This election is fake.

Jason Kenney's Senate "election" is a scam.

We don't elect senators in Canada. The Prime Minister appoints them. So this fall, when you vote, you aren't electing the next senator at all. You're just picking who Jason Kenney will write a reference letter for.

Alberta has "elected" ten people like this already, and the only times any of them actually got into the Senate were when a conservative Prime Minister was in power who wanted to stack the Senate with more right-wingers. The election has no legal force. It's made-up. It's fake.

So why's he doing it?

Elected senators and equalization are two classic right-wing issues in Alberta. Conservatives love them. Running big province-wide campaigns on them is an excuse to get the UCP talking heads on TV to talk about something that isn't Jason Kenney's brutal mishandling of COVID-19, that isn't how his government is gutting our health care, education, and public services, and that isn't Kenney's total failure to get Albertans back to work.

And the real kicker is the timing: this scam "election" and referendum are happening on the very same day as municipal elections across the province. That's the big hope from the UCP: that conservatives will get whipped up about these two pet issues they love and then show up big time to elect right-wingers to city councils and mayorships all over Alberta.

This scheme is already getting pumped up with your money. A minister announced on June 14th that $10 million was already being set aside for it. They're already changing the law so that cabinet ministers can campaign on it. And they're already pulling the caps off election finance limits so that the wealthy can have a free-for-all with dark-money PACs and big advertising campaigns.

But we can play this game too.

We can't stop Jason Kenney from abusing the powers of government and the public purse to run this right-wing voter-engagement scheme of his but that doesn't mean we can't turn it against him.

Alberta is not the conservative hellscape so many people think it is. There are more of us than there are of them, actually. And the Campaign to Elect Duncan Kinney for "Senate" is going to get all of us to those municipal elections. It's going to get all of us talking about real issues that really matter, like decolonizing, decarbonizing and democratizing this country.

And just think about how mad he'll be.

We're all sick of Kenney. We're sick of his arrogance, his his corruption and his cruelty. 

Nothing is going to stick in his craw more than a lefty coming out on top in his little game. Imagine the day he'll have when he has to recommend, for lifetime appointment to the Senate, someone he absolutely loathes, and someone who fights against every rotten thing that Jason Kenney stands for.

That candidate is Duncan Kinney, and this fall, let's elect him as Alberta's next senator. (But not really.)