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how do you manage to read all these proceedings to quote them?? do you know if anyone is doing this for other provinces??
On the weekends I try to read one transcript every day. Sometimes I fall behind if I'm busy. And at this point I've been doing it for a while, so I can mostly skim because I have a good idea of which topics and which members are going to yield quotable content! I don't know about other provinces, but I think it would be a good idea! Anyone else know?
Question (period, aha) please: where do you get these quotes from? Is there a transcript of the legislature sessions?
Good question! Yes, there is. You can find them all here, going back to 1972, when Alberta's Hansard was created:
https://www.assembly.ab.ca/assembly-business/transcripts/transcripts-by-type
There are also Hansard transcripts for Legislature committees, though I don't post content from them as much.
Every province and territory, the House of Commons, and the Senate has a Hansard that you can look at if so inclined.
I do some light editing, like if I take a quote from the midst of someone's speech, I'll add their name before it, though in the transcript it only appears at the beginning. If I want to cut something down for length I'll put in ellipses, and I remove a lot of generic "Thank you, Mr. Speaker"s and the like, again, to keep post length relatively manageable.
It would be so delightful if, in the next session, the speaker occasionally asked members to define words that they're clearly misusing. "Woke" and "socialist" being at the top of the list.
That WOULD be delightful, an excellent suggestion! It would also be nice if the alleged leftists in the NDP stopped letting "socialist" be used against them as an insult and saying nothing about it. Whenever someone tries to use "What are you, some kind of SOCIALIST?" against me I just say, "Yeah, I am. Can I explain it to you?" A lot of people like the ideas of socialism until you use the word "socialism" because they've been conditioned to think socialism=bad. And the AB NDP just keep reinforcing this by running scared from the word. I am of course assuming that anyone in the NDP even identifies as a socialist anymore, which they may not. But a lot of people in this province do, so at the very least it would be nice for someone in the Legislature to point out that simply being a socialist is perfectly legitimate and not eeeevil, and it's really shitty to keep saying that socialists want to destroy the province, when we're just normal Albertans going about our lives and advocating for change. Which is our right. Wow, sorry. That got away from me. This has been bothering me for a while!
I think the NDP need to deploy more ranch metaphors when dealing with oil and gas addicts. 'Listen, when the bull gets old, he gets put out to pasture. Oil and gas have done a lot for this province but it's time to let them respectfully go and eat clover as we move towards a renewable energy future.' Also, thank you so much for the work and time you put into this tumblr. I love your efforts.
Oh, thank you! Sharing some of this nonsense and having other people react with “wait what the fuck?” makes me feel slightly better about the state of the province. We aren’t alone! Also yes, how do we start a Put Oil and Gas Out To Pasture campaign? I think this idea has legs
If I were speaker of the house, I'd get fired for singing 'Children, behave' all the time
Saaaame Speaker Cooper does love music, and he will break out into Broadway or pop songs, so maybe one day we’ll see “Children, behaaaaave” in the official record of the Legislature. We can dream!
feel free to not answer this since i am partially asking about location (not specifics, only whether you're in a conservative or ndp/liberal area), but i'm wondering if you've seen any sort of change in votership amongst conservatives in your area or in your circle, like family members. some of my most die-hard conservative family members (in the 65+ age range) have considered voting orange or red based on the actions of trump, poilievre, and smith. in my area (lethbridge), during the last fed election i saw mostly blue signs and polls, but there was always more orange than red. now, with our previous mla having endorsed the liberal candidate who was a previous mayor of lethbridge, i've only seen red and blue signs, and liberals have overtaken the ndp in polling. have you noticed any interesting shifts like this in your area or around it? what are your thoughts on some of the ndp vote going to liberal candidates in alberta? again, please feel free to ignore this or parts of this if you'd rather not answer for one reason or another--i'm only curious and am not trying to bait any specific answer or start any sort of debate. have a great day and keep doing what you do :] i'm trying to spread the word about your blog to my politically minded peers so more people can know what really goes down in our legislature.
Hmm, my specific area is probably not a great gauge for a trend as I think it's kind of an outlier. My riding has been very capably represented by an NDP MP for four years. He won by a very slim lead last time, and this time around I've seen way more campaign signs in my neighbourhood for him, only a couple for the Conservative candidate, and none so far for the Liberal. So that's a good sign for my electoral hopes personally, but like I said, it's kind of a unique case in Alberta. I have seen some people advocate for strategic voting on behalf of the Liberal candidate here, which is wild to me since (a) I haven't even heard a peep from whoever it is and (b) our incumbent MP is both a great representative for the community and a strong progressive voice. That kind of strategic voting, that doesn't take into account individual candidates at all, drives me crazy and tbh I think it's just as bad as people who always vote Conservative no matter what.
Any followers have anything to add? Any new or surprising voting trends y'all might have observed in your communities?
wow that latest one is just the ucp so blatantly wanting to gerrymander lethbridge. cuz west lethbridge is one of the only (if not the only? unsure) ridings outside of calgary/edmonton that votes ndp. when our byelection happened, both candidates had been selected for a WHILE, and then premier danielle dunce called the election for when she thought all the students would be away for the holidays. rob miyashiro still won tho, so they wanna split up the ridings even fucking more.
I know it shouldn't surprise me at this point, but it is still distressing just how utterly without shame they are in their open intentions to manipulate democratic processes as much as possible to their own advantage. I cannot imagine having that much contempt for voters and, again, be so OPEN about it! Though I guess when so few people are paying attention, they figure why not?
I was so glad when the blatant ploy to try to guarantee a win in Lethbridge-West failed!
I want to say thank you because your blog has made my day slightly less sucky as a trans person in this godforsaken province.
I love the commentary, and I love how you highlight some of the absolutely wild things that get said and accepted as normal in the legislature. Sometimes I forget that they’re elected official because they act like squabbling children so often.
Oh, Anon, thank YOU for this lovely message. This blog sometimes feels like the very least I can do in terms of combating what we're up against, so thank you for reminding me that it's valuable to point a lot of this stuff out. I dearly hope that we see some changes in the prevailing mood of this province soon
