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Red Deer South MLA Jason Stephan open letter calling for hope and unity in times of fear and contention

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Submitted by Red Deer South MLA Jason Stephan

COVID-19, let’s have more hope and less fear

While COVID-19 should be respected, I am concerned there is too much fear, contention and polarization; hope is so much better.

Relying on true principles results in more happiness and better choices, carrying us through challenging times to better days. I know this is true.

One foundational principle of the United Conservative Party is to “[a]ffirm the family as the building block of society and the means by which citizens pass on their values and beliefs and ensure that families are protected from intrusion by government.” I love that.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is intended to protect families from intrusions by government.

When I was studying the Charter in law school, I learned that Section 2 of the Charter recognizes “fundamental freedoms” including freedoms of “association” and “peaceful assembly.”

The freedom of association allows for the “achievement of individual potential through interpersonal relationships”.

What interpersonal relationships allow for more opportunities for “achievement of our potential,” individually or collectively, than in our families?

The freedom of assembly protects the “physical gathering of people”. What physical gatherings are more important than with our own families?

Belonging to, and gathering in, our families are not mere fundamental freedoms, they are also among the highest, most important, expressions of these freedoms.

Families are the fundamental unit of society. More than ever, families need each other and need to be supported.

Section 1 of the Charter requires “minimal impairment”, “rational connection” and “proportionality” between the objective of reducing harms from COVID through public health orders and the harms of imposing limits on the freedoms of families to gather and act in ways to support each other in these challenging times.

I am blessed to be the father of two adult sons and a teenage daughter who I love.

Like many parents, I am concerned about the impact health orders are having on the mental and emotional health of our children.

I feel joy watching my sons become independent of their parents, to seek happiness as they individually see fit.

Yet, like many parents, I see the work and effort of young adults threatened by lockdowns or shutdowns with devasting social and economic consequences.

This ought not to be. Some of the loudest voices calling for more lockdowns or shutdowns, will not lose a penny of pay, while those impacted may lose it all.

No child under 20 has died from COVID-19 in Alberta. A single positive COVID case in a high school should not automatically result in 118 other students sent home to isolate, just because they were in the same classrooms, notwithstanding physical distancing may have been maintained throughout, and notwithstanding a student is in good health and exhibiting no symptoms.

Public health measures require these school children to go home and isolate for up to 14 days, avoiding close contact with household members, including parents, not leave their properties, even for walk, and even if they have no symptoms. For some children, all of this can be very unhealthy. Parents seeking the well-being of their children may be compelled to respond differently.

The WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Orders, lockdowns and shutdowns impose long term physical, mental and emotional health costs, especially on our children.

Children should never be made to fear. Truth is an antidote to fear. Truth is a knowledge of things as they are and as they are to come.

Perspective is integral to understanding truth.

Interpreting facts in isolation, or with selective fact emphasis, distorts perspective, allowing fears to take root.

Providing facts in context, with a balanced emphasis, supports healthier perspectives.

Vaccinations are increasing and the observed cyclical incidence of COVID-19 lessens as summer approaches.

Selective fact emphasis should not be used to magnify risk. Media hysteria, and those seeking to leverage a narrative of fear are not serving the truth.

While we should vigilant, fear should not be used as a tool to coerce compliance to restrictions. Great leaders lead in love and inspire hope and the best in those they serve.

Prescriptive approaches used for unhealthy individuals, should not be used for healthy populations. Prescriptive approaches can deny responsible adults the opportunity to make personal judgments appropriate for their own circumstances, their families, and their children.

A principled vision of hope trusts Albertans to govern themselves and their families in respectful ways. We will have more hope, and we will be healthier and happier.

We can love truth and trust that it will prevail.

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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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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