The local Albertan!

Former Flashpoint Archive staff member.

Enjoys local history, open data, Canadian politics, retro video games, and cooking (mmmm, perogies).

I have the following instances blocked. If you are on these instances, it’s often nothing personal:

  • lemmy.world/piefed.world - Way too much American politics and casual transphobia for my liking
  • lemmy.ml - Transphobia from admins as well as denial of human rights abuses
  • 24 Posts
  • 38 Comments
Joined 20 days ago
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Cake day: February 22nd, 2026

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  • Reading through the article from CBC, I haven’t really seen much reason to see that he actually endorses the material or mindset. Mostly seems like he’s just an avid collector of historical memorabilia, especially keeping in mind other things he keeps.

    When I did currency collecting, I used to have a Nazi-era German coin that I bought from the local antique mall. Didn’t ascribe to the beliefs of the entity that minted the coin, didn’t agree with the emblem that was pressed onto it, just thought it was neat having a little piece of history like that in my possession.

    Besides, in high school I knew a few people that went out of their way to get Mein Kampf. Doesn’t mean they agree with it, they were just people who were avid about political history like that. The same people also read The Communist Manifesto and other such books.

    As someone who sees themselves as relatively progressive, I do think at times people take things a bit far, and this is one of those cases.




  • Great!

    I get the argument of saying this is a diversion from the actual issue, but even then, sometimes things happen, and even if you’re getting by alright, issues can pop up suddenly.

    Few months ago I was donating to Amnesty International and Save The Children. I’ve stopped since funds are tight, but I remember starting off was really awkward since I was told by one that there would be no immediate donation needed, to which I was later told there would be. Ended up with $150 in NSF fees because I couldn’t cancel that initial donation, followed by the other trying to withdraw funds I would have otherwise had twice.

    I’d have taken being $120 less in the negative any day.





  • Binzy_Boi@piefed.catoCanadaNDP MP Lori Idlout crossing floor to Liberals
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    3 days ago

    Progressive Democrats at no point accomplished universal health care. Obamacare was simply a “meet-in-the-middle” situation if you could call it that, which has slowly been dismantled by Trump’s Republicans. If Biden’s Democrats had some progressive fight rather than being overrun by right-wing corporate Democrats and managed to pass actual universal health care, Trump would have never had a second term, full stop.

    You fight an ascendant populist right not by merging with people who have also moved right, but by standing your ground in your values. Saying that the NDP is sticking a middle finger to the vulnerable is completely rich seeing how vulnerable indigenous populations already are only to have a Carney government stick the middle finger to them by saying “yeah, once again we’ll fail to address the systemic issues that face you, and on top of that, we’ll bypass your treaty rights to do what we want”.

    The Carney government has made healthcare vulnerable by not fighting the Alberta government when it comes to violating the Canada Health Act, has made union workers vulnerable by forcing arbitration on flight attendants striking against unpaid overtime, made Canadians as a whole vulnerable to U.S. foreign policy by falling in line with the U.S. with the official statement on the Iran war rather than following through with calling out violations of international law as the prime minister highlighted in his own speech at Davos, made the working class as a whole vulnerable by appointing a “Minister of AI” and being the first prime minister in over a century to not appoint a dedicated Minister of Labour, the list goes on.

    The NDP has been vocal and unwavering in all of these things. To claim that supporting the NDP and being against a floor crossing to the party that has done all the above somehow sticks a middle finger to the vulnerable is a flat out lie.


  • Okay, but this comes with multiple issues:

    With the federal Liberals moving to the right of where Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were, and the increasingly right-wing rhetoric of the Conservatives with the party trying to appease and imitate Republicans down South, the erosion of the NDP like this further consolidates the system to a two-party one similar to that in the US.

    In the federal Democratic Party down in the US you have a progressive wing of the democrats. How much have they been able to accomplish within the party? How much have they been able to accomplish in the party since Republicans took control of the White House, House, and Senate?

    Idlout crossing the floor to the Liberals accomplishes nothing other than empower the Liberals and a two-party system in Canada. The Liberals have some more progressive people such as Erskine-Smith, but within the party what has been accomplished to move the Liberals to the left with him around?

    You can move the Liberals left by opposing them, especially working with the Bloc Quebecois, Elizabeth May, and maybe Erskine-Smith on the rare occasion. Hell, on some issues, the NDP can likely work with the Conservatives, such as reforming the Labour Market Impact Assessment.

    Working with the Liberals simply gives voters the impression that Carney’s policies and issues “can’t be that bad” because someone crossed the floor from the NDP. It also gives Carney the ability to apply direct pressure on her to fall in line.

    The NDP was able to get dental care for low-income Canadians through outside pressure under Singh for all his flaws. There is no need to apply pressure from within the party when doing so from outside has proven to be effective and comes with less vulnerabilities.


  • Binzy_Boi@piefed.catoCanadaNDP MP Lori Idlout crossing floor to Liberals
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    4 days ago

    Unbelievable.

    Yeah, the prime minister who tried pushing a bill that would bypass treaty rights for the sake of “nation-building” projects is the right person to side with for the benefit of a territory comprised mainly of indigenous people.

    Any respect I’ve had for her is gone, the logic is lacking, and all she’s done with this is act as a pawn for Liberals to try to appear favourable to indigenous people or have the veneer of being such despite their anti-indigenous policies.




  • We can denounce the horrible shit that people have done in the past and correct the wrongs that continue to happen while also making indigenous people front and centre of how we approach our national identity, especially when it comes to the connection we have to the land that we live on seeing how indigenous people’s cultures are by and far the most attached cultures to the land which we live on.

    I respect treaty rights and the right for First Nations have regarding self-determination, and there should be more efforts out there to help give proper reconciliation to the people we’ve historically harmed who have more right to this land than anybody else.

    In Edmonton for example, while there is absolutely more that needs to be done, especially when it comes to helping indigenous people directly through social services and the likes, I do appreciate that the efforts for reconciliation have been made such as the renaming of city wards to Cree names, renaming Dan Knott Junior High to Kisêwâtisiwin due to Knott’s very likely connections to the KKK, and renaming the Oliver community to Wîhkwêntôwin because of Frank Oliver’s racist efforts and attitudes towards indigenous people like the Papaschase as well as Black immigrants.

    We are leaving the very people who hold the richest culture relating to our land behind, and it is absolutely inexcusable that we continue that pattern, to which we should hold the government to account.

    Edit: Looking at the modlog for you and the absolutely vile things you’ve said about people, I’m just not going to engage any further.



  • Completely against this.

    Every single election cycle we hear the same thing from either side of the aisle of American politics where if the person they’re against wins, suddenly they want to move to Canada.

    We already have a big enough problem with having our own national identity. You can argue we have xyz that’ll keep us afloat, but the reality is, we lack a lot culturally compared to other countries in our position. We constantly lose cultural talents here to the U.S. because it’s more profitable to do what they do down south than it is here. Like, how many Canadian actors can you name that haven’t moved to the American film industry? How many of them even live here?

    The same goes for a lot of major musical talents. Like wow, congrats, fucking Drake lives in Toronto, what an accomplishment that we have one major musical talent from this era who stuck around, and it’s one of the worst people you can name.

    When Americans come in here through these ancestry claims, we are importing more American culture while completely failing to adequately protect our own. We are also giving credence to Americans seeing us simply as a safe-haven extension of the U.S., and allowing people to abandon the responsibility to their country if the Trump administration is the root cause of them coming here.

    Want to protect those such as immigrants and trans people in the U.S.? Get rid of the Safe Third Country agreement. We should only be taking in those whose lives are directly in danger despite their actions rather than those who have the ability to do something about their situation, yet take the coward’s way out by leaving after they refused to take proper action.

    You already see this crap online of people simply saying “sorry” and doing fuck all otherwise about shit like the annexation talk. Why reward inaction?





  • Resources for the homeless in Edmonton have always been terrible, speaking as someone who was homeless there twice now. There’s a lot of people wanting to make a difference, but as for organised supports in getting housing, there wasn’t a lot when I lived up that way.

    When you compare the resources available for the homeless in Edmonton to those available for people in Calgary, it’s essentially night and day. Even with government assistance, I remember waiting over four hours on two occasions to get on Income Support in Edmonton, whereas in Calgary, we were in and out of the office in maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.

    Mind you this was a few years ago, but still.