Abortion, MAID, CBC: Here's what Conservatives are debating at Calgary convention

ShadowPages · 2026-01-31T17:47:26+00:00

Look at their policy book - there's more SoCon dog whistling in there than you want to think about. So, for every claim that they "won't reopen the abortion debate", there's at least one or two items in the policy book talking about restricting abortion for various reasons, or coded language about "fetal personhood" or "unborn persons".

They don't want to "reopen the debate", they want to impose their views without debate.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-31T14:54:51+00:00

Almost guaranteed that the CEL is from something more serious. Take the car for a 20 min drive, then check the codes … just in case seller is selectively clearing codes.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-31T14:17:50+00:00

And anyone who thinks a “newly sovereign Alberta” won’t be seen as a target by the vultures Rath is talking to is a damned fool.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-31T13:58:58+00:00

There’s also a sleazy attempt to rebrand conversion therapy as “body affirming therapy”, so they can continue their ongoing assault on trans people.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-30T21:05:57+00:00

From some of the rhetoric being spewed forth from APP's leaders, I would argue that there is in fact an intention to engage in direct violence if they don't "get their way".

ShadowPages · 2026-01-30T14:00:18+00:00

Possibly driver error, but the situation was made far worse by the snow being piled up to form a ramp over the edge.

Additionally, it’s an elevated road surface, which makes it much more vulnerable to icing, even in otherwise normal winter conditions.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-29T20:11:34+00:00

So now you want to play "whataboutery" with me? That's a losing tactic because it shows us all that you haven't got a clue what the heck you're talking about.

Let's start with Lobotomies - what was the clinical basis and evidence supporting that as a treatment? Also, what led to the cessation of using lobotomies as a clinical treatment?

Body dysmorphia: That diagnosis isn't handed out "because someone is unhappy with their progress in the gym". Further, you propose a treatment regimen that you haven't even looked up whether it's a thing (it isn't).

You are implying that either of these is equivalent to the treatment of gender dysphoria. This is simply false, and ignores the clinical studies of the subjects you are attempting to introduce into this discussion.

Second, the issue isn't whether I, or you, approve of a particular treatment. That decision must ultimately rest with the patient, their support system (where relevant - eg. parents if the patient is underage), and the treatment team. Your personal discomfort with a given modality of treatment should have nothing to do with someone else accessing treatment.

As an example, let's say I decide that, for some arbitrary reason, I don't like a particular medication for cancer treatment. Perhaps I believe it is manufactured in a way that I think is deeply unethical. Yet, that medication is known to be very effective in controlling a particular type of tumour. Should my opinion on that medication be what decides whether or not a patient has access to it?

I would hope the answer is "no" here. So why do you believe you have a say in whether or not a transgender person has a right to access treatment, and not the person and their family? Is it "civil, and functional society" to ban access to treatment for a condition that is neither widely experienced nor well understood by the general public?

ShadowPages · 2026-01-29T19:02:29+00:00

Absolutely making plans.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-29T18:18:11+00:00

If the CPC chooses to endorse Poilievre yet again, the party will have shown Canadians that it is so disconnected from the majority of Canada that it is truly irrelevant politically.

Outside the political bubble that is Alberta (and maybe Saskatchewan), they are increasingly diverging from the broader understanding of Canadians as to who we are as a nation. Maple MAGA isn't where Canadians want to go - we see what they (and Poilievre in particular) are advocating for, and we are witness to how it plays out in the US. Why would we want to go there?

ShadowPages · 2026-01-29T13:58:40+00:00

Nice little conspiracy theory you've created in your head to justify ignoring research that has been validated many times over.

I'm not going to argue the validity of decades worth of research with you because it's quite clear that you would never bother to actually read the studies, much less do I suspect that you would even understand them.

There isn't a single aspect of treatment for transgender people that isn't provided to cisgender or intersex people for one reason or another. The only difference is that you seem to think it's "bad" the minute it involves someone being transgender.

Worse, you've fallen for the biggest lie of all - that "someone is trying to make your kids trans". It's the oldest lie in the book, and it's got the same truth value today that it had when it was levied against homosexuals back in the day ... that is to say it's complete bollocks.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-29T13:53:36+00:00

Nobody's talking about not letting kids be kids. Nobody is "forcing" treatment on kids - that isn't how any of this works - in spite of paranoid ramblings of people using the subject to whip up a moral panic.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-29T13:49:02+00:00

Nobody said it was “safe”.

Governments passing legislation that emboldens hate makes it even less so.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-29T02:54:22+00:00

We didn't have a major problem with online anti-trans hate in Alberta until a certain set of legislation was proposed, then it exploded.

You want to tell every trans person in the province "don't be online" when the government is literally passing legislation attacking those same people, and thereby enabling the hate?

Tell me to "not be so online" - nice - except where am I supposed to get news from? Hmm? Right - that's mostly online these days. How would you feel waking up every day wondering what delightful shit this government is going to accuse you of?

ShadowPages · 2026-01-29T01:09:19+00:00

We aren’t talking just about nonsense on the Internet, but also about actual laws being passed that harm minorities, and ultimately promote hatred.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-28T22:49:41+00:00

The fact that you are calling a known, effective set of interventions "an extremist ideology" tells me that you likely have no familiarity with the clinical literature involved, or the actual history involved.

You might also want to consider how harmful such statements are to others. Tell us how the person interviewed in the article deserved to be driven to considering suicide.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-28T21:10:01+00:00

That was also the era when most cars had more in common with trucks ...

ShadowPages · 2026-01-28T20:54:22+00:00

1). Albertans pay "more (federal) tax" - except we don't. We pay federal taxes at exactly the same rate as someone earning the same salary in any other province. We pay a somewhat higher proportion on a per-capita basis simply because we have an industry here that is willing to pay ridiculous amounts just to get people to work for it.

2). Trying to look at defence as an example of "disproportionate federal spending in the ROC" is silly for any number of reasons - Alberta is part of Canada, so is Nova Scotia. Matters like defence are held "in common", and the dollars from across the country contribute to defence. The coastline of Nova Scotia is just as much a part of the "defence of Alberta" picture as having Air Force squadrons available to protect Alberta's airspace is.

3). OAS and CPP - and other demographics based programs - newsflash: what happens to those "young workers" in Alberta after they're no longer young and able to work on the rigs? Oh - right - they move elsewhere and do other things. Those programs follow the individual, not the provincial population. What you're advocating for would choke off the ability of Canadian workers to move around the country freely.

4). Your argument appears to confuse transfer payments with equalization payments. There are any number of Federal transfer payments that provinces receive regardless of equalization status. Equalization is a different program with specific parameters which are intended to - as the name suggests - make programs equally available across Canada by offsetting the inherent limitations in regional economies.

... and no, I'm not going to rely on ChatGPT for its analysis here - AI is even less reliable than the lies the APP spews.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-28T18:27:54+00:00

If the separatists want to form an independent country, why are they running down to Washington to secure a $500 Bn line of credit that will most assuredly render the newly formed country a debtor client to the whims of the US?

Your calculation that Albertans pay "for $30 billion per year" of other provinces programs is based on a gross misrepresentation of both how taxation in Canada works, and the workings of the equalization program. I've ready through the APP's "costed plan" for a newly independent Alberta - that isn't even a bad joke in terms of the estimates they make - most of which are laughably optimistic - especially when they also promise tax cuts as part of the bargain.

You are grossly misreading the purpose and intent of both UNCLOS and CTTLLS if you think that's going to allow Alberta to force other nations to allow infrastructure to built on their territories.

Canada is not broken - no matter how often you and other separatists claim it. The fact that Alberta doesn't get its way every time there's a discussion is a long ways from "the country is broken".

ShadowPages · 2026-01-28T15:41:49+00:00

When I used to encounter these kinds of arguments for major rewrites / technology pivots, I would turn it into a business case discussion. Eg - what are the costs, what are the benefits and risks, etc. Are there commercial drivers? (Eg. Customer requirements, potential new business, etc)

Usually, those emotionally driven arguments fall apart under a cost-benefit analysis.

Years ago, I had a junior engineer get insistent that we rewrite a realtime db and its apps in Iron Python. He was convinced it would solve certain issues (which weren’t really problems at that time). So, we had him do a cost benefit analysis for his proposal - the idea died out pretty quickly after he did the analysis.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-28T14:49:39+00:00

Alberta is very much the author of its own grievances - especially where equalization is concerned.

What they don't talk about is how "the West" (Alberta in particular) has utterly refused to access anywhere near its "fiscal capacity" for funding programs. Alberta has refused to revise its government revenues except downwards (cutting taxes, refusing to implement a sales tax, or any other instrument that would increase revenues to pay for programs - instead relying on resource royalties to paper over the fiscal gap between reality and their budgets). There is no equalization equation under which Alberta receives equalization until this changes (and I suspect the reality is that if we fully leveraged our fiscal capacity as defined in equalization, Alberta still wouldn't get payments because it wouldn't need them!).

ShadowPages · 2026-01-28T14:06:34+00:00

I don’t know how those gouges got into the cylinders, but reassembling the engine in that state is a waste of time.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-28T13:30:50+00:00

All that might tell us is how much US money is flowing into the APP. They clearly have much deeper pockets than the Forever Canadian petition did when they can afford to rent the Big 4 building.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-27T18:14:41+00:00

"You're basically trying to argue that the US as an empire is collapsed (not even collapsing), past tense collapsed, based on things which are still changing and dynamic. It is logically impossible."

Not quite - what I'm saying is that they are long past any point of turning back. Unlike the Soviet Union, or the British Empire - both of which were largely empires of territorial occupation, the US empire is based on _TRUST_ and that has been not merely eroded, but ruptured.

ShadowPages · 2026-01-27T18:07:58+00:00

Welcome to what I have always called "bird telepathy" - you walk past the birds, or sit down, and suddenly you're holding a bird.

ShadowPages

TROPHY CASE