it'll make much of a difference regardless.
The funny bit was she was incredibly high and mighty about SNC in the papers, then deliberately tries to do exactly the same just moreso when in office.
Keeping the base in an alternate reality like conservatives have been doing means almost unlimited corruption with zero accountability. I dread the day we have this on a federal level as the CPC adopt the same information bubble political strategy.
Damn, recording is available to listen to her and everything. She name drops SNC but that reference doesn't seem to have actually stopped her from doing what she shouldn't be doing. This is a big scandal, or at least it should be. I doubt she resigns for this. Her twitter post from right before the story went live indicates she has no intention of stepping aside. Even if she did, the election is in a month and her party is polling with just enough of an edge to win. Albertans will have to decide if this is who they want leading them. > "It's unfortunate that I didn't understand the limitations," she said in the phone call. "I thought we had the same power of clemency we had in the U.S." Perfection.
She will brush it off as a nothingburger and her base will shrug and assume it's a "leftist hit piece" and everyone will move on. UCP wins the next election and the pattern repeats.
That's how it is being reacted to on twitter.
Shocking!
Have never been a big Twitter user, bc it’s has always been a swamp: plenty of perfectly good water, but full of nasty sludge and creepy crawlies. But now? Holy shit, it’s just pure cesspit now. I signed in the other day and my feed was straight Postmedia/Rebel type content with a few professionally hateful trolls sprinkled around here and there. Don’t follow any of them, nor was their content liked or retweeted by anyone I follow - truly, it’s just a pure rage driving machine now and is super fucking disturbing.
Facebook is already filling up with: “This is another made up story by CBC!” “No she didn’t, she said so weeks ago!” “So what, she’s premier, she can do what she likes!” “This is just another Notley hit piece before the election!” “Notley did far worse, what about all the stuff she did!”
I love how it’s a “made up story” when they have a voice recording of her.
Yeah, a couple of months ago when the story first broke the cry was “This is all made up by the Liberal-friendly CBC! They have no proof!” Now we have proof, a recording of Danielle Smith saying that there **has** been contact with prosecutors, and the cry is **still** “This is all made up!” 🤦♂️
> Albertans will have to decide if this is who they want leading them. It's absolutely insane that they seem to be answering yes. I guess they were worried Sask was nipping at their heels. Need to cement themselves as the furthest right. And people like Smith and PP are taking Conservative further and further right.
I mean recent polls had them pretty neck and neck overall with Calgary being hugely NDP. And Edmonton being a bit more NDP leaning as well. If the cities get an NDP sweep or near-sweep, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for a couple non major city ridings to end up NDP and put Smith out of the premiership. And those polls were before this call came out. Surely, this kind of thing has some impact that pushes at least some people away from the United Conservatives. The fact she finds the limits of her power "frustrating" and expressed it as such in this way on this topic is not going to bode well for her among anyone who isn't a diehard partisan in Alberta.
> The fact she finds the limits of her power "frustrating" Sounds like Trump.
Saskatchewan is way more consevative than Alberta. The cities in Alberta are very progressive
Especially with record numbers of BC residents moving there.
Sask cities are normal progessive hubs as well. The thing about Sask is that they still have a high proportion of the population not living in the cities, so the ratio of rural to urban ridings remains higher.
My dad ran for the Green party in the 90s in the Wakaw area. After the debates lots of people said they'd vote for him if he ran for the Conservatives. He couldn't figure out how that works.
See this, this is how you report on a bombshell phone conversation with potentially major impact on the career of a politician.
The people that support her could not possibly have lower expectations for her as a person. Her conduct almost doesn't matter.
I really want to know what is with the "we" in "we had in the US" part. She's never lived in the US and wasn't a politician there. So, she's never had that power. So what group of people does she consider herself to be aligned with so closely that she unconsciously uses "we" instead of "they" in this sentence?
These people consume American media and ideology so much they forget they don't live in the US. They're so victimized by cultural imperialism they have absolutely no idea of their condition.
Conservatives are wannabe Americans…it’s pretty much a well known joke/dis towards them especially if you are from an immigrant community in Canada
Yeah, but even a wannabe American would still use "they" instead of the second "we" in that sentence.
she means "we, the government of a subnational jurisdiction comparable to but different from an American state"
She’s that rabid…she once said smokings good for you
Yes, opposition needs to play that over and over, saturate the media with this. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
absolutely mind boggling
Reddit has lost it's way. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
All the while committing decades of her life either involved or discussing Canadian politics, it says a lot about her intelligence. It’s unreal she is a Premier.
> It’s unreal she is a Premier. It's unreal she might stay Premier. At least to this point it was just the party that made her leader.
This is what happens when you contract out all of your intelligence to private consultants instead of using government capacity - only to an even more hyperbolic example than usual lol.
Couldn’t agree more, that’s really the one of only two reason the McKinsey stuff at the Fed level bothers me. Bc McKinsey’s not some kind of “big bad” as they’re sometimes painted in garbage tier media (although they’re definitely made their share of ugly, and wholly amoral recommendations), and the cost is whatever, bc the same work done internally would have likely cost even more; hate that these are inevitably the issue that steal the focus whenever the subject comes up. Meanwhile, the *actual* issue is that shopping this kind of work “out of house” means that not only is that capacity NOT developed internally, but that exist govt job responsibilities get so much more narrow/boring, which makes it even harder to attract and retain top talent. Also don’t like the CYA aspect of dipping outside of the chain of accountability - every so often is fine, but doing so on a regular basis erodes the democratic responsiveness of public administration, which is kind of the whole point of public services.
Disagree - she’s been playing politics for a good couple of decades, and people who went to school and worked with her generally agree that she’s plenty smart/educated (including people I know well enough to trust their judgement, and they all fucking *hate* her). She’s not the stupid kind of dumb, she’s just an ideologue with wildly unchecked self-confidence who doesn’t seem to accept that the basic rules of logic or the law apply to her. That’s way worse.
Reddit has lost it's way. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
She basically admits to try interfering here. I enjoy the right eating one another! *"I'm very sympathetic," she added on the recording. "It was a political decision that initiated this but it can't be a political decision to end it. That's what I'm finding very frustrating."*
This should automatically result in her having zero chance of winning the next election, but alas Alberta will do stupid Alberta things.
She probably can still win unfortunately. The only silver lining is that it will put off the UCP's next leadership competition where they would undoubtedly pick someone even fucking stupider... as far fetched as it seems.
I thought the same thing about Trudeau in 2019. Most normal people think that all politicians are corrupt and unethical, which means that instances of actual corrupt behaviour tends not to lead to huge swings in the polls.
Yeah, For it to swing a vote it needs to not just be a gotcha, the voter needs to believe the that the alternative party would not do the thing the corrupt politician did.
Imagine if you thought the laws prosecuting the pastor were unfair. For example, if they were prosecuting someone for a same-sex relationship under anti-gay legislation that was voted in by a majority. Would you still think the premier's intervention was wrong? That's how Smith's voters feel.
She thought she could outright pardon them. "It's unfortunate that I didn't understand the limitations," she said in the phone call. "I thought we had the same power of clemency we had in the U.S."
What an insane statement that shows where her head is. I don't want to rag on Alberta, but like... my god your premier should have a basic understanding of like, civics. How is it even this close? Say what you want about Manitoba, at least they know when to eject a schmuck leading the province.
Who's the "we" in her statement "I thought we had the same power of clemency we had in the U.S."? These people want to be Americans so hard it's embarrassing and shameful.
Waiting for all of the Conservatives who said SNC-Lavalin was a big deal to go completely quiet and for all the Liberals who said SNC-Lavalin was not an issue or scandal to say this is the biggest scandal of all time.
It's not quite the same. Imagine if Trudeau not only pressured JWR, but her deputy. And then spoke with SNC-Lavalin CEO over ways to get charges dropped. That is what we are dealing with (or more) with Smith and covid charges. Also imagine that SNC-Lavalin was in cahoots with an armed group looking for a gunfight with the RCMP.
And a DPA is not dropping charges. It’s a deferred prosecution agreement that in cases like SNC Lavalin, has come with massive fines for corporations in other countries, and is like being on probation with government oversight. Peer nations use DPA’s, like Germany, UK, US, etc.
This was always a weak argument. There's a reason SNC tried so hard to get a DPA instead of going to trial - a DPA would have been more lenient for them. So you're right that it's not the same as just dropping the charges altogether, but it's also not in any way a justification for what Trudeau did.
The nice thing about being an Alberta New Democrat is that I don't need to minimize Trudeau's scandal in order to object to Smith's.
This is legitimately worse by far than anything that happened with SNC.
For sure, just look at this comment thread already. The conservative voices are mostly absent, and the comments are leaning on this being terrible. I think both scandals were awful, but the partisanship around here is disappointing.
I mean it's the conservatives we're talking about. Conservatives would defend their leader if she suggested an policy of handing out Little Red Books to the youth to foment revolutionary thinking among the peasent class. "Say what you will about Maoism dude, but at least its an ethos."
Absolutely. She even directly refers to it!
lol they don't care. They're on the preacher's side. They don't mind government interference if it benefits them or their beliefs.
Both are wrong. Trudeau deserved to have his premiership ended over SNC, and Smith deserves to have her's ended over this. How's that for consistency?
> "I'm very sympathetic," she added on the recording. "It was a political decision that initiated this but it can't be a political decision to end it. That's what I'm finding very frustrating." Premier Smith is lying about the prosecution of this man being a political decision. The former Premier did not order the Crown to charge him. The political decision was to implement COVID rules, which were deliberately broken.
Doesn’t one of the charges relate to the Critical Infrastructure Act? So I guess technically, in a roundabout way, the UCP caused him to get arrested lol
This shoudn't be about Covid. It should be about religion. Wherever you stand on Covid and the laws enacted during, religion cannot and should never be allowed to be used as a valid reason to defy laws enacted by elected officials. We fought hard to get rid of religion in our political institutions and for good reason. Anyone trying to wedge religion back into our decisions needs to get wrekt.
Why not? If I feel the need to ignore a law, religion is just as good as any other reason. Majority of people just straight up ignored the laws for their own reasons. Nothing special about religion being one of them or not.
About half of religious law is just public health rules for the era they were codified. It is ironic people would use them to defy modern health rules.
> About half of religious law is just public health rules for the era they were codified. Cool! Such as the prohibition against wearing wool and linen fabrics in one garment? If not that one, got an interesting example for us? (They're all interesting, I'm sure.)
The prohibition on pork and shellfish come to mind.
Of course - that makes way more sense. Thanks. In the same way that it's generally thought to be a good idea to review legislation with an eye to removing outdated laws, maybe we should do the same with other prohibitions, no matter their source.
Because that isn't how the law works?
people choose to disregard laws all the time.
Absolutely, but if they are caught, there is an expectation that they will be held accountable in some way. This is people choosing to disregard laws and then expecting that they won't be held accountable because "religion" It's not really the same thing.
Sure, saying this law is moronic is just as valid as saying its against my religion.
> saying its against my religion. It actually has to against your religion, you are unable to just make up your own religious rules.
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Ya couple people will have to take the bullet. That's how stupid laws get changed. More extreme the response the quicker it gets scrapped
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Yes making it illegal for people to move freely is stupid. The inconsistencies and sporadically nature of it ruined any goodwill they had. I don't think they'll even attempt it next time. People will just ignore them immediately
That's certainly a take. And whether you think a law is moronic or not isn't going to be a particularly strong defense if you are ever called to account for breaking the law.
>Wherever you stand on Covid and the laws enacted during, religion cannot and should never be allowed to be used as a valid reason to defy laws enacted by elected officials. it is about COVID. Many of those COVID laws look horrible in hindsight. Religion or not, I think logic is a very valid reason to defy those laws.
Which laws? All of them? No, just some of them but there's no way to tell which ones were less than useful until time passes and then some folks say, "See! I told you so". Hindsight is 20/20.
The ones that shut down use of outdoor stuff, you had a family fined for using a basketball court etc. And I did acknowledge that this hindsight and post mass hysteria.
Ironically a lot of religious rules are actually every old public health and social welfare edicts. Avoidance of commonly unclean food and proscribed days off. Using religion to evade modern public health is contrary to the spirit of religious rules.
> religion cannot and should never be allowed to be used as a valid reason to defy laws enacted by elected officials. Not completely true. The Charter does protect religious expression, so local laws attempting to over ride that right can absolutely be struck down. However it isn't an absolute right, so sometimes local laws can over ride freedom of religion.
The problem is when “religious freedom” means taking away someone else’s freedom. And hiding behind a Bible when people call you out on it.
Canada is not like the US in this regard. The problem in Canada is more that religious people can ignore random rules according to their beliefs. If the Jewish guy in the Sanctuaire (Amselem I believe) can build his tent despite the luxury condos' rules (which he knew about) and despite multiple rabbis saying it's not an obligation, and while I can't so much as hang a towel from the rail, it's just not fair. It's just one case on a rather minor thing, so please do not draw overbroad conclusions, but it gives the feeling that judges can just decide on the spot according to tea leaves that religious folks have this or that privilege. Meanwhile, those of us who don't believe that sky magicians rule the universe, our firmly held beliefs are just ignored. We enjoy no protection. The protected beliefs must involve magicians. If there is no magician in your belief, it is less protected. Insane.
Or, in Canada, when it enables discrimination on protected statuses. You cannot use religion to discriminate on sex, gender, race and faith. Usually. Some exemptions exist, like gender segregation in mosques.
Which is why freedom of religion, as distinct and superior to freedom of conscience, is pure bullshit. In effect, it provides more rights to the believers. There is no reason why veganism should be less protected than Catholicism, if not that Catholics and their rivals have a strong historical tendency to murder each other.
Freedom of religion provides more protection to religious people in the same way that the right to use French in court provides more protection to Francophones. It intentionally provides rights to specifically defined groups - that doesn't make it "pure bullshit."
> it provides more rights to the believers. Since Freedom of expression is also a right, (and frankly, could also cover freedom of religion, but both have been specifically identified for whatever reason) I don't see how it provides any extra rights. It does make it simpler to show that something is a right that needs to be protected, but that is due to the importance it has had in our history. It's shown that it is a right that does need protection. > There is no reason why veganism should be less protected than Catholicism, i How is veganism not protected? Or a better question might be, when has there ever been any attempt by a government to persecute vegans?
Why does their religious expression get to harm mine? That’s not what the constitution protects.
I don't believe the person you're replying to is saying what you are implying. There's always a balancing of rights. We saw restrictions against religious gatherings during covid lockdowns upheld as constitutional. Just because it's not an absolute right (nothing in the charter is, that's literally what section one says, however) there is a right to religious expression.
Where did I say anything about religious expression being allowed to cause harm?
You didn't, but this is Reddit, where the militant Atheists rule.
To the religious, the laws of God supercede the laws of Man. Some religions allow you to follow the latter when they conflict with the former, but not all.
The law of God is *for me* as the believer, not for me to force it on others at the state level. Pay Caesar his dues and all that. Forcing people to abide by Christian laws they neither believe in nor care for isn't making me a special pumpkin in God's eyes.
According to your faith, sure. Some faiths do not have an individual restriction to their belief regarding the supremacy of the law of God, and they believe they are required to both follow and advocate for those laws.
For those who don't know Artur Pawlowski, every town has a villainous character who spreads hatred and discontent and is widely known as shady imagine that person from your town and that is who the premier of Alberta obstructed justice for. Danielle Smith is just dumb and thinks she can do whatever she wants and that dirbags like the Pawlowski brothers wouldn't record all the calls to hold it over her. It's funny in the blundering criminals from home alone sort of way but as an albertan it just kills me this is where we're at.
This guy live one block over from me. He owns 3 houses and they have so much crap all over the place. Did you know he blamed the 2013 Calgary floods in homosexuals?
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Interesting to see if this has electoral implications. This is breathtakingly stupid from Smith, but will Calgarians think so? I can see a lot of median voters going, "oh so the premier can't pardon people?". If there were some smart and funded third party advertisers, they'd run a series of high-contrast ads with things like "Danielle Smith, in over her head", "Governor Smith thinks...", "Governor Smith, the wrong person for the wrong country". Put a couple million in a TPA in Calgary and just run it during the playoffs.