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Showing posts with the label Danielle Smith

Alberta bill aims to force schools to accept gay clubs

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Just seven months after the Alberta legislature defeated amendments to the new Education Act that would have forced all Alberta schools to establish gay-straight alliance clubs, ostensibly to combat bullying, Liberal opposition MLA Laurie Blakeman has brought them back. Since then there has been a provincial election that weakened the province’s social conservatives, a scandal that brought down a premier, and a bevy of turmoil within the opposition Wildrose Party . So Blakeman may feel the bill has a better chance, as well as want to make mischief with both the Wildrose and the governing Progressive Conservatives . “I think in the end everyone will pass the test,” she said, meaning all MLAs will support measures most opposed earlier this year. “I think the bill will pass, but it’s a lot of my explaining between here and there to make sure that happens.” Bill 202, the Safe and Inclusive Schools Act, is backed by the two tiny Liberal and New Democratic caucuses, while the P

Alberta Premier sets new precedent: will attend ‘gay pride’ festival

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EDMONTON, Alberta , June 4, 2012 ( LifeSiteNews.com ) - In what organizers of this year’s Edmonton homosexual festival are calling a “milestone,” Alberta Premier Alison Redford announced over the weekend that she has accepted the group’s invitation to participate in the city’s “gay pride” festival next Saturday, something that event organizers say no other Alberta premier has done before. “This is a huge milestone for us,” Colleen Sutherland, co-chair of the Edmonton Pride Festival Society, told CTV Edmonton. Premier Alison Redford “It’s saying to us that we are being accepted by the government. It’s saying to us that the gay, lesbian and transgendered community is just as important as any other community and no different than any other walk of life so we’re very honoured to have her there.” “I think that it shows that everybody is accepted across the province and it emphasizes the Edmonton (public) school board taking on the new sexual orientation and gender identity p

Leader of Alberta’s surging Wildrose Party insists she’s ‘pro-choice,’ pro-gay ‘marriage’

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Signage promoting a provincial political party, the Wildrose Alliance, and its leader, Danielle Smith, outside a community hall event hosted by the party's Edmonton-Rutherford constituency association. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) CALGARY, Alberta, April 11, 2012 ( LifeSiteNews.com ) – As her party dominates polls in the lead-up to Alberta’s April 23 election, the leader of the upstart right-wing party Wildrose has insisted she is ‘pro-choice’ and has no intention to ‘legislate morality.’ After criticizing Wildrose leader Danielle Smith last week over her previous support of conscience rights for doctors and marriage commissioners, the reigning Progressive Conservatives attacked a Wildrose proposal to institute a mechanism for citizen referendums, calling it a backdoor plan to repeal the ‘rights’ of women and homosexuals. But Smith made her own views clear at an all-candidates debate in her riding of Highwood on Tuesday. “When our members elected me they knew they were electing a c