A Canadian moment — apologies to my non-Canadian readers, but… Kenney’s election — or, the way the UCP handled it, his coronation — to premier of Alberta is just another disturbing sign of the rise of what is laughingly called “populism” in Canada, yet another thing we managed to import from our neighbour to the south. Never mind his long-standing anti-LGBTQ stance (coupled with the equally long-standing rumour of Jason’s own very deep closet)… he’s also brandished his anti-immigrant, near-xenophobic, oil-rules-over-everything-else platform for all to see… and Albertans bought it — at least enough to give him a majority government. Sigh. So now we have Ontario acting like a four year old throwing itself on the floor of the candy aisle, Saskatchewan siddling up to its new buddy to the west, and Atlantic Canada getting ready to tun right as well. Even Québec has been throwing around its own unique brand of this, even if it’s had to walk back from some of the more outrageously anti-Muslim policies it wanted to implement. I guess it’s not enough to look south to see the results of such an attitude; perhaps we need to learn it for ourselves… yet again. But at what cost? Some of the more extreme candidates of the UCP spent their campaigns talking about ordering Ottawa to tear down the marriage-equality laws (amoung many other things). If Scheer manages to get the PM nod this fall, the provinces may put so much pressure on him to act that he’ll actually do it. And Canada will be just as mindlessly regressive as… well, a lot of other countries. I’ve never been much of a hopeful person when it comes to this kind of stuff. Perhaps it’s the cynic in me that says Canada is headed into some pretty dark times. I hope I’m wrong. But as Ray points out, if we just stand together, maybe we can get past this. However, like Doc, a little reassurance every now and then would be helpful.