Our willingness to leave settler violence unnamed permits it. It allows arsonists to be cast as conservationists, and for systemic problems to be framed as regional disputes. From Atlantic fisheries to Alberta classrooms, there is no part of settler society violence does not touch. After all, it is a whole society that must realize the need to face the consequences of a traumatic history.

The many transgressions of Alberta’s UCP government should be repugnant to all who value and celebrate democracy. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms still stands tall and is a defining feature of our federation. However, as various examples elsewhere in the world tell us, good constitutional frameworks can unravel if they are chipped away at over the course of time.

What does a budget cut for the University of Alberta have to do with honouring the continuation of the linguistic and cultural communities that make up a multinational federation like Canada? It starts with the fact that this university is home to the only French speaking centre for higher education west of Manitoba—Faculté Saint-Jean.

Kenney’s position is a perplexing one for a self-described defender of western interests to take. John A. Macdonald was in fact no friend to the west. Strangely, the Alberta premier appears set to champion the very architect of the historical west’s subservient position as little more than a colony of central Canada’s financial interests.

Led by former Harper-era cabinet minister and far-right evangelical Christian Jason Kenney, the UCP government is currently taking a sledgehammer to Alberta’s provincial state, gutting the province’s fiscal and regulatory capacities, attacking its public servants, and eliminating any and every barrier to the fossil fuel industry’s profits—the climate crisis notwithstanding.

The province of Alberta may eventually be forced to repeal Jason Kenney and the UCP’s Bill 1—the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act—but in the meantime, standing in opposition to this draconian legislation that infringes on Indigenous rights must mean standing on the front lines with the communities who will be most detrimentally affected by it.

Like so many of the Kenney government’s actions, Bill 1 may be just more red meat thrown to its angry base or, as the Edmonton Journal contends, “an expensive and unnecessary public relations exercise.” Nonetheless, the threat is real and shows in stark terms the authoritarian animus motivating the UCP government.

Let’s be clear: enormous amounts of money are being spent in the global battle to lobby governments and sway public opinion on climate change in the roughly dozen years we have left before it’s too late to stop the world’s descent into climate hell. But the vast majority of this money is spent by the fossil fuel industry, according to research by Drexel University’s Robert Brulle.

Conservatives are gaining momentum in part because of the absence of a real radical resistance. Politically, there have been few notes of optimism, with the exception of Québec solidaire. The socalled alternative parties, the NDP and Greens, have demonstrated a cowardly lack of leadership in recent years as well as an inability to put forward a bold set of policy proposals that address the root of our social, economic, and ecological problems.

Except for the information that he is unmarried and a devout Catholic, Kenney’s personal life beyond politics is a black box. Don Martin describes Kenney as “brilliantly analytical,” “flawlessly bilingual,” and “tirelessly energetic,” noting further that he “keeps his social conservative beliefs under a kimono that’s never to be lifted.”