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Alberta

Alberta and British Columbia set to gain federal ridings from Liberal-held Ontario areas

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Three Liberal-held ridings in Toronto and northern Ontario are set to be given to British Columbia and Alberta this spring, providing a potential benefit to the Conservative Party in the next election.

Alberta and British Columbia are set to gain more federal ridings, which could increase Conservatives’ chances of a federal victory in the next election.  

According to a memo published October 10 by Blacklock’s Reporter, the next federal election will see fewer Members of Parliament (MPs) in Toronto and northern Ontario, and more in Okanagan, British Columbia, and suburban Alberta. 

“One of our election readiness activities this year relates to electoral boundaries redistribution,” Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault testified at the House affairs committee.   

The changes will come into effect under the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act on April 22, 2024, and elections after that date will “take place under the new map.” 

The redistribution aims to rebalance the seats proportionately to population growth within the provinces. It will mean a record 343 seats in the House of Commons. Currently, ridings are divided into 122 in Ontario, 78 in Québec, 43 in British Columbia, 37 in Alberta, 14 in Saskatchewan, 14 in Manitoba, 11 in Nova Scotia, 10 in New Brunswick, 7 in Newfoundland and Labrador, 4 in Prince Edward Island and 1 each in the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.  

Under the new distribution, Toronto will lose the Scarborough-Agincourt riding held by Liberal MP Jean Yip, going from 25 to 24 federal ridings. Last election, all 25 Toronto ridings voted for the Liberals, at 51 percent support, making it the party’s largest popular vote in any major Canadian city. 

“It is necessary to move a district to other areas of the Greater Toronto Area that, while equally diverse, are growing much faster than the City of Toronto,” said the Final Report of The Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission For The Province Of Ontario. 

“The population of the City of Toronto only grew by 6.9 percent from 2011 to 2021 compared to 11.7 percent for the remainder of the province,” it wrote, arguing that keeping 25 seats in Toronto would “unfairly impact other parts of Ontario.”  

Additionally, Northern Ontario is set to lose one of its nine ridings. In 2021, most ridings in Northern Ontario voted Liberal, with the exception of Kenora (Conservative MP Eric Melillo) and Timmins-James Bay (New Democrat MP Charlie Angus). 

“We are in a very fragile time for democracy,” MP Angus testified May 8 at the House affairs committee. “We must do our best to reassure citizens that their voice counts and that they are being heard.” 

Ontario’s ridings are set to be given to western provinces. British Columbia, which typically votes Liberal or New Democrat, will gain one new seat, Vernon-Lake Country in Okanagan.  

On the other hand, Alberta, a historically Conservative province, is set to gain three ridings in Calgary McKnight, Airdrie-Chestermere and Spruce Grove-Leduc.

The Alberta ridings are not the only factor pointing to a Conservative victory next fall. Recently, Canadians have become increasingly fed up of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership.   

A September poll revealed that Trudeau’s disproval rates have reached a record high of 57 percent. The number should not come as a surprise as the polling also showed that 72 percent of Canadians are concerned with rising costs of living amid Trudeau’s ever-increasing carbon tax and energy regulations.   

According to a September 5 report by Statistics Canada, food prices are rising faster than the headline inflation rate – the overall inflation rate in the country – as staple food items are increasing at a rate of 10 to 18 percent year-over-year when compared to the overall inflation rate of 4 percent.   

Earlier this year, the Bank of Canada admitted that Trudeau’s federal “climate change” programs, which have been deemed “extreme” by some provincial leaders, are indeed helping to fuel inflation.  

Furthermore, as a result of the Trudeau government’s Online News Act, Canadians can no longer access news on Facebook or Instagram as Meta refuses to pay the fees mandated by the act.  

On the other hand, Conservative Party leader Poilievre has openly condemned the Online News Act, comparing it with George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”  

Furthermore, Poilievre has repeatedly promised Canadians that he will axe the carbon tax and restore the economy if elected prime minister.  

While Trudeau came out to condemn the September 20 Million Person March against LGBT indoctrination in schools, Poilievre initially failed to support the immensely popular pro-family effort, and even went as far as having his office tell his caucus to refrain from making any statements about the movement. 

Poilievre did eventually break his silence on the matter, slamming Trudeau for his condemnation of concerned parents and encouraging the federal government to leave LGBT discussions to families and not the education system.

Alberta

Media melts down as Danielle Smith moves to end ‘transitioning’ of children in Alberta

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

After Alberta’s Danielle Smith put forth legislation to protect kids from being gender ‘transitioned,’ the Canadian media went on a predictable melt down, citing ‘experts’ who blatantly lie to advance the LGBT agenda.

A year after announcing her intention to combat transgender ideology and protect children, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has tabled three pieces of UCP (United Conservative Party) government legislation: 

  • The Education Amendment Act 2024 will require parental consent for “socially transitioning” children under the age of 16 (changing a child’s name or “preferred pronouns”). The bill also gives parents an “opt-in” option for any sexual or content at school. Smith has emphasized that the Alberta Teaching Profession Commission has the power to discipline teachers if they decide to break the law. 
  • The Health Statues Amendment Act 2024 will ban the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, as well as prohibit sex change surgeries on minors. 
  • The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act will ban trans-identifying men from female sports teams.  

Together, these three bills represent the most definitive pushback against gender ideology in Canada by any premier. Smith’s decision to announce her intent to pursue such legislation and then wait has turned out to be politically savvy—it has given the UCP government a good look at the LGBT response, and during that time the U.K.’s Labour government has successfully fought to maintain a similar ban in the courts and publicly rebutted many of the scare tactics used by LGBT activists.

Smith and the UCP are thus walking into this debate with eyes wide open, and are clearly certain that the public is on their side (it is) and that the legislation can survive the court challenges surely coming from LGBT activists. The policies are clearly popular with the UCP party’s base, who handed Smith a staggering 91.5% approval rating in her leadership review at UCP gathering in Red Deer last Saturday.  

The party also passed 35 policy resolutions, including several that indicate the UCP’s willingness to go further in fighting transgender ideology, with resolutions that would restrict “exclusively female spaces” like bathrooms and changerooms to females and designating transgender surgeries as “elective cosmetic procedures” not funded by the taxpayer. The motions received near-unanimous support.  

The Canadian press, unsurprisingly, is working hard to present policies that the vast majority of Canadians support as an attack on fundamental norms (albeit norms that only surfaced in the last few years and were never presented to voters). Global News ran the headline: “Alberta unveils 3 sweeping bills affecting trans and gender-diverse youth.” It is important to note that the press accepts the premises of transgender ideology as the starting point for their reporting, with heavy usage of nonsensical phrases like “gender-diverse youth,” which implies that there are many genders. 

In fact, Global News and other Canadian outlets trotted out talking points that have been definitively rebutted by the U.K.’s Cass Review and multiple medical studies—in fact, even the New York Times has been reporting on the permanent harms of puberty blockers over the past several years. An example from Global News: 

Alberta parents of gender-diverse youth like Haley Wray believe the new laws will give kids less choice — especially when it comes to health-care that is not permanent but instead, gives kids time to work through their identity struggles. 

‘Hormone blockers are a very valuable tool,’ Wray said, explaining they have a very small window of effectiveness to pause, but not prevent, puberty. ‘It is reversible because nothing changes. And what that does is it allows youth and families to have that that pause, that break to explore further, validate, understand what this means and know that permanent changes aren’t happening.’

Wray believes the proposed legislation will make the province a less safe place for tens of thousands of Alberta kids who aren’t straight. It’s why, Wray says, a growing number of families with transgender children are now grappling with whether Alberta is a place they can stay. ‘I know people who have, and I know people who genuinely feel like there is likely nowhere to go,’ she said. 

This is incorrect. Puberty blockers cause permanent damage, and children may be rendered permanently sterile after taking them for a relatively short period of time. Puberty is not something that can be “paused,” and it frequently causes irreversible rather than reversible damage. Smith and her government understand this, which is why they have decided to pass this legislation—not, as nearly every press outlet claimed, to “target trans youth,” but to protect them. 

The CBC chimed in with sentences like this one: 

Terms like ‘biological female’ and ‘biological male’ can be used to imply that transgender people are still their assigned sex at birth, despite their identity. 

To translate: a scientifically accurate and precise statement is now an ideological one, but inherently ideological language invented by the transgender movement over the past decade is, in fact, technically accurate. People can identify as anything they want; it is irrelevant to their biology. The CBC presents pointing this out as some sort of propagandistic attack on vulnerable people. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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Alberta

Alberta calling for federal election! Premier Smith demands feds scrap dangerous oil and gas production caps

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Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean issued the following statement on the proposed federal oil and gas production cap:

“This production cap will hurt families, hurt businesses and hurt Canada’s economy. We will defend our province, our country and our Constitutional rights.

“Make no mistake, this cap violates Canada’s constitution. Section 92A clearly gives provinces exclusive jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resource development yet this cap will require a one million barrel a day production cut by 2030.

“The evidence is overwhelming. Three reports from reputable firms have shown that these regulations will sucker-punch Canada’s economy, a million barrels cut every day according to S&P Global, $28 billion a year in lost GDP according to Deloitte, and up to 150,000 lost jobs according to the Conference Board of Canada.

“The losses to GDP mean billions a year will disappear from the economy. Billions that won’t be going towards new schools, hospitals and roads, all for a reckless ideological scheme that will not reduce global emissions.

“Ultimately, this cap will lead Alberta and our country into economic and societal decline. The average Canadian family would be left with up to $419 less for groceries, mortgage payments and utilities every month. Canadian parents and workers will suffer while Justin Trudeau outsources the duty to provide safe, affordable, reliable and responsibly produced oil and gas to dictators and less clean producers around the world. We could be the solution. Instead, Ottawa would rather sacrifice our ability to lead.

“Tweaks won’t work. This cap must be scrapped. Alberta’s government is actively exploring the use of every legal option, including a constitutional challenge and the use of the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. We will not stand idly by while the federal government sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for its extreme agenda.”

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