(Trans)gender in Fascist Context

Florence Ashley

We live in a time of turmoil. The United States is facing growing fascist threats as the Trump government targets all those deemed undesirable with little concern for such pithy notions as due process or human rights. One of the first amongst these assaults has been against trans communities and so-called “gender ideology,” mirroring the creep of anti-trans politics northward to Canada. This presentation will explore the close conceptual and strategic overlap between anti-trans movements, anti-abortion, and white supremacist movements, emphasizing the intertwined nature of anti-fascist struggles and the need to organize in solidarity across difference.

Florence Ashley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law and John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre. Read more

Malady or Remedy? Two Futures for Healthcare in Alberta

Rebecca Graff-McRae

Canada’s universal, single-payer, public health system has long been held as one of the defining pillars of our national identity – one that binds provinces and territories together and which offers a stark contrast to our American neighbours. In this time of geopolitical and economic turbulence, when Canada’s sovereignty is challenged both from without and within, the future of healthcare is also a deeply uncertain one.

Public healthcare as a form of nationbuilding, as an essential pillar in our economy, and as a guardrail of our social democracy could provide the remedy to social, economic, and political inequity. Or it could be eroded and transformed by political and corporate interests into a tool of further division.

Alberta is on the frontlines of this tug-of-war and has been for much of our recent history. This presentation will outline the current healthcare crisis in Alberta and map out the two future possibilities before us. What does healthcare mean in Alberta today? Who is it for? And what price are we willing to pay to preserve and expand it?

Rebecca Graff-McRae is a Research Manager for the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta, where her areas of research include public healthcare, seniors’ care, and public services. Read more

Sumak Kawsay and Wellbeing Economy – Challenging Authoritarianism by Reframing Democracy from the Ground Up

Salimah Valiani

Sumak kawsay is ‘life in harmony’ in Kichwa, an indigenous language of the Andes. Shared by other indigenous groups of the Andes and Amazon rainforest, sumak kawsay is the principle by which these communities strive for collective wellbeing: through harmony with all other life forms. Wellbeing economy, a concept of the global North, is an economy organized in the service of people and the planet. Though different in many ways, both of these notions, and their accompanying practices, present challenges to the authoritarianism, inequality and division so pervasive today. This presentation will explore these challenges, and propose they are antecedents to a future democracy in which the collective and the ecological are as important as the individual and the political.

Salimah Valiani is a Research Manager at the Parkland Institute and a researcher of world historical political economy. Read more

Making the Connection between “Parental Rights”, Privatization and the State of Alberta’s Democracy

Heather Ganshorn

In Alberta, the concept of “parental rights” is being deployed to encroach on the autonomy of schools and school boards to set policy on matters such as library collections, sex education, and supports for gender and sexual minority students. Many of those pushing for restrictive policies and greater government control are also proponents of education privatization. “Parental rights” organizations wish to reframe education as a private good rather than a public one. This results in an erosion of funding to public education, even as subsidies to private schools increase. Culture-war issues are being used to promote privatization and reshape public education governance in the lead-up to this fall’s trustee elections.

Heather Ganshorn is the Research Director for Support Our Students Alberta, a grassroots group that advocates for inclusive, equitable public education for all Albertans. Read more

Shredding Democracy: How Alberta’s Curriculum War Mirrors Authoritarian Tactics

Carla Peck

In this presentation, I will examine how Alberta’s K–6 curriculum redevelopment under the United Conservative Party represents a profound shift away from democratic educational tradition. I argue that curriculum has become a political weapon used to delegitimize experts, suppress diverse histories, and replace inquiry with rote memorization. These changes mirror broader authoritarian and populist movements across North America that target public education as a site of “culture war,” centralize state power, and produce compliant rather than critical citizens. I conclude by outlining how educators and communities can resist democratic backsliding and defend public schools as institutions essential to pluralism, evidence-based reasoning, and civic democracy.

Carla L. Peck, PhD is Professor of Social Studies Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. Read more

Illiteracy Versus Democracy

George Elliott Clarke

Do artists have a responsibility to undertake public education, not to propagandize, but to edify, especially in regard to historical events? Indeed, one sign of political decadence and/or civilizational decline is the loss of public memory of the import of historical events pertinent to the existence of the nation or to broader enterprises such as “The West” or “BRICS,” etc. One may expect artists in all disciplines to remind audiences of events and personalities erased from historical consciousness precisely because they challenged lineages of unmerited privilege and/or tyrannical oppression. The chief threat to democracy is (historical) illiteracy. I will give examples and read pertinent poems.

George Elliott Clarke is the 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-2015) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), and teaches English Literature at the University of Toronto. Read more