Not unexpectedly, the Alberta government is pausing its book ban in large part because of the malicious compliance by the Edmonton Public School Board and others, where they weaponized the bans to show how ridiculous they are, particularly in targeting things like Ayn Rand, which Danielle Smith thinks should be “compulsory reading,” because of course she does. And yes, Margaret Atwood got involved, because one of the books that got picked for the ban was The Handmaid’s Tale, and Smith and company were roundly ridiculed by everyone. As they should be.

But as the government decides that they’re going to either come up with a more targeted criteria, or just take these school boards by the hand and essentially do it for them, nobody is actually talking about how this all started with a moral panic about queer or trans books, and that this is what the outcome is going to be once Smith and her ministers come up with the “targeted” list. And frankly, it’s disappointing to see that Naheed Nenshi is not calling this out either, instead giving credence to the moral panic by saying that this was about the UCP igniting a culture war that backfired on them, and “Instead of just saying, ‘Hey, we found a couple of troubling comic books with some troubling images, let’s take those off of shelves,’ they wrote a ministerial order.” Those “troubling images” are overreactions or taken out of context, but more to the point, they’re queer and trans materials. That cannot be toned down or ignored in the broader scheme because this is where fascism always starts. And no, this isn’t just Smith being a MAGA adherent because a lot of these particular tactics have a more tangible origin point in Orbán’s Hungary, where Americans like Ron DeSantis then adapted them for his own use, and far-right groups took their cues from the US shared their lists with members of the UCP to show their “concerns.” Nothing was an accident. Let’s not pussyfoot around this.

I don't think this has necessarily been intentional by anyone in media, but I am fascinated by the way the narrative around the Alberta book bans has shifted away from the censorship of LGBTQ2S+ stories into being much more "Look, they're even banning Game of Thrones!!"

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-09-02T17:18:21.140Z

In other Alberta news, their bans on students changing names or pronouns in schools, and ban on trans women in sport have also taken effect, so Egale Canada is part of a lawsuit that has been launched to challenge these laws, which will inevitably result in Smith invoking the Notwithstanding Clause, because of course she will, but she’s going to insist that she’s the reasonable one in the room while she’s doing it.

1/ Egale Canada and Skipping Stone have filed a constitutional challenge against the Government of Alberta’s Education Amendment Act, 2024 (formerly Bill 27), which places unconstitutional restrictions on the use of names and pronouns in schools across Alberta.

— Egale Canada (@egalecanada.bsky.social) 2025-09-02T21:21:32.679Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-02T21:22:03.302Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia has launched air attacks on Kyiv overnight. There were fresh attacks on Ukrainian power facilities over the weekend, and Ukraine has vowed retaliation. Ukraine is also seeing a new troop buildup along certain parts of the front lines. As the school year starts in Ukraine, many more schools have been moved underground as a result of the war. The former Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada was gunned down on Saturday in a political assassination.

Good reads:

• Mark Carney is holding a Cabinet retreat—err, “planning forum” today and tomorrow in the Toronto area.
• Carney has appointed an interim PBO for the next six months as Yves Giroux’s term ended yesterday (thank the gods) and they haven’t selected a new one yet.
• Last Friday, Carney announced that the Major Projects Office will be headquartered in Calgary, and headed by former Trans Mountain CEO Dawn Farrell.
• Dominic LeBlanc tells The Star that he doesn’t see any “dead ends” with his current trade talks with Howard Lutnick (but also notes the goalposts keep changing).
• François-Philippe Champagne is giving the CRA 100 days to fix their call centre problems (while he’s also cutting their funding. Good luck with that).
• Anita Anand has finally made a public statement about the US sanctions on ICC judges, including one Canadian.
• The federal government says they’re ready to help earthquake victims in Afghanistan, but won’t say how, or how to get around their own rules against it.
• The Cabinet order has gone out to begin the process of transferring the Canadian Coast Guard from Fisheries & Oceans into the Department of National Defence.
• AFN national chief Cindy Woodhouse Neepinak says their general assembly will also be where they lay out their budget priorities for the government.
• Businesses are pushing back at Bill C-2’s demand for backdoor access to systems for government, while a group of eminent Canadians is calling for it to be scrapped.
• The Logic tried to replicate the digital asbestos “turn a briefing into a podcast” tool Evan Solomon bragged about and it made critical errors two out of three times.
• Speaker Scarpaleggia will be hosting his G7 counterparts, including the Speakers of the EU Parliament and Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada.
• The federal NDP have officially launched their leadership race, and want to ensure that signatures for candidates are not all coming from cisgender men. (Seriously).
• Alberta wants to charge a surtax for data centres in the province, unless they partner with a new gas-burning generation facility. (I cannot even…)
• Kevin Carmichael posits that our stable markets could be a haven for investors fleeing America, but cautions that we can’t be smug as we nearly elected Poilievre.
• Supriya Dwivedi warns Carney and the PMO not to let Trump become their sole focus, as those where times where Trudeau stumbled for lack of attention.
• Justin Ling criticises Carney’s appeasements of Trump, and says that he has the political capital to fight back, because the current path isn’t working.
• Paul Wells ponders the things that Poilievre has been saying about Carney’s actions, and the promises he’s been making post-election.
• My weekend column calls on the government to get serious about digital sovereignty, which is more than just locally-sourced data centres.
• My column points out that the market case for east coast LNG has not magically appeared, and it’s even worse for Churchill, so why is Carney pretending it’s there?

Odds and ends:

New episodes released early for C$7+ subscribers. This week I look at some of the problematic elements of the omnibus border bill. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-02T01:57:05.600Z

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