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Opinion

Alberta Election 2019 is shaping up to be the most anticipated election in decades.

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3 minute read

The Alberta 2019 Election will probably be the most exciting election in decades.
If the forecasters are correct and we are back in the boom portion of our boom and bust economic cycle then the incumbent New Democratic Party government will be a contender. Simultaneously drawing from and decimating smaller parties like the Alberta Greens and the Alberta Liberal Party.
The recently created United Conservative Party after 2 years of media attention from creation, merger, and leadership votes is expected to be a strong contender. Splinter groups will likely appear from disgruntled ex-Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives which may grow faster in a fractious leadership race. The Alberta Advantage Party is in the works and should not be discarded.
Former Premier Jim Prentice found out the hard way that politics is fickle. Ending the Progressive Conservative reign, electing an New Democratic government with a Wildrose opposition. Alberta has been instrumental in creating parties like the Reform Party and Wildrose so these splinter parties should not be ignored.
The Alberta Advantage Party appears to be drawing some interest from former Wildrose, Progressive Conservatives, Alberta Reformers, and Social Credit voters. Depending upon funding and organizational abilities they may be contenders.
The Alberta Party seems to draw the attention of some Alberta Liberal members, some Progressive Conservatives, and some Greens but will they burst onto the scene like the hare or continue like the tortoise? Only time will tell.
The other wildcard is the urban vote. Will the urban vote rally around the current New Democratic government and will it be enough? The urbanization of the rural communities, the younger generation’s increased education, increased computer and internet access, the decline of local media, and the accelerating of the importance of technologies other than fossil fuel based technologies, altogether or individually, deem the policies of the United Conservative Party archaic even before their first election?
Elections Alberta shows about a dozen parties but I think in 2019 there will probably be only 3 or 4 serious contenders with the New Democrats and the United Conservatives being the top 2 to watch. The Alberta Party and the Alberta Advantage Party may prove to be contenders, only time will tell.
The 2015 election was supposed to be a slam dunk win for the Progressive Conservatives after former Premier Jim Prentice lured former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith and several MLAs over to his party. He then campaigned with his back turned to new leader of the Wildrose allowing the New Democrats to show their strength and win. So 2019 will be exciting.
Forecasters may be wrong, as they often are, and we may be in the bust portion of our boom and bust economic cycle so it may be a walk for an opposition party.
The 2019 Alberta Election will be the election to watch, Albertans do not shy away from a good fight. 2019 is shaping up to be a good fight.

National

Despite claims of 215 ‘unmarked graves,’ no bodies have been found at Canadian residential school

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Over 100 churches have been burned or vandalized since the Trudeau government and mainstream media promulgated, without any physical evidence, the narrative that mass ‘unmarked graves’ had been discovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Canada’s Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has confirmed it has spent millions searching for “unmarked graves” at a now-closed residential school once run by the Catholic Church, despite the fact that no human remains have been found.

In total, some $7.9 million was earmarked for a search of unmarked Indian Residential School graves in Kamloops, British Columbia. According to the spokeswoman for the Crown-Indigenous Relations, Carolane Gratton, the community got the money “for field work, records searches and to secure the Residential School grounds.”

“Details of initiatives taken by Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation are best directed to the community,” noted Gratton. 

To date, the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has not given a financial accounting under the Access To Information Act as to where the money went. According to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation, it “continues to grieve children that are in our care and are focused on the scientific work that needs to be done,” but made no mention of the $7.9 million. 

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools. 

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation was more or less the reason there was a large international outcry in 2021, when it claimed it had found 215 “unmarked graves” of kids at the Kamloops Residential School. The claims of remains, however, were not backed by physical evidence, but were rather disturbances in the soil picked up by ground-penetrating radar. 

The money given to the First Nation was done so to find the “heartbreaking truth” of the residential school system, according to a 2022 Indian Residential School Sites: Unmarked Burials department briefing note.  

“Our thoughts are with survivors, their families and communities as the heartbreaking truth about Residential Schools’ unmarked burials continues to be unveiled,” read the note.  

“Funding is available to support communities, survivors and their families on their healing journey through researching, locating and memorializing those children who died while attending Indian Residential Schools.” 

While there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the past wrongs led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment, which boiled over in the summer of 2021 after the discovery of the 215 so-called “unmarked” graves in Kamloops.

While some children did die at the once-mandatory boarding schools, evidence has revealed that many of the children tragically passed away as a result of unsanitary conditions due to the federal government, not the Catholic Church, failing to properly fund the system.   

No human remains have been found 

Soon after the Kamloops announcement in 2021, other regions claimed the presence of “unmarked graves,” which prompted Canada’s House of Commons under Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with the help of all other parties including the Conservatives, to declare the residential school program a “genocide” despite the lack of evidence.

The reality is that to date, no human remains have been found at the Kamloops site or other sites.

In fact, in August 2023, the Pine Creek Residential School, located in Pine Creek, Manitoba, underwent a four-week excavation and yielded no remains. 

The excavation was led by a First Nation’s tribe called Minegoziibe Ashinabe, and came after a total of 14 abnormalities were found at the former school by ground-penetrating radar.  

There have been other excavations conducted at residential schools that have likewise turned up no human remains.  

Since the spring of 2021, over 100 churches, mostly Catholic, have been burned or vandalized across Canada. The attacks on the churches came shortly after the “unmarked graves” narrative began.

Despite the church burnings, the federal government under Trudeau has done nothing substantial to bring those responsible to justice or to stem the root cause of the burnings. 

“I think Canadians have seen with horror those unmarked graves across the country and realize that what happened decades ago isn’t part of our history, it is an irrefutable part of our present,” Trudeau had earlier remarked to reporters.  

The unmarked graves controversy also spurred a Senate committee in 2023 to claim that anyone who questions the graves is engaged in “Residential School denialism.” 

“Denialism serves to distract people from the horrific consequences of Residential Schools and the realities of missing children, burials and unmarked graves,” said a Senate Indigenous peoples committee report titled Honouring The Children Who Never Came Home.  

The Senate committee report said that the Canadian government should “take every action necessary to combat the rise of Residential School denialism.” 

Jordan Peterson tells Pope Francis to ‘take note’ 

Responding to reports about the Trudeau government spending nearly $8 million without finding a single body, renowned anti-woke Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson took a shot at Pope Francis.

“Pope Francis take note @Pontifex,” wrote Peterson on X (formerly Twitter) last Thursday. 

Peterson’s remarks likely came in light of the fact that Francis visited Canada in the summer of 2022 for the purpose of apologizing for churchmen’s role in the operation of the residential school program.  

During his July 2022 trip, Francis visited First Nations in Alberta and Quebec. While in Quebec, he seemed to join in on a pagan “smudging” ritual before giving a lengthy speech where he conveyed “deep shame and sorrow” for the role played by Catholic Church members in government-funded residential school abuses.  

While Francis seemed to go along with the mainstream narrative regarding residential schools, others have spoken out.

Last year, retired Bishop of Calgary, Frederick Henry, blasted the blatant “lie” that thousands of missing indigenous children who attended residential schools run by the Catholic Church were somehow “clandestinely” murdered by “Catholic priests and nuns.”

The founder of the National Post, Conrad Black, also made similar statements as Henry in an opinion piece for his former paper, calling the entire narrative a “fraud.” 

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Opinion

Canada’s fertility, marriage rates plummet to record lows: report

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Canada’s fertility rate hit a record low of 1.33 children per woman in 2022, according to a recently released report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

A recently released report from major Canadian think tank the Macdonald-Laurier Institute has painted a dire picture for Canada’s future, noting that the nation’s marriage and fertility rates are at extreme lows and have been on the steady decline for years.  

According to the report, titled, “Decline and fall: Trends in family formation and fertility in Canada since 2001, the number of never-been-married Canadian adults has increased significantly since 2001, notably among those 45 years and younger.  

The report notes that being in a single, unmarried state for those under 30 has become the norm and that because of a decline in marriage rates, Canada’s fertility rates have been impacted as well.  

Also troubling is that amongst couples that do get married, many of them are choosing not to have kids, and those that do only have children only have one or two, which is not statistically sufficient in boosting Canada’s birth rate into positive territory.  

The report released concerning findings relating to the decline of the traditional nuclear family, noting that the proportion of those aged 25-29 who “are in a couple dropped by 10.9 percentage points between 2001-2021.” 

“Younger people are increasingly delaying marriage or common-law relationships into the late 30s or early 40s, with a growing fraction of people remaining single well into middle age,” notes the report. 

Also, Canada’s fertility rate was only “1.3 in 2022, down from 1.6 in 2016,” it noted. 

Canada’s fertility rate hit a record low of 1.33 children per woman in 2022. According to the data collected by Statistics Canada, this is the lowest fertility rate in the past century of record keeping. For context, in the same year, 97,211 Canadian babies were killed by abortion.     

Instead of promoting marriage and child-bearing, the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has instead resorted to using immigration to boost the population.  

Governments should ‘worry’ about low birth rates 

“The most important step in addressing these problems is perhaps… to recognize that the declining family formation, dropping marriage rates, and deteriorating fertility are serious problems facing our society, and they should be a top priority for policymakers in our country,” noted Sargent. 

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute noted that Canada needs to ensure that there are “policies that make housing more affordable, use the tax system to incentivize family growth and the raising of children, subsidize daycare, and address the rising problem of credentialism by finding ways to reduce the formal educational requirements for jobs will allow young people to marry, afford a house, and have children earlier.” 

Some positives from the report note that in Canada, despite the fact of the current Liberal government, there are “incredible benefits, both in terms of income and broader well-being” by starting a family. 

“Adjusting for economies of scale (recognizing that couples require only 1.5 the income of a single person to have the same standard of living) the average single 35-45-year-old has only 49.2 percent of the income of their coupled counterpart,” notes the report. 

“Single parent homes have approximately 35-40 percent less income per family member relative to a two-parent family.” 

The report observed that married couples have a “significantly lower incidence of, and better survival rates from both cancer and cardiovascular disease, are less stressed, and are less likely to suffer from depression and other emotional pathologies.” 

As reported by LifeSiteNews earlier this month, a survey showed that more and more Canadians are delaying the start of families due to the rising cost of living.  

Also, instead of embracing new and current life, as taught by the Catholic Church, Trudeau’s government has instead promoted abortion, contraception, and euthanasia.  

As noted by LifeSiteNews contributor Jonathon Van Maren, a recent scheme by the Trudeau Liberals to offer free contraception to all Canadians, will only worsen Canada’s current demographic crisis.  

“Canada, like any nation, needs babies. This is an obvious, undeniable fact. It is also a truth that few seem capable of uttering,” wrote Van Maren. 

“Justin Trudeau is passionate about abortion, and his government is one of the most aggressive proponents of feticide in the world. Canada’s taxpayers fund the killing of the very children we desperately need.” 

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