It is important that news like this gets proper exposure and to illustrate how the MSM is not doing its job. Plus it gets it on Facebook around the stupid news censorship in Canada.
By now, every Canadian has heard the news out of Alberta. Although depending where you get your news, you’ve either heard that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has announced a forthcoming genocide camp for LGBT youth or—for those who’ve not lost their grip on reality—you’ve heard that Smith is taking an evidence-based stance on transgender healthcare for minors, protecting female athletes in sports, and ensuring parents have the right to safeguard the well-being and best interests of their children.
There will be no more puberty blockers or cross sex hormones for children under 16. No gender surgeries—such as double mastectomies or penile inversions—for minors under 18. No more teachers changing under-16 students’ names or pronouns without parental permission. No more leaving parents in the dark about gender-identity school lessons. Parents can continue to opt their children out. For female athletes, they will have sports leagues of their own: no males can identify their way in.
Screenshot from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s gender law announcement video.
Smith is bringing safety, fairness, parental rights, and reason back to her province. She is bringing Albertans exactly what the majority of Canadians support, as per a recent Angus Reid poll that shows parents expect to be notified if their kids suddenly identify as transgender at school. (What loving parent wouldn’t want to be?) Similarly, a 2021 poll reveals that Canadians want sports segregated by sex, not gender self-identification.
There’s no denying that Smith’s new legislation is reflective of majority Canadian sentiment. So naturally, Canada’s activists and hard left, plus their sycophant Liberal and NDP bootlickers—fringe minority that they are—had a Chernobyl-level nuclear meltdown, with a fallout zone well beyond Alberta’s borders.
Notably, our national broadcaster trotted out vile misogynist Fae Johnstone, slapped an “expert” label on the transgender-identified male, and hit “publish” on another gaslighting piece of state propaganda. They quoted Johnstone on Smith’s new rules: “This is interfering ideologically in the provision of medically necessary healthcare for trans and gender diverse young people.” He also claimed the new legislation “flies in the face of establishing medical best practice.”
All of what Johnstone said is demonstrably—and infuriatingly—false. The only ideology at play is his. Gender “affirming” healthcare for minors is being globally outed as the medical scandal that it is, with numerous Scandinavian and European countries implementing restrictions or bans on the treatment of children. The World Health Organization just released trans care guidelines that do not include standards for youth or minors; they cite a lack of evidence to support childhood transition guidelines.
Persons like Fae Johnstone are desperate to bury the truth. When not lying via our government-funded media platform, Johnstone can be found trolling and threatening women with differing political opinions online. “I actually do want a political environment in which TERFs are so vilified they don’t dare speak their views publicly,” he once wrote. Because if you can’t beat them, shut them down.
And then there’s Canada’s Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on LGBTQ2 issues, Randy Boissonnault, who took the good news from Alberta particularly poorly. In a presser, the man insisted that joining your school’s chess club or debate team is no different than changing your gender and going on Lupron, the puberty-blocking drug used off-label for trans kids and also to castrate sex offenders.
“Nobody calls your parents when you join the debate team. But now, if somebody thinks you’re questioning or queer, they’re gonna tell the teacher and the teacher’s gonna call the parents,” said Boissonnault. “This is our NATO moment as an LGBTQ community. An attack on one of our communities is an attack on us all.” Boissonnault, a gay man, seems blissfully unaware that childhood medical transition is disproportionately inflicted upon gender-confused kids who, if left alone to go through puberty, would simply end upgay. What Canada is doing to “trans” kids, in many cases, is “transing the gay away”; it’s a modern form of conversion therapy. It must stop. We are an international embarrassment on several fronts, most appallingly so for ignoring the global demise of gender ideology and destroying the bodies and minds of untold numbers of vulnerable children.
In response to Premier Smith, legal group Egale Canada has called her proposed legislation “unconstitutional” and claims they will launch a court challenge. It’s possible that the federal government will, too. Minister Boissonnault is promoting a rally to protest Smith’s proposed changes at the Edmonton Legislature this weekend.
Premier Smith is not backing down. Good for her. Canada needs an enormous dose of reality, and our petulant gender activists need their tantrums to go ignored. Let them stamp and shout and lie—the adults in the country are finally having a conversation.
I was a strong proponent of the Harm Reduction strategy until more data has come out about its effectiveness and benefits for society versus other methods. There might be a case for Harm Reduction, but as currently implemented in BC it is a like a 4 legged stool that is missing three legs -harm reduction, law enforcement, prevention and treatment – just focusing on harm reduction and not the other areas is a recipe for social disaster.
The Alberta rehabilitation model has been modestly more successful in dealing with the problems of addictions. Both systems require overlapping programs working together to get people out of the drug abuse loop – whether Alberta has been more successful in coordinating the synergy of anti-addiction programs or that rehabilitation programs are just more effective remains to be seen. Initial data points to the Alberta method being more successful.
The divergent policies and politics of B.C. and Alberta have played a major role in determining the public perception of Canada’s opioid crisis. Left-leaning media outlets have tended to laud B.C.’s harm reduction as being more compassionate, while conservative voices point to Alberta’s focus on treatment as more practical and realistic. What Canada had lacked until recently was an impartial, data-driven assessment of the two competing systems.
Advantage Alberta: The Stanford Network on Addiction Policy’s 2023 report (depicted above) observes that, “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms,” while “Canada overall, and BC in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.” At middle, a typical street scene in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside; at bottom, a therapy session at Alberta’s new Red Deer Recovery Community. (Sources of photos: (middle) Ted McGrath, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED; (bottom) EHN Canada)
That problem was partially solved last year with the release of a report from the U.S.-based Stanford Network on Addiction Policy. Entitled Canada’s Health Crisis: Profiling Opioid Addiction in Alberta & British Columbia, the document offers an even-handed review of the differing policies of the two provinces, summarizes the latest available data (which it criticizes as inadequate) and cautiously evaluates the results. B.C., the report notes, emphasizes harm reduction, “safe supply” of illicit drugs, decriminalization of possession and reduction of addiction stigma. Alberta, by contrast, is focusing on “investment in rehabilitation beds and spaces, such as therapeutic communities,” while moving away from “safe supply” of opioids and instead providing addicts with medications.
Using these differences as a natural experiment, the Stanford report comes to a few key conclusions. First, it observes “a lack of policy innovation in BC on the issue of drug addiction.” Obsessive attention to harm reduction appears to have blinded politicians and public health officials to the longer-term consequences of their favoured policy. “Enforcement against drug crime has [been] reduced in recent years,” the report notes, “indicating a general lessening of criminal justice enforcement against drug offences in Canada during the escalating health crisis of opioid addiction.”
Second, “Of the two provinces studied for this report, Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” The province’s rate of overdose deaths declined by 17 percent from 2021 to 2022 (B.C.’s remained almost unchanged), although it was still Alberta’s second-worst year on record. Using the most recent data available, the Stanford researchers point to B.C.’s higher death rate as suggestive of the two approaches’ relative effectiveness: “Our research indicates that Canada overall, and BC in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”
Hey folks, I’m just here watching the NDP continue to betray women and their hard fought for rights in society. Janis Irwin, of course is at the forefront of deciding that we should be including men in female sports, spaces, and services? Why? Because these men have special gender feelings that tell them that are women.
Read judiciously. Take some time and see what is being said in the message.
So do you see the absolute TRANSPHOBIC HATRED there. The notion that biological sex is real and that it is important in sports (and to be frank, every-fucking-where else) to maintain fairness and safety.
Make careful notes here folks as this is the exact bullshit routine every faux-progressive shitter performs when faced with any sort of criticism or inquiry about their position. There are no counterpoints, there are no rebuttals, and no arguments just wild baseless accusations. This just happens to be an member of the legislative assembly here in Alberta and sadly the fact free hyperbole is par for the course.
It’s a farcical disgrace.
More to the point there is a person with political power that uses this sort of hyperbolic rhetoric to advance a platform and ideology that actively harms women and their rights in society.
Scary stuff. It is unsurprising that the Alberta NDP is losing female support as they support the erosion of female rights and safety in society.
Talk to your political representatives and find out if they support this attack on female boundaries in society and be wary if they cannot define what a woman is.
“A food company in Canmore is facing a backlash over a transphobic response to a donation request by Canmore Pride.
As the Canmore Pride Society prepares for its second annual celebration, the volunteer-led group has been reaching out to local businesses to ask for sponsorships. The group’s co-chair, K Kealey, sent an email to Valbella Gourmet Foods to ask for donations for an upcoming BBQ and was shocked by the response.
The response was signed by Jeff von Rotz, whose email signature identified him as the deli’s owner. He started the email with a dig at Kealey’s single-letter name, then continued with transphobic and homophobic remarks.
“I’m sorry to say but you could not pay me to sponsor anything to do with child grooming tranny’s [sic].
“Please keep these sick people away from the children of this community, you should be disgusted with yourselves.”
He added that he’s sure there would be “some woke organization mentally ill enough to help” the group with their event, but it “isn’t Valbella’s.”
We should be clear here. This is not the most appropriate way to respond to a request for a donation from a special interest group. It isn’t a professional business appropriate response and should not have been sent out. A simple “no thank you” would have been entirely sufficient.
People feel strongly about issues and those emotions and impulses should not automatically be transferred to electronic media where they live forever. Stuff happens. However, lets take a look at the response.
“Kealey, who identifies by the pronouns they and them, said they were disappointed and hurt by the response.”
Welcome to society. The expectation not be offended and have your feelings hurt is an unrealistic and unhealthy belief.
“I shared the email because I was concerned about the safety of my own community and, as a trans person myself, I was thinking I didn’t want to go into that place or if I would be safe there anymore,” Kealey said Wednesday.
The bad man said words? And you are that fragile that you’d feel “unsafe” entering the store? This is classic vulnerable narcissism in action – pity me and (or I will make you pay for!) my bruised feelings…
Of course, if it ended there it would have been fine. Perhaps an adult conversation could have taken place and an apology elicited for the rude behaviour.
Ooooooooooor, we can take it the media and start a shit-show.
“We think we deserve spaces where people can go and be safe, and not only be safe but be fully accepted,” they said. “There are so many great people out here and they deserve better and deserve to exist in spaces as who they are and feel embraced for that.”
No one in society gets to be fully accepted automatically. And we really need to connect the dots between a heated email about donations and then somehow not being able to buy deli meat safely? It doesn’t compute outside the realm of those who are always on the lookout to be offended.
“Chantal von Rotz — Jeff’s sister and the daughter of the company’s founders, Walter and Leonie von Rotz — said in a post online Tuesday that Jeff has been removed from the company and its operations.
“The owners and leadership of Valbella Gourmet Foods express its deepest apologies to the Canmore LGBTQ+ community for an intolerant email that was sent (Tuesday) by one of our former team members,” said Chantal.
She said his words do not reflect the opinions of the Valbella team and that the company strives to make its workplace inclusive.”
Whoops – there is the damage control in action. The knee must be bent fully to the needs of fragile people with access to media and social media.
“We hope to soon be able to work with experts from the LGBTQ+ community to implement new training and education,” said Chantal. “Our priority is regaining the community’s trust.”
Valbella Gourmet Foods was founded by the von Rotzes in 1978 and has grown into a 40,000-square-foot production plant.
Chantal said a thorough review of internal policies is underway and the company will implement new equity, diversity and inclusion policy to make sure employees feel supported”
It won’t be enough. It is never enough. If the vulnerable narcissists want you cancelled, you will be cancelled. Better to stick up for your beliefs and tell them to go to hell, at least you will have your character and integrity intact.
“Several businesses that worked with Valbella Gourmet Foods have posted statements that they will no longer be doing business with the Canmore deli. The page on Valbella’s website listing its retail partners has been removed.
The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity said in a statement that it will remove all Valbella products from company operations and has ceased all business relations.
The Fairmont Hotels at Jasper Park Lodge and Banff Springs said it will no longer work with or purchase from Valbella. Blush Lane and SPUD posted statements saying they have discontinued their relationships with Valbella.
Dan Berezan, founder and CEO of online Alberta farmer’s market Cultivatr, said in a statement his company has immediately suspended selling products from Valbella. The Canmore business was a vendor on the website.
“At Cultivatr, we have no place for hate of any kind,” said Berezan. “We have received tremendous support from the LBGTQIA2S+ community and we want you to know that we appreciate you and we support you right back.”
ACME Meat Market promised to halt future purchases of Valbella products and will donate any existing stock. And Monki Bistro said it will remove all Valbella products from the restaurant.
Canmore Folk Festival said it has returned a donation from Valbella in full.
After taking a day to determine how to respond, Sunterra Market released a statement Wednesday that it will also cease all business relationships with Valbella.
“Some may see the time we took to have these conversations as a concern. Please know this was done solely to consider all those affected by our decisions,” said the market.
“We believe Sunterra’s choice to cut ties with the company will have a significant impact on their 50 team members and their families.”
How did this Woke shit get so deeply embedded in our society? It is because stepping out of line has drastic real life consequences as illustrated here. The consequences are completely out of whack for the real offense/harm done. Do the employee’s at Valbella deserve to have their jobs put in jeopardy because some fired off a poorly worded email? (No, of course not. But those other companies do think that their virtue signalling is more important than the Valbella employee’s livelihoods.)
Apparently the answer is yes. This will continue until enough people say no to the bullying and coercion that some factions of the rainbow community seem to wield. Also, it isn’t helpful that the news media amplifies this sort of hyperbolic sob story that somehow lends credence to the overreaction that started this whole kerfuffle.
So yeah, a terrible email, but does the business deserve to be shut down/lose significant revenue because someone was offended? Probably not, if you value a reasonably tolerant and reasonably free society.
I was recently texted by my local NDP office with regards to getting a sign for the upcoming Alberta provincial election. This is how it went:
So no, you cannot count on my vote because you are participating in the erasure of females in our society. Allow me to provide a non-circular reality based definition of the word ‘woman’. A women is an adult human female.
Play stupid identity politics games, win stupid prizes.
It certainly seems like the religious, libertarian hard right fringe has made its way from the US to Canada. The illegal occupation of Ottawa and border crossings are prime examples of the profoundly undemocratic/reactionary roots of this ‘movement’.
The police are reacting with a glacial slowness that is exacerbating the situation. Much more needs to be done to protect our civil society, public health, and democratic institutions.
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