Sounding a mite panicked by the negative public response to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s willingness to bend rules to help political allies in trouble with the law, the United Conservative Party (UCP) has retreated to its ideological safe space: Law ’n’ Order, with a side of dog-whistles and urban crime stereotypes.
There is a deep and obvious irony in this strategy, of course – the UCP is cranking up the frightening prospect of “social disorder,” one of its favourite phrases these days, because its leader is in trouble for trying to get some real agents of social disorder off the hook.
When Premier Smith found herself in hot water after being caught chatting sympathetically on the phone with a gay-hating, COVID-denying, border blockader awaiting a verdict on charges of criminal mischief, her response was to try to scare the bejesus out of Albertans about “violent criminal incidents” on city streets.
When voters look askance at re-electing a political party dominated by allies of the group alleged to include extremists plotting to murder Mounties in hopes of creating an Alberta Alamo moment, the UCP brain trust must have concluded the answer was to blame federal bail policies for the number of homeless folk in the downtowns of Alberta’s underfunded big cities.
Never mind that Premier Smith said out loud she had been speaking with her officials “almost weekly” about a political ally facing criminal charges stemming from his role in the Coutts blockade last year.
Consider the news release published by the government last Tuesday in the wake of that Monday’s embarrassing news conference at which Premier Smith refused repeatedly to answer media questions about her simpatico tête-à-tête with pastor Artur Pawlowski.
“Enough is enough,” screeched the headline atop the release, which was supposedly about “Transit safety and violent crime.”
“Alberta’s government is taking action to restore order and improve public safety in response to increasing crime and disorder in the province’s big cities,” said the subhead, dog-whistling about us city folk.
“In both Edmonton and Calgary, criminal activity is on the rise,” the release began. “Between July 2022 and January 2023, Edmonton’s LRT and transit centres experienced an increase in violent criminal incidents of 75 per cent. In Calgary, overall criminal occurrences at LRT stations increased 46 per cent between 2021 and 2022.”
One would like to see some explanation of how those statistics were calculated. Could the end of pandemic restrictions have anything to do with these seemingly large increases in crime?
You have to dig a little deeper to get to the actual announcement: Smith has directed her “public safety” minister “to work with his cabinet colleagues to develop a plan to hire 100 more street-level police officers over the next 18 months to increase the visible law enforcement presence and tackle criminal activity in high-crime locations in Calgary and Edmonton.”
How long they’ll be there, and who will pay for them, was not explained.
“Safety on public streets is never negotiable,” the release quoted Smith saying. “We can address root causes like mental health and addiction at the same time, but we will not compromise on security for all Calgarians and Edmontonians. This starts with the federal government reforming its broken catch-and-release bail system and includes us working with cities and police services to fight back against criminals.” (Emphasis added.)
As Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis, a former police officer, added in his performative statement during the Calgary news conference on the supposed crime spree, “We need jail, not bail, for violent offenders.”
Promising “to take back the streets from the violent repeat offenders that are causing chaos in our communities,” Ellis hyperventilated that “the crime and disorder that we are seeing in our streets today is a direct result of the Liberal-NDP coalition and their dangerous policies. …”
“These are dangerous and violent criminals, they are a serious threat to our communities,” he continued, although it turned out he wasn’t talking about any of the convoy-blockaders who seem to have the premier on speed-dial for legal help and sympathy.
While there is no doubt downtown Edmonton in particular is a depressing mess, it’s got little to do with either municipal governments or Ottawa’s bail policies – it’s mostly the result of bad old-fashioned financial neglect of social problems by Alberta’s provincial government.
Are the streets as threatening and dangerous as Ellis claims? Absolutely not. I speak as someone who walks through downtown Edmonton literally every weekday. It’s depressing, but it’s not New York in the 1970s.
Still, this nonsense will sell well in rural areas of Alberta where the myth that cities are hotbeds of immorality and crime sells well with UCP voters who imagine they are pillars of rectitude and righteousness by comparison, a caricature encouraged by the UCP.
And in Edmonton, it’s hard to believe that city police – led by “a reliable UCP validator,” as one commentator described Chief Dale McFee, who with his Calgary counterpart participated in last Tuesday’s newser – haven’t been avoiding the bleakest parts of the city’s downtown to ratchet up political pressure on a city council that objects to the UCP’s aversion to providing housing for the homeless.
There are, of course, things that could make Alberta’s cities safer – and one would be a serious effort to control the easy availability of firearms, an obvious idea that is anathema to the UCP.
So, the same UCP government trying to scare us with “social disorder” announced “a new regulation restricting municipalities and police from entering into unilateral agreements with the federal government” to get firearms off the streets.
Say what? “Alberta’s government is providing clarity to municipalities, police services and police commissions about their responsibility when considering accepting federal funding to enforce a federal firearms confiscation program,” said the news release on that topic. (Emphasis added.)
“This action demonstrates that Alberta stands unequivocally with law-abiding firearms owners, but there is more to do,” Justice Minister Tyler Shandro was quoted saying. “Stay tuned.”
Mr. Shandro didn’t put in a physical appearance on Tuesday, presumably because Ms. Smith’s handlers were afraid reporters would ask him about what he told her when they talked about Art Pawlowski.
Regardless, his announcement yesterday makes it clear enough just how committed the UCP Government really is to making Alberta’s streets safer.
That is to say, it is not interested at all. Fortunately the streets of Alberta’s big cities aren’t nearly as dangerous as the UCP and its political allies in uniform pretend they are.
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