Today's News: "Next Year Country" , the Alberta story behind the story, and Trump's no good very bad day

"Next Year Country" 

Thanks for the memories. Canada will have to wait another year to build a team for the 2027 Stanley Cup -- which could well be the Canadiens again. 

I think all of Canada is grateful that the Canadiens worked so hard and got so far. A Game Four loss of 6 to 1 is painful, but it is what it is.
I guess I'll cheer for the Canes in the Stanley Cup.

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I liked this approach, too:

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Alberta story 

I think we've found out the story behind the story in Alberta.
This is a terrific article that explains what Smith's "sovereign Alberta within a united Canada" actually means. And it is terrifying. 

In Alberta Views, Edmonton writer Patrick Lennox describes how Smith and the UCP are following a blueprint very similar to the US Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Lennox describes it as "Shakedown Federalism".

...Like many Albertans I’ve been struggling to keep pace with the rate at which the UCP has legislated since Danielle Smith took the helm in 2022, often in unconstitutional ways that target minorities and override treaty rights. They have passed legislation, often in the middle of the night, that will leave extraordinary impacts on citizens of the province, alter the nature of our democratic society and could ultimately see Alberta remove itself from Confederation. On four occasions they have invoked the notwithstanding clause to override Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms....
Similar to our neighbours in the US, Albertans are in our own anti-democratic revolutionary political vortex, in which we’re being pulled into the unknown by a MAGA-adjacent far-right UCP government.
It might have helped to see some of this coming. Turns out we could have, if only we’d read the Free Alberta Strategy sooner.
The Free Alberta Strategy was written in 2021 by Rob Anderson, Barry Cooper and Derek From at the height of anti-Trudeau sentiment in the province, and in the altered-reality state of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, when so many radical ideas were incubated in a stew of isolation and myopia-inducing screen time. Anderson is a lawyer with a history in provincial politics who is now premier Danielle Smith’s chief of staff. Cooper is a political science professor at the University of Calgary. From is also a lawyer.
The document is a shade under 50 pages and contains a smattering of footnotes from Ted Morton, Jack Mintz, Lorne Gunter, Preston Manning, Pierre Poilievre and the Fraser Institute. Not exactly a non-partisan affair. And it certainly isn’t written with any attempt at neutrality or objectivity either. On the contrary, it is laced with incendiary rhetoric that seeks to demonize eastern Canada in simplistic and snide ways. It sets Alberta up as an oppressed victim of Confederation that has been “pillaged” by a federal government that has become an “existential threat to our province’s economic viability and the core freedoms of our people.”
The strategy asserts that “Ottawa has fundamentally breached its constitutional agreement with Alberta.” Accordingly, it has become incumbent upon the provincial government to “repudiate this arrangement on behalf of its people, to renegotiate its terms of membership in Confederation and, if Canada’s federal and provincial leaders refuse to negotiate, to form an independent nation.”
The authors then call on the government of Alberta, which at the time was led by premier Jason Kenney, to pass a Sovereignty Act that would allow the province to disregard all federal laws at its discretion; turf the RCMP and replace it with a provincial force; create independent provincial legislation for financial institutions, presumably to end federal regulatory oversight over banks working in the province; end equalization transfers; opt out of federal health, education, resource development, environmental regulation and property rights; replace the Canada Pension Plan with an Alberta version; do the same with Employment Insurance; replace the federal government in international diplomacy and negotiation; and give the provincial legislature the power to make all future judicial appointments....
According to the authors “a vast majority of Albertans” agree that the province in recent years has been “economically terrorized by the Government of Canada.” “Eco-extremists,” they say, have looted the province of “well over $600-billion” through transfer programs.
Anderson, Cooper and From blame the federal government for increases in suicides, bankruptcies and overdoses. And they suggest the feds have “commenced a deliberate strategy to phase out and eliminate Alberta’s largest and most critical industry.” Policies such as the carbon tax, clean fuel regulations and environmental impact assessments are characterized as “assaults.”
All of this dramatically sets up an extortion play which is the core of the strategy: “In the event that Ottawa refuses to recognize Alberta’s provincial rights of sovereignty, and instead continues its strategy of economic tyranny, co-opted management of our resource sector and the marginalization of our citizens, it may leave our province with no other recourse but to leave Confederation entirely.”
Rather than co-operative federalism, this is shakedown federalism. It’s a “do what we say or we are done” extortionist strategy that is rooted in an inflated sense of grievance that doesn’t jibe with any discernible reality.
Politicians and political scientists are careful to acknowledge the real sense of grievance that some Albertans feel vis-à-vis their relationship with the federal government. You can’t argue with people’s feelings after all, but you can take issue with how they choose to rationalize and justify them. There’s nothing on the public record that could plausibly support characterizing the federal government’s relationship with Alberta as something equivalent to economic terrorism, as the authors of the Free Alberta Strategy assert. To the contrary, since 2010 oil production in the province has more than doubled, from two million barrels a day to 4.1 million barrels a day.
The Free Alberta Strategy didn’t get much traction with Jason Kenney’s UCP, perhaps because in year one of Kenney’s reign Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, ramped up investment in the TMX pipeline, which runs from Edmonton to tidewater at Burnaby, BC. The project eventually cost the federal government $34.2-billion. Even for Kenney it would have been a stretch to describe this massive outlay of public dollars as an “assault” or a form of “terrorism” committed against his province by the evil overlords in Ottawa.
But since Kenney was given the bum’s rush by the far-right separatist wing of the party he created, the strategy has come back into vogue. In fact, Kenney’s successor, premier Smith, is hewing closely to much of the plan....

No wonder they wanted to get rid of Kenny. And no wonder Kenny is now doing whatever he can now to oppose their strategy. In the article, Lennox also covers how Alberta separatists are seeking and getting support from MAGA Americans too. The whole article is well worth reading.
Canada is now seeing a groundswell that opposes Alberta separatism.
Charlie Angus provides some background to the Alberta separatism movement and "Donbas Danielle"



Thousands came out to the Alberta "Fight Back Now" day of action on Friday:

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But even in Red Deer, people were protesting the separatists

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I can't tell whether there is any single leader on the federalist side who will become the public face of the Remain side in Alberta. It seems that Dani Smith is pretending to do this, but since the divisive Referendum Lite vote was all her idea in the first place, trying to presenting herself as some sort of federalist just isn't going to work.
NDP leader Naheed Nenshi would be the natural choice -- Alberta has appeared underwhelmed by Nenshi since he became NDP leader a year ago, but he's pushing himself forward now:

"Do not be fooled by her deathbed conversion last night, in which she said 'I'm fighting for Canada'- because let's be clear, she will not lift one finger to help the remain side in this ridiculous referendum" AB NDP leader Naheed Nenshi reacting to Premier Smith's address and referendum question.

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— Courtney Theriault (@ctheriault.bsky.social) May 22, 2026 at 11:27 AM

Ironically, Danielle Smith just handed Naheed Nenshi a viable path to the premiership. She's a GD genius, that one.

— Dr. Bast 🇨🇦 (@bastsbest.bsky.social) May 22, 2026 at 9:07 AM

But it is Wab Kineau who is already schooling Smith about the meaning of the treaties.

The man from Manitoba could play a big part in keeping Alberta from separating John Ivison: “But he said in an email to National Post that more recent polling shows Kinew’s net positive polling in the province is higher than for all the Alberta politicians tested in March, including Carney, Poilievre, Kenney or Farkas. “‘It would need to be an Albertan leading the ‘Canada’ campaign since, ultimately, it’s a vote about Alberta. But there’s a role for voices from the rest of Canada to be part of the dialogue, and it’s hard to think of a better voice than Wab Kinew,’ Arnold said. “Whoever takes the reins of the Remain campaign would be well advised to employ the political skills of the Manitoba premier. “He has already shown that few are more comfortable wearing the Team Canada jersey than he is.” https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-the-man-from-manitoba-could-play-a-big-part-in-keeping-alberta-from-separating

- Ben Atkinson, PhD

Read on Substack

Here's a fascinating clip of Kineau from 14 years ago, showing his powers of communication:

Premier Wab Kinew before he was Premier Wab Kinew. In 2012, he hosted 8th Fire, a four-part CBC miniseries subtitled “Aboriginal Peoples, Canada & the Way Forward.” The series took an unflinching look at Indigenous and settler relations in Canada, tracing the history and mapping a path forward. Kinew was direct from the start: this was not about guilt. It was about both sides learning from each other and taking ownership of the future together. It debuted in January 2012 and found a loyal audience across the country within its four-week run. Still worth watching in full. https://youtu.be/L7LY-fXzhZI?si=1Uu7AXF8Z6DtW5hv

- Annie Koshy

Read on Substack

And he's a terrific dancer too:

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Threatening to blow up the country is making everyone take a hard look at whether separatist grievances have merit. 

Here are a couple of good comments on that very topic:

I kind of agree with the separatists on one thing: Alberta would be far better off if it weren't for all these unfair transfer payments…to oil companies. Every year we transfer billions of dollars to wealthy investors by not charging them what our oil is worth, because of our ridiculously low royalty rates. That's our money they are pocketing We transfer more wealth to those rich oilmen by paying for the roads their companies rely on, the education and health care of their workers, and the emergency services that keep their operations safe. Because of ridiculously low corporate tax rates, we end up subsidizing them for all those services. That's our money subsidizing them When they walk away from unpaid taxes or abandoned wells or toxic spills, our government passes those costs on to the rest of us. Also ridiculous. Also our money paying for their http://delinquency.So http://delinquency.So I agree that it's time to demand fairness and stop transferring our money... to oil companies. We pay exactly the same tax rates to Ottawa as everyone else in Canada, but our Alberta government keeps us poor by transferring our Alberta wealth to their corporate friends. And then they tell us to blame http://Ottawa.So http://Ottawa.Soerhaps there should be a third option on this fall's referendum question: "Alberta should stay in Canada but demand the provincial government finally start acting like owners of our own resources by ending transfer payments to wealthy oilmen. It should be unlawful to blame others for made-in-Alberta failures."

- Kevin Van Tighem

Read on Substack

Next, Evan Scrimshaw writes

...The reason Albertans are in the place they’re in is because they’ve been lied to by their politicians for decades. Since Ralph Klein left office, the Albertan right have been consistently running bad governments that haven’t done the basics of good governance. ... The basic problem with Alberta is not a lack of pipelines or a lack of feistiness with Ottawa, but a lack of good provincial governance. Notley tried to do some of it, but four years with low oil prices wasn’t enough time to build the schools and hospitals places like Red Deer and Lethbridge need, let alone the two big cities, and to fix the structural problems. The oil money should be a bridge to get Alberta from where it is now to where it will be in a post-oil, or at the very least post-peak oil, world. But it’s not being used as that bridge, it’s being used to plug holes in a province that is rapidly failing at its admirable goal of being the best.
...It’s absolutely valid to see the combination of Trudeau’s failures with the increasingly decrepit state of the provincially run public realm in Alberta as a reason to embrace a wild or crazy idea.
Now, separation is the wrong idea, for a lot of reasons. Nobody’s building that pipeline Smith wants built any time fucking soon, as a start, and the nascent but growing tech industry in Calgary can kiss their growth goodbye. Nobody in Kitchener and Kanata who have been looking at maybe investing in Calgary will do that anymore, as the uncertainty of this bullshit outweighs the benefits of a low tax regime. The Alberta budget looks fine for this year because of the oil spike from war with Iran, but the idea that Alberta’s still in the boom days and can afford to lose investment is, plainly, how you become Quebec. This decision to validate and officially begin a Western front of the National Question means Alberta is inviting stagnation, brain drain, and economic malaise....
... Albertans deserve a government that is focused on rebuilding their schools and hospitals, growing the economy, working with Ottawa to fix the problems that Trudeau created, and attracting the kind of investment and opportunities that will keep Alberta the economic crown jewel of Confederation. Danielle Smith will never lead that government. Naheed Nenshi needs to show Albertans he can, and then he needs to do it, or we will all, across this country, suffer the consequences...

And I thought this was also a good point:

To paraphrase the 1998 Supreme Court of Canada reference re: separation - provinces don't "belong" to their residents, they belong to Canada as a whole. Referendums have no legal authority and provincial governments cannot unilaterally act like they own their territory and people. #cdnpoli #ableg

— Stephen Lautens (@stephenlautens.bsky.social) May 28, 2026 at 7:31 AM

Trump's no good very bad day
Trump continues losing:

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The Democrats are officially calling Stephen Miller an Ugly Fuck and I am so here for it! The Republicans are clutching pearls and losing their minds.

Stephen Miller Is An "Ugly Fuck", Both Inside,And Out.......

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— M Meerkat (@kackbro.bsky.social) May 28, 2026 at 3:27 PM

"Did we just become best friends? YEP!" I love how she doubled down on her response.😅

- The Mouthy Renegade Writer

Read on Substack

Sure, but Stephen Miller really IS an ugly fuck.

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— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack.bsky.social) May 29, 2026 at 11:45 AM

Meanwhile, Trump stamps his feet, takes his ball and goes home after a judge tells him he can't close or re-name the Kennedy Centre. (And I assume his Supreme Court justices told him they wouldn't support him either.)

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Trump's White House wrestling match is going to be awful:

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I absolutely agree with this remark about Scott Bessent:

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In much more important news, what is happening with the Iran War? 

I could post a dozen comments but in Public Notice, Noah Berlatsky summarizes the whole sorry mess:

... when Iran seized and closed down the Strait of Hormuz instead of capitulating immediately, Trump and his team of dunderheaded and cowardly fascists hesitated briefly and then gave up. Ever since, the president has been searching for a way to back out of his enormously unpopular war in a way that doesn’t make him look like the cowardly dunderheaded fascist he is.
Unfortunately for Trump, though, the people who won the war (that is, Iran) have little to no incentive to let him set terms to make himself look good, or even adequate. Neither do other leaders in the region. As foreign policy scholar Elizabeth N. Saunders explains, Trump has two choices: “Humiliation or (increasingly futile) escalation.”
Escalation is a terrible option for Trump. The US has already shown that bombing alone cannot defeat the Iranian regime. That leaves a ground invasion as the only possible path to something like victory. But a YouGov poll at the end of March found that only 14 percent of US adults support sending ground troops into Iran. Among independents, nine percent support ground troops against 66 percent who oppose, and even among Republicans an invasion is a loser, with 30 percent support against 37 percent opposition.
These figures are dismal enough to suggest that significantly ramping up the war could actually cause Trump’s terrible overall approval to fall even further — especially with Republicans (73 percent of whom support the war), and especially if significant numbers of US service people are killed in combat.
So that leaves accepting humiliation.

People are also suspecting that US war casualties and damage are significantly greater than the Pentagon has admitted.

Finally, I saw it announced today that No Kings are organizing nationwide protests for June 14, Trump's birthday.

‘No Kings’ movement planning nationwide protests on King Trump's 80th birthday.

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— Bruce Little (@brucedlittle.bsky.social) May 28, 2026 at 3:25 PM