Danielle Smith traps NDP on ＂book ban＂ issue - Nenshi flails around!
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
174.72858
Summary
In this episode, I talk about Alberta's new ban on sexual explicit materials in school libraries, and why I think it's a bad idea. I also give my picks for municipal candidates to vote for school board trustees and councillors.
Transcript
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Truly Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is blessed by having some of the dumbest political opponents in Canadian politics.
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The Alberta NDP, led by Naheed Nenshi, for some reason are trying to score points on the supposed book banning issue,
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but it's just turned into them arguing in favor of sexually inappropriate materials in school libraries.
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They tried to woke scold her on something that 90% of Albertans, if they actually know the books that are being banned,
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would not actually have a problem with it, and these books aren't even being banned, really.
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You can still go out there if you're crazy and buy these things.
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You just can't show them to elementary, middle school, or high school kids, depending on what the content is
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and whether it's appropriate for certain age groups and not for others,
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or it's just completely inappropriate and it shouldn't be shown in the case of a book like Genderqueer.
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So I want to take you guys through some of the new news about this issue,
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because as you know, last week, Danielle Smith pulled back a bit on the book ban.
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Really, it's just restricting inappropriate material from school libraries.
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But they came out just this morning with the revised version of it that actually specifically targets
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the inappropriate materials in ways that the Edmonton Board of Education cannot misinterpret.
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Because, of course, last week, the Edmonton Board of Education pretended like the ban was for things like
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High school students can't read The Handmaid's Tale anymore.
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I guess we're also going to have to get rid of the Bible and to kill a mockingbird.
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But obviously, those would have not been actually caught up in any book ban.
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They were banning sexually explicit materials, especially ones that were visual-based.
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But everyone wanted to be obtuse and make a big deal about this and try and embarrass the premier
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by basically maliciously complying with the orders from Education Minister Demetrius Nicolaitis
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and just banning a bunch of popular books and acting like this is the actual intention of the ban.
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Now, they can't pretend, but for some reason, the Alberta NDP is still trying to naysay the ban.
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So, before I get into it, I just want to remind you guys, if you like the show,
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make sure to leave a like on this video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber,
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and leave a comment on what you think about this whole situation.
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And, of course, because I am currently covering an Alberta issue,
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I just want to shout out some municipal candidates.
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If you live in Alberta, especially in the major cities,
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I'll have a whole list for Calgary of school board trustees and councillors to vote for.
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But make sure if you're in Calgary, the best person you can vote for,
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if you want a conservative that can win, is Sonia Sharp.
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In Edmonton, your best bet would be Raheem Jaffer.
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In somewhere like Medicine Hat, I would say Drew Barnes is fantastic.
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And I will be filling in the gaps in some places like Airdrie and Red Deer as time goes on.
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But here is the headline from the CBC article by Janet French here.
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New Alberta School Books Order Bans Explicit Images of Sexual Acts.
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changes come after school board listed more than 200 books to remove from libraries.
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The most woke one was the one who pretended that this was some sort of Christian nationalist book ban,
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where if it doesn't comply with the 1930s Hays Code of Films,
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Again, this is what you call malicious compliance.
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And so even though people obviously know the intention is to get rid of books like Genderqueer,
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they're going to get rid of books like The Handmaid's Tale and then get Margaret Atwood to attack the premier.
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But this article says Alberta's revised rules on books and schools will prohibit works containing explicit images of sexual acts,
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but not written descriptions of the same, according to a new ministerial order published Monday.
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And obviously, there can be written depictions of stuff if it is a book meant for older kids in high school.
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And it is obviously literary, like it's, you know, it's necessary for the story for what happens.
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But you wouldn't have that in an elementary library, which is probably also in the school order,
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that you do not have those books with written descriptions available to very young children.
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But if you're in, you know, grade 12, you can have stuff like that.
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But yeah, this is obviously completely uncontroversial.
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It goes on to say the ministerial order issued in July asked school employees to remove library materials that depicted sexual acts,
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That prompted Edmonton board schools to assemble a list of 226 books to remove from shelves and classrooms,
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including well-known works such as The Handmaid's Tale, The Colored Purple,
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Godfather, and Jaws.
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And so obviously, this is to make her look foolish,
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when specifically, they had also included written passages before,
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because you don't want some of those books listed going to a child in grade 5.
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who haven't clued into the fact that they should probably shut up about this issue now,
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because they are going to look really stupid arguing about this.
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trying to still naysay the premier on something that upwards of 80% of Albertans,
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if they knew what the order does, would absolutely support it.
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So she was going to fix the book ban in two hours,
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which is the province made an ideological commitment
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in the hopes that it would help them in the Edmonton-Ellersley by-election.
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And now they're trying to figure out how to actually implement that commitment.
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Because now you, having addressed the book ban,
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it's like saying there's an alcohol ban because you can only drink if you're 18.
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he has to come out and state whether or not he supports it.
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tell me if this is something that's in line with your values?
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And anyone who read that order in July knew exactly what was going to happen,
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which is books like The Handmaid's Tale would get banned.
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No, that's obviously not what was going to happen
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unless you were reading into the mind of a school board activist
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How is it that the Northern Board of Education,
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Central, ones around places like Lethbridge, Fort McMurray, Calgary,
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and they didn't go wild banning books that it clearly did not mean?
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It was only the most woke NDP school board that decided to do this.
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And he's just playing dumb about it, that acting like,
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oh, it's just because there's sloppy policy work that this happened.
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It has nothing to do with the fact that we obviously wanted this to happen,
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that we wanted all these books to get banned in order to make her look bad.
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When that happened, and also the premier's favorite book
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Like, the whole point was that the nuance of the order
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was that it couldn't include written passages for certain ages of children.
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Could there have been some vague wording in there
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Maybe, but the thing is that I think government
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shouldn't be able to operate on a certain level of common sense.
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Now she's intimating that actually it's just about gay comic books.
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that she doesn't want elementary school students to see.
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What's funny is even in that little moment right there,
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oh, she just doesn't like the gays or something like that.
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like, I don't know if he's trying to attack or agree
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Or are you agreeing that nobody wants these on the shelves?
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They went into the libraries to verify they are there.
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So does Nenshi think it's a waste of time getting rid of them
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When they finally released the list of schools that had these materials,
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So you can have porn as long as it's a high school.
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Maybe it's wrong to have that anywhere because it's gross.
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No public institution should carry those books.
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You can order it online if you're weird, but nobody should have access to that book.
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So he thinks it's okay if you're 15 and you get a copy of Genderqueer
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that is just literally just written like visual sexual material.
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It's just even the person who wrote it even said it's only for adults.
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Behind the scenes right now, either they're going to get rid of all those restrictions
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and just say, listen, we don't want explicit comic books in elementary schools,
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or they're going to try and circle it and keep the restrictions in place
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and put in an exemption for literary classics or works of literary merit.
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It's actually been a wildly popular policy in places like Florida.
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So if I were giving advice to the premier who's going to make her bureaucrats work
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all weekend to try and resolve this situation, I would just say, tell them to back down
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and write a one-sentence ministerial order that says school boards should strive to ensure
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that all materials in every school are age-appropriate, period.
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He can say this, but when the NDP were in government,
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they didn't fund schools wildly more than any previous government did.
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So unless he's going to condemn Rachel Notley too, this is just hypocritical.
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Plus, at the same time, right now, Alberta, while having the youngest population of any province
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and has the largest classroom sizes, and it's not even exactly because of underfunding.
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If you get rid of the extra vice principals at every school and the extra counselors that
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you don't need and you just put teachers back in the classroom and you had more teaching
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They'll say, oh, the actual per capita spending is the lowest in Canada.
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Okay, well, the educational achievement rates are also the highest.
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The thing is, certain costs are actually fixed over time.
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When you have an education system, the more people that you add to the system,
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every time you add a new student to the system doesn't mean another $13,000 needs to be spent.
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At some point, certain things that you've paid for, you have already paid for.
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You've already paid for all the testing materials and the rights to certain online programming
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And so it doesn't matter if you add another kid.
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You don't have to go back to that vendor and say, here's another $75 so that we can use
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You just get the testing material for the general size of your school system.
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And so, again, it has nothing to do with the fact that we spend a couple thousand dollars
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The problem is, is just that the money allocation could be better.
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It has nothing to do with the amount of dollar signs behind the program.
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And currently, Alberta still has the best functioning system, which is a testament to the fact that
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But anyways, so I want to move on now quickly to this comic because it got absolutely roasted
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This is from Theo Mudakis from the Toronto Star, trying to attack Danielle Smith because
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she doesn't want comics like Archie available in the schools with her saying, we must protect
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And I can't show you the way people parody this, but in general, if you don't want somebody
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to edit the comic or picture you put out, never have the person in the picture or the
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person depicted in the drawing holding something that you can easily edit.
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Because now what people are doing is taking the comic that cartoon Danielle Smith is holding
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and putting in place actual images from the sexually explicit materials.
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Again, this is such a stupid hill for Nihide Nenshi and the NDP to die on.
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You want to fight her on whether or not porn should be in high schools?
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Well, they're high school students, so that makes it okay.
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And we have the education critic for the Alberta NDP here, Lori Sidgerton, saying,
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Okay, I guess apparently we don't fund it, even though we have the best performing system.
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Amanda Chapman, Alberta's new Democratic shadow minister of education, or I guess this is Amanda
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Chapman, it's not Lori Sidgerton's who's putting this out.
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And Amanda Chapman, Alberta's new Democratic shadow minister for education, issued the
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following statement in response to the UCP government's revised book ban.
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Quote, the UCP government refuses to admit they've made a mistake.
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Instead, they are doubling down on their book ban.
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Okay, well, your leader has agreed with aspects of it, so what's your point?
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Quote, these changes include increased cushion for parents, schools, and teachers when the
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issue of age-appropriate books was already being dealt with.
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Nothing today addresses the additional burden placed on teachers and school staff to catalog
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books that contravene the UCP government's gaslighting ministerial order instead of
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ensuring everyone understands only age-appropriate books are in schools.
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Now the government is putting parents against schools just because somebody doesn't like
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Nobody's saying that we should pause school for a week and then run through the libraries
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If it comes up and it's obviously age-appropriate, it's obviously just flat-out inappropriate for
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anybody to be reading, let's just have an agreement that we should probably get rid of it.
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Nobody's going to come rip Harry Potter off the shelves.
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Nobody's going to rip The Handmaid's Tale off of high school bookshelves.
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We just don't want, you know, explicit images being in any school.
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It's so weird Nahid Nenshi thinks that the ticket for him on this issue is just saying,
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ah, she thinks, oh, these are already banned in elementary schools.
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Okay, does he want to see polling on a Canadian parents, Alberta parents think it's good depending
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Just legitimately, just sexual acts depicted in a book are just perfectly cool for kids.
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As long as you're 14 years old, as long as you're 13, what's the age cutoff for him?
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I'd like to know, because I feel like that will answer more questions about Nenshi than
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it does about what age-appropriate books in schools look like or not.
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That seems rather odd, that he has a very hard and fast rule on who should be looking at sexual
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activity and who shouldn't be looking at it in terms of young minor children.
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Anyways, so that should be it for this video, guys.
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I hope the NDP keeps tripling down on their opposition to what is a very popular issue for
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the UCP, and it's because they're running on nothing.
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The NDP is so broken at this point, they believe that it's also going to help them to oppose
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Yeah, let's just take away more working-class people's jobs.
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I actually opposed when we phased out coal power in Alberta, and I even criticized both
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Kenny and Smith for kind of carrying through with the ban.
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The NDP put it in place, but I'm like, it doesn't matter if the ban has already almost
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But now the NDP, again, is doubling down on something unpopular because getting rid of
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coal power has caused there to be near energy shortages in Alberta when it's super hot outside
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or when it's super cold, in favor of windmills and solar panels that barely work when also
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And now they want to say just, oh yeah, no mining at all.
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Maybe they're trying to capture the 1% of greeny voters who think that we should not extract
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a single resource from the ground ever because it might upset a penguin somewhere or whatever.
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Anyways, but with that being said, guys, just wanted to remind you again, especially if
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you live in the city of Calgary, get a lawn sign for Sonia Sharp.
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We want to make sure to litter the entire city with these things.
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I'm also getting one for my local council candidate that I like in Ward 6, Joanne Burse.
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There's this guy, John Pantazopoulos, running in Ward 6, who I see a lot of people have signs
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I've heard that his campaign is being run by an Alberta NDP manager.
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And everything I read about the guy just strikes me as generic stuff that a lot of bad council
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candidates say to make them sound somewhat fiscally responsible or whatever.
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But I'm making sure to put up signs for the candidates I like.
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I think it's a good practice to be able to signal what you think is the right way for
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But I'll have a link down in the comments below, both for Sonia Sharp and Joanne Burse for
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But again, Raheem Jaffer is probably the best candidate for mayor in Edmonton.
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Easily the best candidate in Medicine Hat is Drew Barnes.
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It's because Drew Barnes is a fantastic candidate on top of being the best out of the bunch.
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Anyways, so with that being said, see you guys all later.