#danielle smith

Skate Canada says it won’t host national and international-level events in Alberta, citing provincial law that restricts transgender athletes from participating in female-only sports.

The organization said in a statement Tuesday that its decision was made following its assessment of Alberta’s Fairness and Safety in Sport Act.

The law, which came into effect Sept. 1, blocks transgender athletes from Alberta who are 12 and older from competing in female amateur sports.

“Skate Canada considers a variety of criteria when selecting host locations for its national events,” the statement said. “Following a careful assessment of Alberta’s Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, Skate Canada has determined that we are unable to host events in the province while maintaining our national standards for safe and inclusive sport.”

Double Breach

‘Two giant, school bus-sized, blubbery whales, sometimes weighing up to 40,000 kilograms, coordinated a jump at the same time. I took this image off the coast of Lennox Head, northern NSW, this winter, Saturday 5 July. We call it the humpback highway; every day you can see whales jumping. This was a rare opportunity to capture two at the same time.’

Danielle Smith

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says the law will be enforced if First Nations communities engage in civil disobedience over her government’s separation referendum. At an unrelated news conference in Calgary Friday, she said: “I hope it doesn’t come to that.” On Oct. 19, Albertans will vote on whether they want to stay in Canada or start the process to hold a second, binding referendum on quitting the country.

Read more.

Ms Smith: I think that we are acting in the true spirit of economic reconciliation.

The student's censored query came just two days following a province-wide student walkout and "Save Alberta’s Education" rally protesting the province's education funding, recent controversial book ban and transgender laws, which Premier Smith said she is willing to override Charter Rights to push through.

Source: Bruce McAllister's Wikipedia page (Moderating Incident section).

link to clip + link to reddit post

transcript below:

Leyland Cecco at The Guardian:

Covert meetings between separatist activists in the Canadian province of Alberta and members of Donald Trump’s administration amount to “treason”, the premier of British Columbia said on Thursday. “To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that – and that word is treason,” David Eby told reporters. “It is completely inappropriate to seek to weaken Canada, to go and ask for assistance, to break up this country from a foreign power and – with respect – a president who has not been particularly respectful of Canada’s sovereignty.”

The revelations that far-right activists met US state department officials first emerged in a Financial Times report outlining the efforts a group of increasingly emboldened separatists are taking in their attempt to secede from Canada. A minority of residents of the oil-rich province have long argued that the province’s woes are due to the structure of payments to the federal government and a perceived inability to get their vast fossil fuel reserves to market. Organizers of the Alberta independence movement, which still boasts only minority support, are now collecting signatures to trigger a referendum there. The pro-independence campaign has been travelling across the province as organizers try to collect nearly 178,000 signatures over the next few months. The group has publicly said it wants a $500bn credit facility from the US treasury to help fund the creation of a new country if their referendum is successful.

“I think that while we can respect the right of any Canadian to express themselves to vote in a referendum, I think we need to draw the line at people seeking the assistance of foreign countries to break up this beautiful land of ours,” Eby told reporters, adding he would raise this at a meeting of provincial leaders later in the day. Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, who has rejected the idea of separation and said she “supports a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada”, is facing mounting criticism that her government recently made it easier for residents to petition for a referendum. The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, said Smith needed “to stand up [to the separatists] and say enough is enough”. Last week, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, appeared to support the efforts by the separatists in an interview with the conservative website Real America’s Voice.