When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith mused in the midst of the debate over her government’s new funding turf war with Ottawa that “we could also establish our own research programs” to ensure ideological balance in academic research, many Albertans suspected they understood precisely what she had in mind.
They thought the United Conservative Party’s Bill 18 is about more than just keeping the Trudeau government from getting credit for helping Alberta municipalities, starved for cash by her government’s policies, and Alberta students and researchers who qualify for federal grants. The so-called Provincial Priorities Act, many also thought, was intended to ensure that what research gets done in Alberta reinforces the UCP’s ideological preferences for unbridled markets and climate change denialism and against vaccines and effective public health measures.
Image description: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on April 10, 2024. Photo by Chris Schwarz / Government of Alberta. Image is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.