Letter: Why we show up every Saturday
By Letter to the Editor on March 11, 2026.
Dear editor, From 11 a.m. to noon, a group of us stands outside MLA Justin Wright’s office or MLA Danielle Smith’s office holding homemade protest signs. We wave to passing cars, talk with neighbours and sometimes answer the same question: Why protest? The answer is simple. Because democracy only works if people show up. Albertans pride themselves on independence, fairness and looking out for our neighbours. Many of us feel those values are being tested right now. Public health care and public education are systematically being dismantled, while our politics increasingly turns to scapegoats instead of solutions. People on AISH are blamed. Immigrants and Temporary Foreign Workers and international students are blamed. The federal government is blamed. AHS is blamed. The LGBTQ community is blamed. Unions and organized labour are blamed. At the same time, after the separatists were given a hand up by our premier changing legislation, their rhetoric is gaining traction. Hundreds recently attended a separatist panel in Medicine Hat. Imagine if those same numbers showed up to defend strong public services and a confident Alberta within Canada. Many of us standing outside those offices had never protested before this. But the stakes have changed. If you are worried about the province’s direction, you are not alone. Across Alberta, ordinary people are beginning to speak up. You don’t have to agree on everything to believe everyday Albertans deserve to be heard. Join us on Saturdays. Stand with your neighbours. Let your voice be counted. Because democracy only works when we show up. Anna Hansen Medicine Hat 13-12
Great comments Anna and unless our fellow seniors wake up and start showing they care about what these Reformers are doing to our children and grandchildren’s future they are in serious trouble. These mindless seniors supporting them don’t care, do they?
Yesterday my wife discovered that these Reformers will no longer pay for seniors annual eye exams as they force us into a privatized healthcare system. It cost my wife $129. Of course helping the rich become a lot richer is far more important to them, as they help them steal the peoples oil and corporate tax wealth, isn’t it? That’s how stupid Albertans are isn’t it.
We can just imagine what these wars are going to do to our cost of living while these fake conservatives, Reformers, blame it on the Liberals, can’t you?
You are correct. These seniors also influence their younger relatives how to vote, and here we are. The UCP aren’t a Conservative government at all.
I’ve had dozens of young people tell me that they don’t have the time to follow politics and have relied on senior relatives to advise them who to vote for then wished they hadn’t listened to them.
Recently they have been telling us that they have become so disgusted by watching these seniors believing every lie these Reformers feed them that they have told them that they are no longer welcome at their family gatherings like Christmas and birthdays it’s gotten that bad.
I think next election we are going to see a huge change and the NDP will be elected in Alberta, and Poilievre will be kicked out of our beloved Conservative Party, don’t you? They were stupid to get him elected in the first place. He is a farce, isn’t he while he praises Donald Trump?
Mark Carney has proven to us that he’s a lot more like our Conservative hero Peter Lougheed and he cares about the well being of all Canadians and not just the rich like these Reform Party fools do, doesn’t he to you?
I agree with you. The NDP in Alberta were much closer to Peter Lougheed’s Alberta PCs. Even Peter Lougheed’s own cabinet ministers disagree with the UCP and Danielle Smith.
Red Deer’s Jim Foster, former Progressive Conservative Attorney General, endorses NDP | rdnewsnow.com https://share.google/MGQkyJS9Mqtb7QrC8
Opinion: Alberta undermining public education — and democracy | Edmonton Journal https://share.google/eZwzIZBpBLzJFkXxx
Thank you for standing up for democracy, Alberta and Canada! You are the real Canadians that the world sees and then consistently votes Canada as one of the top countries in the world, for decades running.
The maple maga are traitors that collude with the worlds most deplorable pedophile ring. Everyone associating with that evil cabal is blatantly immoral.
Similarly, anyone signing the maga-separatist petition has signed away their place at any Remembrance Day event. Especially the traitor UCP MLAs that signed the petition, for they swore an oath to Canada when they assumed office.
Indeed, all elected officials that sign a traitor petition should be forced out of office immediately for breaking their contract.
Thanks Hawkeye. The true conservatives in our world are disgusted with these fellow seniors who are so stupid that they don’t care what these Reformers are doing to our children and grandchildren’s future while they hurl their sarcastic comments at us for not being as stupid as them, and I bet you are also?
I had uncles, and other relatives who fought in WW2. The UCP and Danielle Smith are enabling these traitors to continue.
I did also. One was killed.