I Never Thought I'd See It Happen...

[bjarvis]

If you ever needed a sign that the end times are upon us, here it is:
Alberta is going to recognize same-sex marriages.

Yes, the province that makes Texas look like a bastion of communism, the same province that fought the Supreme Court of Canada tooth & nail to deny that gays & lesbians were even human beings, is finally caving in on our weddings, albeit grudgingly.

Full article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050712.wgaymarriage0712/BNStory/National/

BTW, the same-sex marriage bill, C-38, passed second reading in the Senate July 6 with a 2:1 margin, and is scheduled for third (final) reading on July 18 with a quick vote before being sent off to Governor-General Andrienne Clarkson for her signature. Five more days! Whee!

Comments

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Alberta's an interesting special case. From the US point of view, it only looks conservative because it's compared with other Canadian provinces; by our standards it's similar to Montana or Wyoming, and more liberal than, say, Idaho or Utah. A significant part of the population is descended from US farmers that moved there for cheap land. They also have legitimate grievances against Eastern colonialism, most notably Trudeau's NEP. Rural areas of both AB and BC have (for Canada) significant fundie populations.

This socio-political note brought to you by the letter 'Y'.

Oh, and it's good to see you writing things here. You even got Bill Eyler into a chatty mood!

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

The National Energy Program is still one of the most quoted pieces of fed-bashing by Alberta (and in Saskatchewan which was also affected), despite being dead & gone for 20 years. Current grievances include distribution of federal power (population-heavy Quebec & Ontario are frequent targets), the Canada Health Act (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/medicare/chaover.htm), the US beef embargo and the GST. There is some low-level discussion about resurrecting the triple-E senate proposals (http://www.cric.ca/en_html/guide/senate/senate.html) of the Meech Lake Accord (http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/Proposals/MeechLake.html) but my impression is that there is little stomach among the voters to entertain constitutional amendments of any kind at the moment, even by Albertans. Basic pocket book issues continue to be more significant to voters.

Personally, I'm not sure how a triple-E senate would help maintain Conservative control of Alberta. It would take serious gerrymandering to keep senators under the thumb of rural conservative voters rather than the more liberal voters of Calgary and esp. Edmonton. My suspicion is that this is one of those odd situations where the end result could be precisely the opposite of what the drafters intended. It would be a fun experiment in any case. In any case, my very unscientific intuition is that there are better odds of a single transferable vote modification to the House of Commons than replacement/abolition of the Senate.

Once a political junky, always a political junky. :-)