Gloria Taylor was a devout Christian and a lover of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. A mother and grandmother, she was working at a residential care facility for people with developmental disabilities in the Okanagan when she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS.

Taylor too wanted to die on her own terms. So, along with the Carter family, she lent her name to a case brought by the BC Civil Liberties Association, a constitutional challenge of the law against MAID. They won at BC’s Supreme Court and at its Court of Appeal. Taylor died before the case went to the Supreme Court of Canada. But in 2015, in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), that court found criminalizing MAID unjustifiably infringed section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The law, said the Court, was of no force and effect if it prohibited a physician-assisted death for a competent adult who clearly consented to the procedure and had a grievous and irremediable medical condition, including an illness, disease or disability that causes enduring and intolerable suffering.

In response Justin Trudeau’s government passed a law allowing MAID in cases where a person’s death was reasonably foreseeable. But that law was immediately challenged in the courts, because it didn’t deal with people dying by inches, with intolerable, irremediable suffering. Finally, in 2021, Ottawa passed Bill C-7, which extended access to MAID to all people encompassed by the Carter ruling.

The Senate debate on C-7 was deep, profound and moving, as we worked through the thorny legal and ethical issues. Medical assistance in dying was one of the most thoroughly and thoughtfully debated public policy decisions in history—and one widely supported by Canadians and Albertans.

So what to make of Danielle Smith’s decision to ban MAID for people precisely like Kay Carter and Gloria Taylor?

Alberta’s Bill 18, the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act, purports to protect vulnerable Albertans. In fact, it flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling and of federal law. It denies Albertans with intolerable, irremediable medical suffering their Charter right to MAID. People who want to die with dignity, people who want one final chance to exercise agency after so much agency has been taken from them.

The new law also infringes mightily on the rights of those whose deaths are imminent.

Bill 18 forbids doctors to refer suffering patients to another province for a MAID assessment. It forbids health facilities from displaying information on MAID in a poster or pamphlet. It forbids Alberta doctors and nurses from even discussing MAID with a patient, unless the patient initiates the conversation.

All of this may be wide open to legal challenge. But of course, all Smith’s government need do is invoke the notwithstanding clause to get around that pesky Charter.

Most Albertans support MAID for people with irremediable medical suffering.

Criminal law remains a federal domain. Alberta can’t jail physicians if they violate these new laws. Healthcare, though, is provincial jurisdiction. So Bill 18 threatens people who practise MAID, or even provide information about it, with discipline by their professional colleges—and could ultimately cost them their licences. Indeed, it undermines the autonomy of the College of Physicians and Surgeons by making such sanctions mandatory.

It’s a legal loophole. A moral outrage. And a perplexing political strategy.

An Environics poll from this January found 79 per cent of Albertans agree with the Carter decision and support MAID for people with irremediable medical suffering. We are also much more likely to opt for MAID in cases of irremediable suffering than are most other Canadians. In 2024 Quebec had the highest rate of residents who opted for MAID for conditions that weren’t immediately terminal. Alberta was a close second. That’s perfectly consistent with a culture that puts a high premium on personal liberty, independence and self-determination.

Smith has tried to distract us, by claiming to be protecting children and people without mental capacity from euthanasia, and stopping people from making advance directives for MAID. But those things aren’t currently allowed by federal law. Indeed, much of Bill 18 bans things that aren’t actually happening.

Forget the UCP fearmongering. Alberta is doing an end run around the Constitution, depriving the most vulnerable of their Charter rights and denying health professionals the ability to do their jobs responsibly. Like it or not, Alberta is still a part of Canada. This legislation, though, makes Albertans second-class Canadians. It robs us all of the freedom to make fundamental choices about how we live—and how we die.

Paula Simons is an independent Alberta senator and member of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

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Read More: Should We Expand Eligibility for MAID?

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In 2004 I broke the story that a paper Ralph Klein had tabled in the legislature, an essay on the Chilean Revolution that he’d written for a class at Athabasca University, was a collection of quotes lifted from other sources without citations. (Our lawyers advised me not to use the term plagiarism. Other news outlets were less punctilious.) How did I score this scoop I’d simply typed various phrases from Klein’s paper into Google—which was still something of a novelty—and found the sources he’d borrowed from so liberally.

Five years later I broke a story about the Stelmach govern-ment’s multimillion-dollar rebranding campaign, which featured a photo of two blond children, in cable-knit sweaters, frolicking on a beach. Except the kids weren’t Albertan. Nor was the beach. It was a stock photo of English children in Northumberland, playing near a castle that, according to legend, had been home to a knight of the Round Table. The Journal story, headlined “Sir Lancelot wants his beach back,” included a ludicrous claim from the government that there had been no intent to deceive. “The children are a symbol of the future,” I was told. “They symbolize that Albertans are a worldly people.”

From the vantage of 2026 it may be hard to understand why these two stories were front-page scandals. With ChatGPT and other large language models running amok in high school and university classrooms, Klein’s cut-and-paste sloppiness seems almost quaint. At least the premier went to the effort of finding sources and copying them himself. Today artificial intelligence has automated plagiarism and made a mockery of our long-held taboos about passing off other people’s work as our own. Intellectual property Original thought What do they matter, when with a few keyboard strokes a program can stitch together a plausible paper—or column Never mind that the AI is stealing or, worse, making stuff up, adding citations and quotations it has simply manufactured.

And oh, how I long for a time when stock photos were the worst of our problems. In 2026 AI doesn’t just plunder bits and pieces from original work to concoct believable fakes, stealing the livelihoods of artists and photographers and graphic designers. AI has made it simple to strip everyday photos of women and girls, turning them into instant fake porn.

Artificial intelligence can manipulate photos and videos so we no longer know what’s true.

Indeed, AI can manipulate photos and videos so that we no longer know what’s true or false and when to believe the evidence of our eyes. When Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Black civil rights activist from Minneapolis, was arrested this past January for protesting, the White House shared an AI-altered photo of her arrest. The doctored version darkened her skin, removed her lipstick, made her look heavier, and turned her proud stoic expression into a flood of messy tears. Amidst all the horrors in Minnesota that month, that incident didn’t get much attention. But the racism, the misogyny and the petty malice chilled me in a different way than the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—the White House was willing to trample the truth with an ease that would have made Goebbels pea-green with envy and Orwell sob into his beer.

I’m no Luddite. I’ve toured the cutting-edge AI labs at the University of Alberta and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. Alberta researchers are world leaders, doing exciting work in machine reinforcement learning and developing AI to do everything from improving the diagnosis and treatment of cancerous tumours to running power plants more efficiently. Nor am I worried about sentient AI becoming self-aware and leading a robot rebellion. What worries me isn’t smart computers—it’s stupid humans, using the crudest energy-sucking generative AI tools to make themselves dumber, debase creativity and undermine the very concept of truth itself. (And I haven’t even touched on the horror stories of people who fall in love with their chatbots, or turn to them for dangerously bad advice, without seeming to understand they’re caught in a narcissistic feedback loop, speaking to their own reflection.)

When I see governments and businesses pushing people to use AI to answer every email, goose every online search or even draft official documents, I can only hope this fever dream will pass, that it will become fashionable again to write and create and think for ourselves. Until then, I’ll be boycotting anything that blurs the line between reality and faked fantasy. Maybe I am a latter-day Luddite. After all, they weren’t afraid of machines. They were afraid of what the Industrial Revolution would do to their communities and societies. Before our own post-industrial AI revolution overwhelms us, let’s decide which human values we’re willing to sacrifice—and which we’re not.

Paula Simons is an Alberta senator and a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.

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And while passengers wait in those lines, they can’t help but look over at the lucky Verified Travellers, whisking their way through the short, speedy Verified Travellers line, where people can leave their computers in their cases, their toothpaste in their toiletry bag and their boots on their feet.

As they stand watching, they may be wondering—how do I get to be a Verified Traveller?

Four classes of Canadians, in fact, get to use the “good line.” First, current members of the Canadian Armed Forces. Second, RCMP members as well as most members of provincial and local police forces. Third, pilots, flight attendants and other aircrew members in uniform, as well as any airport employees who carry special Restricted Area Identification Cards.

If you’re not in one of these categories, the only way to use the fast line is with a NEXUS card. NEXUS is a joint US/Canadian program that lets Canadians cross more easily into the US. It’s ideal for people who do a lot of cross-border business or who work in both countries. Applicants go through security background checks and in-person interviews by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA)—and US Homeland Security.

During the first Trump term, when COVID hit, the whole system ground to a halt, creating multi-year waits to get a card. Then the US tightened its rules. Canadians used to be able to go to any major international airport, such as those in Calgary and Edmonton, to be interviewed by US border officials. Now Canadians can only book an interview by crossing a US land border or by buying an airline ticket to an American destination. Getting an appointment isn’t easy. When I spoke to the CBSA a few months ago, they said more than 100,000 Canadians were waiting for an interview.

That’s not the only problem. For many Canadians, the idea of submitting to vetting by Trump’s Homeland Security apparatus, of providing the Trump regime with their fingerprints and their retinal scans, is more than a little disquieting. Then, this past summer, the CBSA confirmed that Homeland Security will only accept NEXUS cards with genders clearly marked F or M. For trans, gender-fluid or gender non-binary Canadians, that means a NEXUS card may simply be out of reach.

The CBSA says applications for NEXUS cards started dropping noticeably last November, right after Trump’s second election. It’s hard to see that trend reversing anytime soon.

The idea of providing the Trump regime with our fingerprints and retinal scans is disquieting.

That’s a problem for Canadian airports. Without enough Verified Travellers in the queue, they can’t afford the staff to keep Verified Traveller lanes open. Already, Ottawa’s airport only opens its Verified line during limited peak hours. The Canadian Airports Council warns that if we don’t have enough Verified Travellers, security wait times will increase for everyone.

Why do we still rely on a country that has threatened our sovereignty to investigate our citizens and collect and retain their private and biometric information It’s not just gender queer Canadians at risk. What if the Trump government just doesn’t like your politics, your social media posts or your skin tone Why have we surrendered to another country the authority to determine which Canadians can be trusted?

Maybe you don’t think you need a NEXUS card. Canadians have dramatically reduced US travel since Trump’s annexation threats. But if you want to fly from Edmonton to Moncton, and leave your boots on, you must show a NEXUS card. If you want to fly from Calgary to Ottawa, without unpacking your laptop, you need a NEXUS card. The only way for Canadian frequent fliers to travel conveniently within their own borders is with Donald Trump’s blessing! It’s bonkers.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As it happens the CBSA already carries out its own background checks in order to issue NEXUS cards. So what is preventing Canada from issuing its own trusted traveller cards to Canadian citizens who aren’t going to the US I haven’t been able to get a proper answer to that question. And so I recently tabled a motion in the Senate calling on the government to investigate the creation of a sovereign, domestic Verified Travellers program for Canadian air passengers.

It’s well past time for us to repatriate control of our airport security systems and stop contracting out our security assessments to a foreign power. It may cost a bit more. But it will be worth every penny for us to reclaim our national sovereignty, and to ensure that every Canadian has the equal right to travel efficiently—even with toothpaste.

Paula Simons is an Alberta senator and a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. 

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Read more from the archive “Not Enough Pilots” November 2023.

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The students in my small program came from across the US—but also from India, the UK and the People’s Republic of China. (And in 1986 that was still a very rare thing.) There was even another Canadian—from Calgary. Stanford understood that recruiting foreign students made campus a more cosmopolitan and creative place. That, in turn, raised and maintained the university’s status both in America and around the world.

Today when I remember how thrilled I was to start my studies, I’m infuriated by the way America has politicized and weaponized the granting of student visas. For Trump it’s been a perfect three-for-one bargain. He has been able to indulge his xenophobia and prosecute his war on science and knowledge, all the while taunting and punishing universities that don’t bow down to his will and whims.

But while it’s easy to denounce Trump’s petty vindictiveness, Canadian politicians have also been playing political games with the issue of international students here. In January 2024 the Trudeau government announced plans to cut the number of international study permits by 35 per cent. The avowed reason was to reduce pressure on rental and housing prices, and to respond to the specific Ontario problem of cut-rate diploma mills that were luring foreign students with false promises. The plan apportioned student permits differently for each province, in some cases cutting the number of student visas allotted to that province by as much as 50 per cent.

Applications have plummeted. International students got the message they’re no longer welcome here.

There was certainly a problem, especially in metro Toronto, of small commercial colleges charging high fees for programs of dubious educational value. But to scapegoat foreign students for Toronto’s and Vancouver’s long-time high rents and housing prices was political pandering to populist prejudice.

Meanwhile, Alberta’s colleges and universities have spent years trying to recruit more foreign students. Those students pay higher tuition than Canadians, of course, which helps make up for cuts to provincial funding. And bringing in international scholars helps build an institution’s global reputation. Whether those students return to their homelands with new skills and credentials, or later apply to immigrate to Canada, the results are a win for Alberta and its standing on the world stage.

Almost 30,000 more foreign students registered at Alberta colleges, polytechnics and universities in 2023–2024 than did 10 years ago. SAIT in Calgary and Norquest College in Edmonton have seen the biggest increases. In 2013–2014 SAIT had 1,616 international students. Last year it had 7,743. A decade ago Norquest had just 153 international students. In 2023–2024 it had 5,383. The University of Alberta has the most international students in the province—more than 9,000 last year. But other schools, from University of Lethbridge to Keyano College, have also seen sharp rises in international enrollments.

The federal policy didn’t cap international enrollments in Alberta. We are still allowed to welcome more students. Nonetheless, many post-secondaries here have reported sharp drops in international applications—and school presidents have been quoted by the CBC as saying they believe applications plummeted because international students got the message they were no longer welcome in Canada. (Though I’m guessing homophobic and separatist rhetoric from Alberta’s government also hasn’t helped to win hearts and minds.)

Without international students and their tuition dollars, some Alberta campuses will cut staff and offer fewer courses.

I had hoped Mark Carney—an Edmonton boy who was once a foreign student at Harvard and Oxford—might change Canada’s unfriendly messaging. We could and should seize this moment to recruit top academic talent: undergrads and graduates who’ve either had their US student visas delayed or denied, or who’ve decided not to run the risks of being a foreign student in Trump’s America, subject to his mercurial mood swings. Instead, during his first prime ministerial press conference, Carney reiterated his vow to cap the total number of temporary workers and international students in Canada, to reduce their numbers from 7 per cent of the population to less than 5 per cent by the end of 2027.

What a wasted opportunity for Canada, for Alberta and for our post-secondary schools, especially our top universities. If we want to be prepared for the economic, social and security challenges ahead, we need to invest many more provincial and federal dollars in higher education, create more opportunities for Canadian students and open our doors to international students—not as an act of charity, but because they have so very much to offer us in return.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.

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Read more from the archive “False Advertising?” April 2025.

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These last few summers, though, we haven’t been breathing easy. We’ve had summer after summer filled with smoke, even in cities far from the wildfires themselves. A haze that burns our eyes and throats and turns our sun a post-apocalyptic red. Days when people had to repurpose COVID masks, just to walk their dog or run errands. Days when outdoor events were cancelled because the air-quality warnings were too dire.

I had generally thought of those smoky days and nights as an irritation. Our summers are so precious and so fleeting. I begrudged a minute of them lost to smoke. And then I felt guilty. So many Albertans have had their homes destroyed or their lives upended by wildfire in recent years. Slave Lake and Waterton, Fort McMurray and Drayton Valley, Jasper and Little Red River: tens of thousands forced to evacuate, made refugees in their own country. Who was I to whine about a little smoke when others were dealing with disaster?

Many of us assume wildfire smoke is natural and somehow benign. We need to become more “smoke smart.”

Turns out, all that smoke may be far more than an annoyance.

Sarah Henderson is the scientific director for Environmental Health Services with the BC Centre for Disease Control, as well as the scientific director of the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health. A professor of epidemiology at UBC, she testified last November before the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry about her research into the health effects of wildfire smoke.

Her testimony took our breath away.

Henderson analyzed the effects of smoke exposure due to the massive 2017 BC wildfires, which blanketed much of western Canada in smoke. No one died directly from those fires, but Henderson estimates that as many as 2,700 excess deaths in Canada during and after the 2017 fire season could be attributable to that smoke exposure, particularly deaths of people with conditions such as asthma or COPD. But that was just the opening of her testimony.

“So far, when we look at wildfire smoke, we know it’s associated with severe birth outcomes, like preterm birth, low birth weight and stillbirth, and there’s mounting evidence for pregnancy loss in very early pregnancy,” she told us. “We know that the children who were exposed to smoke in the womb have more respiratory infections in early life and are more prone to developing asthma and other chronic diseases.”

Nor it is just babies who are vulnerable. “One of the important things to know is some of those very small particles are small enough to translocate across the lung into the bloodstream, and then cross the blood brain barrier,” Henderson testified. “Smoke can have a direct impact on the brain. We know that children do not perform as well in school on smoky days. We know there is an attention deficit on smoky days. We know these early life exposures do seem to be associated with the development of conditions such as ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.”

Is living with our sporadic episodes of intense air pollution as dangerous to health as living in a chronically polluted city such as New Delhi or Beijing “Wildfire smoke might have less impact, because there are these periods of reprieve between exposures,” Henderson told the committee. “On the other hand, the exposures are far more extreme in many cases, and they are far more complex.”

I think many people—myself among them—have generally assumed wildfire smoke is natural and hence somehow benign. We’ve become habituated to it, resigned to it as part of our summer weather. We might believe that closing our doors and windows will keep us safe, or safe enough. But Sarah Henderson says Canadians must become more “smoke smart.”

That might mean creating special smoke alerts for expectant mothers, teaching people how to use masks properly to protect themselves, creating cool, clean-air shelters in our cities, even changing the National Building Code of Canada to ensure new homes are more smoke-resistant.

As another Alberta summer begins, and we hold our breath, waiting to see what this wildfire season will bring, I keep remembering Henderson’s final warning to our committee: “You can’t stop breathing. So you need to be thinking at all times about ways to reduce your exposure wherever you are breathing.”

A sober thought as we all strive to keep our families safe from consequences of climate change we never quite imagined.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.

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Read more from the archive “Alberta Is Burning” April 2024.

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Then, she reaches over and hands them a bunch of sunflower seeds. “Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.”

Three years on, Ukraine is still fighting, still resisting. The human costs have been dire. But almost no one, in February of 2022, thought Ukraine would be able to withstand the Russian invasion and fight back so ferociously.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the extraordinary bravery and wit of that one Ukrainian woman, and what she came to symbolize about individual courage and national resolve.

When Donald Trump first started making “jokes” about Canada’s independence, calling us the 51st state, referring to our head of government not as prime minister but as governor, I, like most Canadians, just rolled my eyes. It seemed pretty obvious he was trolling us, trying to get a rise out of us. And it seemed like the mature and rational thing for us to refuse to take the bait. Trump is and always has been an attention junkie. Responding to his goad, giving him the attention he craves, felt like the wrong response.

Over the course of my lifetime I’ve dealt with a little brother. I’ve raised a toddler. I’ve trained two dogs. And the thing you learn, when they misbehave, or whine, or tease you, is to ignore them, and to not give them the reaction they’re looking for.

Trump, even now, is testing our national resolve—and weighing our capacity for humiliation.

But Trump’s online assaults on our sovereignty didn’t stop. The snarky put-downs went on and on.

Then the American media began normalizing this bonkers discourse. “The president-elect has suggested a territorial expansion into Panama, Greenland and Canada,” CNN reported. “If he’s serious, it would rival the Louisiana Purchase.”

Territorial expansion That’s a euphemism you could well imagine TASS or Russia Today employing to discuss Putin’s invasion of Crimea.

But then, the most disturbing twist. High-profile Canadian conservatives starting publicly celebrating and promoting the idea of some kind of latter-day Anschluss, gleefully talking up the economic potential of being absorbed into the United States. With deluded naïveté, they seemed to believe that Canada—with their help—could negotiate some kind of partnership, instead of understanding that a Trump-led America would never see us as equals.

It was a craven display. How embarrassing to watch these high-profile Canadian politicians, business leaders and pundits rolling over, eagerly exposing their bellies to the most dominant dog at the dog park.

How Trump (and Putin) must be laughing at the sight of these Canadian quislings, slobbering over themselves to sell out their country for 30 pieces of silver.

The sad spectacle really made me wonder. Would we, as Canadians, ever have the resolve of the Ukrainian people, to stand up for our country if push came to shove Would I, a middle-aged woman in a parka and a toque, have the courage to confront armed invaders, with nothing more than a pocket full of sunflower seeds for protection?

To be clear, I don’t seriously believe that the Americans, under Trump, are ever likely to stage an armed invasion. I’m not expecting soldiers to march from Sweetgrass through Coutts. No. The attacks will be more subtle. Trump and his government will be looking to undermine our political sovereignty and our capacity for self-determination in hundreds of ways, on issues from trade and investment to immigration and refugee policy, from environmental regulation to national defence. Trump, even now, is testing our national resolve—and weighing our capacity for humiliation.

And in this moment of trial we need to find ways to transcend our ideological and party differences. We need our premiers and our federal leaders to be working in concert, or at least in grudging cooperation, to protect our national interests and to remind us all—and to remind the whole world—of what makes Canada so remarkable.

We won’t do that by scoring on our own net, nor by selling out the principles and values that make us who we are. The next four years are going to be challenging for the whole world, and the rules-based international order we have known for decades will itself be under siege.

When the world, when our allies, look to Canada for moral leadership and moral example, I hope we will stand ready to provide it. And ready to plant the seeds for a future we can be proud to call our own.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.

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Still, the Venn diagram of people who shop at the hipster Old Strathcona Market, and people who might be expected to follow my work in the Senate contains a lot of overlap. So if I’m going to be recognized anywhere in Edmonton, it’s likely here.

“I just want to thank you,” the woman says. “I want to thank you for wearing a mask.”

It’s true. I’m at the market this afternoon wearing a sturdy N95. A couple of years ago, lots of people in this crowded market would have been wearing masks too. But on this sunny Saturday, the woman and I are pretty much the only two people still masking up—despite news reports that indicate COVID-19 rates are rising again and the flu season has arrived early.

She thanks me one more time, not just for wearing a mask in the market but for sharing videos and photos of myself, with my mask, on social media. She tells me how much it helps her to find the courage to mask herself when she sees me, a public figure, doing so.

If the sight of my mask makes you angry or uncomfortable, you should ask yourself why.

I thank her and continue my shopping. But her voice echoes in my ears.

Yes, I’m still wearing a mask. And yes, it takes some courage. Any time I post images of myself in a mask on my Facebook page, the insults and jeers come thick and fast, mocking me for wearing “a face diaper” or for being too stupid to know that COVID is “over.”

I’ve had strangers shout angry abuse at me as I walk through airports. But I think the most exasperating are the jokes and eyerolls from colleagues and family members, who seem to take my mask as a personal affront or insult. These friends and relations bug me—jokingly, but incessantly—to take it off, or tease me for what they perceive as my neurosis. I had one Senate colleague make fun of me for masking—only to tell me, in his next breath, that he was just getting over his fourth case of COVID.

People ask me: Why are you still wearing a mask Isn’t it uncomfortable or inconvenient Aren’t you tired of it?

Well, yes. It is. All of those things. And yet I mask. Even if that makes me an outlier.

I have what you might call “a high-risk lifestyle.” I fly on jam-packed airplanes twice a week. I attend many meetings and busy receptions with hundreds of guests. So the odds of my being exposed to the coronavirus are higher than average—and so are my odds of spreading it to others.

I have a personal health history that makes me wary. I shan’t bore you with details. Let’s just say that if I were to get COVID, it might be nastier than the average case. I’ve been careful to get every shot, to wash my hands, to mask in crowded indoor spaces. And, touch wood, I haven’t had COVID. Yet.

I confess, though, I do feel a glimmer of glee every time I trigger a troll with my mask.

Maybe that’s naughty. Look, I know people are tired of COVID, I know how badly we all want to forget how awful things were at their worst, how many millions died, how many more were left with long-term health consequences. Like a modern-day memento mori, my masked face reminds people of horrors they’d rather deny. But no matter how hard we wish it away, we’re still dealing with an infectious disease that can make some people quite sick, even though the latest mutations and variants are less dangerous than the original virus.

Perhaps my mask isn’t protecting me as much as I think it is. At this point, I accept that it’s also something of a talisman, to help me deal with my anxiety about catching this disease, or about spreading it to someone more vulnerable than I am. But I don’t apologize for that. If I am wearing a mask for my own psychological comfort, well, that’s not really anyone else’s business either. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of people harassing me about it, online or in person.

But my encounter this day at the farmers’ market reminds me that I’m not just wearing my mask for myself. I’m wearing it for all the people who are masking because they are seriously immunocompromised. Or because they’re caring for someone who is immunocompromised. I’m wearing it as a public figure, to give permission to everyone else who needs or wants to mask. I will go on masking, to tell them they are not alone. And to remind everyone else that this thing isn’t done with us yet.

So, if the sight of me, in my mask, makes you angry or uncomfortable Perhaps, instead of making fun of me, you should ask yourself why.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.

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With the Conservatives leading in the polls, and the Liberals on the back foot, there’s lots of speculation about what the reformed Senate might do if and when there’s a change in government. Historically, any government, Conservative or Liberal, that’s been in power for a decade or so fills the Senate with its own patronage appointees. When the House flips, there’s always a lag time until the new government can appoint its own Senate picks. And the incoming prime minister frets about whether the Senate—filled with people chosen by the previous prime minister—will block or impede their legislative agenda.

But this time there’s a twist. Canada has a new, non-aligned Senate, where only 12 members—Conservatives—officially belong to a political party, and where all the rest of us sit as independents. A 21st century Senate, where any Canadian citizen over 30 can apply for the job and have their application screened by an independent arms-length committee—an open process that has led to the appointment of a wide array of accomplished, non-partisan senators who come from an eclectic range of professional and personal backgrounds.

Independent senators aren’t “whipped”—no one tells us how to vote. Since we are unaffiliated with any party, no leader has leverage to make us toe the line. As a consequence, no Senate has ever held bills to smarter, more unbiased scrutiny. This independent Senate has proposed and adopted 352 amendments to government bills since 2015—of which 175 have been accepted in full or in part by the government. By contrast, during the last Harper parliament, from 2013 to 2015, no Senate amendments were accepted.

Our largely non-partisan committees have authored thoughtful, hard-hitting investigative reports pointing out weaknesses in a wide range of policies and calling on ministers to do better. And while we haven’t killed any bills—that hasn’t happened since the Senate defeated Mulroney’s abortion bill in 1991—we have certainly forced the government to rethink and redraft key pieces of legislation.

To be frank, this situation doesn’t thrill either of the two big parties. Plenty of Liberals wonder if this radical Senate reform was actually such a good idea, or if they wouldn’t have been better off packing the Senate with reliably loyal partisans. Meanwhile, the Conservatives, always opposed to Trudeau’s reforms, fear an independent Senate might prove even more trouble than a predictably partisan one.

The dozen remaining Conservative senators serve as the Senate opposition. If and when the Conservatives take power, will some kind of new opposition caucus coalesce to play that role Or will most independent senators remain staunchly independent, and judge each piece of legislation on its own merits Without party discipline to keep independent senators in line, will they respect parliamentary convention and allow Conservative legislation to pass Or will they delay, to block or even defeat it There’s no precedent for what comes next. Independent senators will have to figure out whether and how a truly non-partisan Senate might function in relation to any future Pierre Poilievre government.

In truth, the Senate reform process has largely worked. The reformed Senate has taken bold steps to improve audit and oversight to ensure Canadians get value for their money. It’s taken long-overdue steps to stamp out sexual abuse and harassment of staff. The Senate has never been more diverse. More than half of all senators are women. More than 10 per cent are Indigenous. We’ve never had more queer or racialized senators. And while we have seen a few people with clear Liberal links appointed, especially recently with an election in sight, the reformed nomination system has also named senators with historic ties to the New Democrats and the Conservatives, as well as many lifelong non-partisans, from bankers to police commissioners, social workers to CEOs, a retired rear admiral and a handful of ornery journalists.

We have different backgrounds and perspectives. But we’re united in a deep commitment to reform a Victorian relic for the pluralistic Canada of the 21st century. It’s the very success of these reforms that makes conventional partisans so angry—and why we see op-ed pages filled with pieces predicting some kind of constitutional cataclysm.

Nonsense. Carved above the office of the Speaker of the Senate in the old Centre Block are a half-dozen Latin quotations, including this one from the poet Horace: “Sapere aude”—Dare to be prudent. When governments change, senators will value, more than anything else, the courage to be prudent, to think things through and not be swept up in the political tides of the moment. May that courageous prudence guide us through the uncharted political waters ahead.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.

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Here’s the hard answer.

Under the terms of Canada’s constitution, cities are but “creatures” of the provinces. Municipalities, no matter how big, have no constitutional protection against provincial laws that might change their structures, functions or financial resources, with or without their consent. Indeed, Canada’s courts have found that municipalities have no legal or political autonomy. That means their powers are subject to abolition or repeal by provincial legislatures.

It is an absurd state of affairs.  Toronto’s population is more than twice the size of Manitoba’s. More people live in Calgary than in all of Saskatchewan. Red Deer’s population isn’t much less than Prince Edward Island’s. Yet even the smallest provinces have powerful constitutional rights and protections, not to mention lucrative funding deals with the federal government.

Canada’s municipalities have no legal or political autonomy. This is an absurd state of affairs.

But municipalities large and small are the Cinderellas of Confederation, forbidden to go to the constitutional ball.

It makes no sense when you consider that municipalities are the economic engines of our provinces and our country. Nor when you consider all the responsibilities that have been downloaded to cities and towns over the decades. It’s municipal governments that must respond first to natural disasters, including those spurred by climate change. Whether we’re talking about floods or wildfires or violent storms, it’s local governments that must provide the emergency services, then pick up the pieces and rebuild their communities.

Cities and towns are likewise first responders when it comes to rebuilding and retrofitting infrastructure to withstand the impacts of climate change—from retooling storm sewers, to building reservoirs and dikes, to depopulating flood plains.

Cities and towns build our social infrastructure too. In multicultural Alberta, where immigration is essential to our economic future, it’s local governments that help newcomers adapt. As our urban Indigenous population booms, municipalities wrestle with the realities of reconciliation. Local leaders deal first-hand with the twin dilemmas of homelessness and drug addiction in the face of the opioid crisis. And our cities must respond to the challenge of ensuring affordable housing for young working Canadian families.

These poor “creatures” have been fighting for decades for the respect and resources they need—even while collecting a fraction of the taxes that federal and provincial governments do. And those tax bases have been hard hit by the aftershocks of COVID, the hollowing out of downtown towers, the emptying out of traditional retail. Calgary still has the highest downtown office vacancy rate in the country, at 30 per cent, compared to 18 per cent nationally. Edmonton is faring a bit better, with a vacancy rate of about 21 per cent. But that’s still above the national average—and it puts pressure on cities to raise residential tax rates, which puts a squeeze on homeowners.

It’s not only big cities such as Edmonton and Calgary that are struggling. In 2019 the Rural Municipalities of Alberta found an unprecedented $81-million on property taxes from oil and gas companies had gone unpaid to small towns and counties across the province. By January of 2020 the same body reported that rural municipalities were facing a shortfall of $173-million in such unpaid taxes. By end of 2023 the RMA’s members reported that at least $251.8-million of municipal property taxes had gone unpaid by the energy industry.

Small wonder that many Alberta municipalities have been keen to strike deals with the federal government, deals which funnel money directly to them, without provincial gatekeeping—and small wonder many are pushing back against the UCP’s proposals to throttle such grant programs.

But this isn’t just an issue of a fight between a particular premier and certain mayors. It’s really about the constitutional inequity at the heart of this country, which leaves cities—even cities with millions of residents—locked in a feudal relationship with their provincial overlords. Meantime, local councils struggle on, doing the essential, often thankless work their citizens need and demand. But if we want to prepare for the environmental, economic and social challenges ahead, we must free our cities and unleash their remarkable capacity to lead the way.

Paula Simons is an independent senator for Alberta. The report of her Senate inquiry into the state of Canada’s municipalities will be released in September 2024.

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Canada is huge. But only about 5–7 per cent of our land mass is prime agricultural land, suitable for cultivation. Of that, one third is found in Alberta: 20 million hectares in total. Mountains in the west and muskeg in the northeast mean a good chunk of Alberta isn’t available for agriculture. That didn’t stop some 52,000 hectares of prime agricultural land from being taken out of production from 2011 to 2020, primarily to make way for urban infrastructure and housing developments.

We’re paving over our topsoil. Not only that, we’re polluting it, poisoning it, overworking it, compacting it and letting it blow away. We may think we have plenty of dirt. Most of us take it for granted, or worry more about water or air quality than the quality of the earth beneath our feet. But the rich topsoil, the good stuff where our crops and trees root, is a relatively thin layer.

And once it is degraded, it’s not just crops that suffer. Healthy soil helps filter, purify and store water. It’s more resistant to drought and erosion, better able to absorb water in floods. It’s a natural carbon sink, essential to our efforts to slow the impact of climate change. And soil is home to more than 25 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity, with over 40,000 different organisms in a gram of healthy, living soil, organisms essential to the biogeochemical processes that make all life on earth possible.

Only about 5–7 per cent of Canada’s land mass is suitable for cultivation. Of that, one-third is in Alberta.

At the very moment this column lands on newsstands and in mailboxes, the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is due to release a major study of soil health in Canada and of the importance of healthy soil to carbon sequestration. For the better part of two years our committee heard from hundreds of expert witnesses: farmers and agronomists, forestry professors and geologists, microbiologists and ranchers, environmental groups and financiers trying to create viable carbon markets, horticulturalists and First Nations advocates, large-scale composters and fertilizer companies. We attended soil health conferences. We toured farms and ranches in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta, visited the University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan and Olds College. We dug deep, plowed through documents, put our boots on the ground, and got the real dirt.

We learned that prairie farmers and ranchers have been leaders in adopting innovative regenerative techniques—they’ve stopped tilling their fields, started intercropping by planting two different crops in the same field, turned marginal cropland back to pasture for livestock, adopted strategic rotational grazing, or used precision soil mapping to reduce use of nitrogen fertilizers. But we also learned that more needs to be done to reward early adopters for taking chances and to incentivize the late adopters to enter the game.

We learned that most provinces, including Alberta, are lagging in soil research, despite exciting innovations in soil mapping technology. We learned that no central body brings together soil research and data from across the country so that Canadian academics and agriculturalists can learn from each other. We learned that attempts to create viable carbon markets haven’t yet borne fruit. And we learned some deeply disturbing things about climate threats posed by melting permafrost and health threats posed by hydrocarbon, heavy metal and microplastic poisoning of our soil.

Our report presents recommendations to the government for action. But we’re not interested in producing a dull soil sermon that gathers dust on a ministerial shelf. We hope our report will be a call to action not just for farmers and ranchers but for all Canadians. We want to inspire everybody who cares about having a healthy, affordable, sustainable food supply, everyone who cares about healthy forests and grasslands, everyone who cares about mitigating the impacts of climate change. Albertans are stewards of some of the most vital, valuable soil in the world. We all play a part in protecting and preserving it.

Once, we understood the debt we owed. The name of Adam, the Bible’s first man, comes from the Hebrew word for soil. The word human itself comes from the Latin word humus, or earth. The Cree, though, have legends of their own, about a great flood, and a brave little muskrat who dove down deep into the waters, and made his way to the surface with a fistful of soil from which to form the land anew. What we, as humans, need now is to find the courage and determination of that indefatigable muskrat, to hang on tight to the soil that gives us all life.

Paula Simons is an independent senator and the deputy chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.

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