CBC's Jason Markusoff follows up with the UCP Gerrymandering campaign, bringing us the details behind the majority and minority reports, and how the UCP are setting the stage for politicians to redraw the ridings.
If anything, I disagree with the headline, and I say that the road map is absolutely in full colour with legends attached. Canadians understand that politicians are always motivated to change goal posts in their favour. Even a layperson will understand that an absolute priority is to reduce the effort it takes for a politician's voters to get them re-elected, and to ensure the process repeats in their favour over and over again.
In a farcical universe, if a politician could choose to have 1 vote count as 5000, provided they had absolute understanding of how to manipulate that 1 vote, and the world accepted this arrangement, they would choose this universe. Hence there are norms in place - voluntary by design - in the assumption that the politician would not willingly destroy personal credibility to interfere with the Process designed to build and maintain Legitimacy.
Here the UCP are indeed attacking that Process, and in turn reveal that Legitimacy does not matter to them. Danielle Smith's UCP are engaged in Institutional Combat. They are prepared to maintain and defend any system to hold power. On the other hand, the UCP will attack and destroy any system that is perceived to be a hurdle to power.
Smith has blown by political norms elsewhere, becoming the first Alberta premier to repeatedly use the notwithstanding clause, using legislation to nullify a court challenge to the referendum that separatists are pursuing, and even passing a law to make sure a former minister couldn’t name his fledgling party “Progressive Conservative.”
I would add to this list how the UCP have disarmed the Office of the Ethics Commissioner, Elections Alberta, and interfered with the Office of the Auditor General.
As hard as it may be to hear, the map charts a course to fascism.
