Rob Breakenridge: Pandering to conspiracy theorists shouldn't be Job One

Smith has an acute awareness of the conspiracy theories that are festering within certain motivated segments of her base.

By: Rob Breakenridge

With the fall sitting of the Alberta legislature underway, Danielle Smith’s government wasted no time in tabling legislation to force Alberta’s striking teachers back to the classroom.

Okay, well, maybe they wasted a little bit of time.

The Back to School Act was actually the second bill introduced in the legislature following last Thursday’s speech from the throne. That was rather curious, given the obvious and identified priority of getting kids back to school. What could possibly take precedence over addressing the strike?

That would be Bill 1, otherwise known as the International Agreements Act. And while this might seem like an odd choice as the top legislative priority for this government, there is a purpose to it. Unfortunately, that purpose is a very strategic and targeted form of pandering.

It’s not exactly government-by-conspiracy theory, although the premier hasn’t been above dabbling in conspiracy theories herself. Rather, it’s an acute awareness of the conspiracy theories that are festering within certain motivated segments of her base, coupled with a very real fear of alienating those same voters.

And while keeping this crowd placated might be politically useful to the premier, this is not an ideal way to be governing the province.

The scant coverage of — and muted reaction to — Bill 1 may also lie in just how nebulous and hypothetical it seems on the surface. The bill stipulates that any international agreement pertaining to a matter of provincial jurisdiction would have to first be approved by the Alberta legislature.

Mind you, the government couldn’t provide examples of previous treaties that posed such a problem. Furthermore, treaties that commit Canada to specific actions need to be implemented via federal legislation, and provinces can obviously challenge any federal law that intrudes on provincial jurisdiction.

However, a government spokesman did cite an interesting example of a possible future issue: the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement. Canada is still deciding whether to sign this treaty, which aims for “greater collaboration, governance and investment to prevent, prepare for and respond to future pandemics.”

Alberta is not being forced to do anything and, again, any law Ottawa passed would have to respect constitutional jurisdiction. Moreover, the World Health Organization does not have the authority to force countries to pass certain laws or implement certain health measures.

Yet, there has been no shortage of conspiracy mongering about this treaty and it’s no coincidence that the Alberta government is suddenly signalling its opposition.

At the same time, though, folks aren’t likely to get too fussed about a symbolic paper tiger. This law isn’t costing anyone anything or really affecting anyone’s life in any way. It’s virtue signalling to a certain segment of the population that will likely evoke apathy from everyone else.

But we should still take an interest in how the government is setting priorities and the groups and individuals from whom they’re taking their cues. This tendency has manifested in other ways, some with real-world consequences.

While Albertans were coping with varying levels of vote and vote-count delays in last week’s municipal elections, one prominent political activist was taking a victory lap.

The founder of Take Back Alberta (who was also thrilled with Bill 1) boasted on social media that, “my proudest accomplishment in politics is getting rid of electronic voting machines in Alberta. As you wait for results, know that it is taking longer because of patriots fighting for election integrity.” Weird flex, as the kids say.

Alberta, of course, never had “electronic voting machines,” but rather, electronic vote tabulators to help count our paper ballots. That was a process overseen by scrutineers and backed by a post-election review process to verify results. Last year, though, the Alberta government banned the tabulators.

There was no obvious need for the ban and it hardly enhanced “election integrity.” In fact, in Edmonton, a recount found that a city council candidate who had lost by six votes actually won by about 600 votes. Human error appears to have been the problem.

But the rhetoric about “voting machines” and “election integrity” — not to mention “patriots” — gives the game away. This is the importation of the conspiracy theories and related rhetoric around the 2020 presidential election in the United States.

Of course, neither the premier nor any of her cabinet ministers even advanced any such theories. They also never presented any evidence or made any claims about the supposed unreliability of electronic vote tabulators. It was merely about maintaining public faith in the electoral system, they claimed. In other words, some folks decided that they distrusted this technology and the Alberta government was worried about alienating them.

Consequently, municipalities faced significant added costs in administering their elections. The only benefits appear to be of the imagined variety. Absent these conspiracy theories, it’s abundantly clear that nothing would have changed.

What’s clearly not changing, though, is this propensity for political pandering. Especially now, in the face of backlash over Bill 2 and other policies, there’s even more pressure to keep as much of the base happy as possible.

So where might this lead next? The National Post reported this week on the list of issues UCP members are hoping to see addressed at the party’s upcoming AGM, including policy proposals around mRNA vaccines and “weather modification” programs.

Well, mRNA vaccines have been a constant target for many in the UCP and we’ve already seen the province make the shots harder to access.

We also shouldn’t discount the possibility that “weather modification” or “chemtrails” could somehow end up on the government’s radar. Donald Trump’s EPA has just announced an “investigation” into these matters and we’ve already seen Smith’s willingness to give oxygen to these conspiracy theories.

It all just serves to embolden these factions, ensuring that we’ll see more and more of this kind of nonsense. Ultimately, it doesn’t do the UCP — or conservatism, for that matter — any favours in the long term, even if Smith staves off any stirrings of dissent or rebellion.

It would be nice to have a premier willing to, at least once in a while, disavow these conspiracy theories. Instead, unfortunately, we have a premier who is not just afraid to do so, but has a troubling level of sympathy for these causes.

Rob Breakenridge is a Calgary-based podcaster and writer and host of The Line Alberta. He can be found at robbreakenridge.ca and and reached at rob.breakenridge@gmail.com

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The Line: Alberta is a provincial bureau of The Line, edited by Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney. Email us at alberta@readtheline.ca.