We can denounce the horrible shit that people have done in the past and correct the wrongs that continue to happen while also making indigenous people front and centre of how we approach our national identity, especially when it comes to the connection we have to the land that we live on seeing how indigenous people’s cultures are by and far the most attached cultures to the land which we live on.

I respect treaty rights and the right for First Nations have regarding self-determination, and there should be more efforts out there to help give proper reconciliation to the people we’ve historically harmed who have more right to this land than anybody else.

In Edmonton for example, while there is absolutely more that needs to be done, especially when it comes to helping indigenous people directly through social services and the likes, I do appreciate that the efforts for reconciliation have been made such as the renaming of city wards to Cree names, renaming Dan Knott Junior High to Kisêwâtisiwin due to Knott’s very likely connections to the KKK, and renaming the Oliver community to Wîhkwêntôwin because of Frank Oliver’s racist efforts and attitudes towards indigenous people like the Papaschase as well as Black immigrants.

We are leaving the very people who hold the richest culture relating to our land behind, and it is absolutely inexcusable that we continue that pattern, to which we should hold the government to account.

Edit: Looking at the modlog for you and the absolutely vile things you’ve said about people, I’m just not going to engage any further.

Reminder to get an adequate amount of fibre in people. Eat more beans, whole grains, ditch the white bread for whole wheat, etc.

It’s unfortunate that colorectal cancer rates are increasing because people’s eating habits lacking the fibre they need.

Completely against this.

Every single election cycle we hear the same thing from either side of the aisle of American politics where if the person they’re against wins, suddenly they want to move to Canada.

We already have a big enough problem with having our own national identity. You can argue we have xyz that’ll keep us afloat, but the reality is, we lack a lot culturally compared to other countries in our position. We constantly lose cultural talents here to the U.S. because it’s more profitable to do what they do down south than it is here. Like, how many Canadian actors can you name that haven’t moved to the American film industry? How many of them even live here?

The same goes for a lot of major musical talents. Like wow, congrats, fucking Drake lives in Toronto, what an accomplishment that we have one major musical talent from this era who stuck around, and it’s one of the worst people you can name.

When Americans come in here through these ancestry claims, we are importing more American culture while completely failing to adequately protect our own. We are also giving credence to Americans seeing us simply as a safe-haven extension of the U.S., and allowing people to abandon the responsibility to their country if the Trump administration is the root cause of them coming here.

Want to protect those such as immigrants and trans people in the U.S.? Get rid of the Safe Third Country agreement. We should only be taking in those whose lives are directly in danger despite their actions rather than those who have the ability to do something about their situation, yet take the coward’s way out by leaving after they refused to take proper action.

You already see this crap online of people simply saying “sorry” and doing fuck all otherwise about shit like the annexation talk. Why reward inaction?

More electricity than Edmonton should already be an absolute “no” on the project. That’s abhorrent.

Resources for the homeless in Edmonton have always been terrible, speaking as someone who was homeless there twice now. There’s a lot of people wanting to make a difference, but as for organised supports in getting housing, there wasn’t a lot when I lived up that way.

When you compare the resources available for the homeless in Edmonton to those available for people in Calgary, it’s essentially night and day. Even with government assistance, I remember waiting over four hours on two occasions to get on Income Support in Edmonton, whereas in Calgary, we were in and out of the office in maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.

Mind you this was a few years ago, but still.

If by chance you mean communities you moderate, I think there is a button to do that when you view a community on a remote instance.

Not sure what the procedure is like otherwise as I’ve never used it myself.

“Democracy dies in darkness, and we’re on the side of darkness”

Whyyyyy

I remember voting against the Daylight Savings removal here in Alberta when it came up because I don’t understand why the only option when it comes to removing the swap is to make it permanent rather than not have it at all.

Like congrats, we’re basically changing timezones.

A lot of lakes here don’t get the respect they deserve for how pretty they are. Like you have world-renowned ones like Lake Louise and Morraine Lake that get a lot of attention, but other places I wish would get some more respect like Lac La Biche, Wabamun Lake, and the Wabasca Lakes.

Glad that these ones got some attention.

This is the issue with the Heritage Fund. When Peter Lougheed established it and started funding it, the funds were supposed to be put towards investments in other sectors of the provincial economy so that we didn’t have to rely on the boom-bust oil cycle.

Premier after premier has failed to address the issue of the fund. We just hit $30 billion in the fund last year when the value in 1985 was $14 billion. We have done fuck all to diversify the economy here, it’s been all talk, with the only action being backwards investments like a new AI data centre that’ll end up costing more money than it’s worth.

Counter-point, council meetings and open events not being a part of politics radicalises people and further exacerbates the issues we see with political extremism since people become more prone to the thought that politicians aren’t working for them, something that could actually potentially happen when politicians don’t meet with constituents face-to-face.

Ordinary Sausage lookin’ ass.

If he can talk about the issues of American hegemony at Davos, he can hold true to that word in a statement like this.

Oh no, the U.S. is gonna negatively affect trade with us… as if Trump isn’t literally out there threatening to abandon CUSMA, a deal that he made in his first term to replace NAFTA.

If their word never seems to matter, why should we hold ourselves to their standards?

True, but isn’t it the city’s responsibility to properly allot that funding? Or are you saying that the cities are underfunded by the province, which I wouldn’t be surprised by.

I don’t know if Australia is facing the opioid crisis the same way Canada is, but if these public washrooms are going to be accessible to the public, the government needs to take drug addiction seriously and properly address it with the money and laws that it deserves.

I recently moved back to Edmonton briefly before coming back to Calgary, and where I remember public washrooms being accessible, they were all closed off, or too monitored to make me comfortable. Washrooms that used to be public in bus terminals and downtown pedways were always conveniently “out of service”, and the open ones I did come across offered by the city had two security guards sitting directly outside them.

People wash their clothes in these washrooms, inject and snort drugs, and sleep in these washrooms. Here in Calgary the Exeloos are a running jokes because they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they’re never available because they don’t want people dealing with addictions abusing them.

Seems like a great step in the right direction, but what would happen if someone on the register were to get pregnant? Would they be legally required to surrender their children on birth?

Is that really the province’s fault though?

Not agreeing with Smith when she blames Nenshi, but wouldn’t the watermain breaks be the collective responsibilities of all the previous sessions of city council up to the break for not doing routine inspections?

In any case it’s annoying to me that she’s blaming the oil glut for the deficit without announcing exactly what proper long-term plans she has to diversify the economy to prevent this issue from being a repeat one. Like, an AI data centre is not going to be a good long-term investment if you just look how much has been dropped into OpenAI to attempt to make it profitable.

I don’t drink a lot of alcohol, but a while ago I wanted to experiment with using whisky as a vanilla extract substitute for baking.

Maybe the experience is different in Alberta from the rest of the country since there’s no public liquor store, but while I was able to find Canadian-made whisky with ease, it was weirdly difficult finding any that were Canadian owned.

Like you take a look at the companies that own these brands and they’re based in the U.S., U.K., Japan for some odd reason… You look online and can find locally-owned brands, but the trouble is finding them on store shelves.

If it helps garner any hope, there are former MPs and MLAs on the fediverse, and two candidates in the NDP leadership election have made accounts there and regularly post.

The leader of the BC Green party, I believe her name was Emily Lowan, also has an account.

Elbows Up Digital has a tracker and campaign to get politicians onto the fediverse: https://elbowsupdigital.ca/

Wonder why they’re closing. Have lab-grown diamonds become that viable of a replacement?

Or is it because the new generation of consumers have changed their shopping habits, either because they can’t afford something as expensive as a diamond, or are bucking the idea that love is something that needs to be shown with extravagance?