This past weekend, I finally got around to watching Brexit: The Uncivil War, a somewhat fictionalized accounting of the events that led up to the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, which drew from the books by Tim Shipman and Craig Oliver on those events.  Starring Benedict Cumberbatch (in a prosthetic to make him look like he was suffering from hair loss) as Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave, the film looked at the ways in which the campaign upended traditional political campaigns and targeted voters in unexpected ways, which included the use of direct Facebook advertising with the assistance of groups like Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ (who were sanctioned last week by the federal privacy commissioner for violation of both BC and federal privacy laws during that campaign).

There was one scene in particular which stuck with me, which was one of the more fictionalized accountings of the Remain campaign conducting a focus group, and at one point near the end of the referendum, Remain campaign director Craig Oliver bursts into the focus group room because he doesn't feel the person chairing it is properly explaining their messages.  While Oliver tries to lay out the fact that the figures that Vote Leave have been citing like the supposed £350 million sent to the EU could be invested in the National Health Service as being falsehoods, the result is a complete breakdown when one of the women on the group who is supposed to represent one of the groups unlikely to vote but persuadable to vote Leave starts shouting "I'm sick of feeling like nothing, like I have nothing!  Like I know nothing.  Like I am nothing.  I'm sick of it!"  And that was the moment in the film where Oliver realizes that he has been outplayed.

So why did this scene in particular stick with me?  Because I'm seeing a lot of these same dynamics playing out in this country, particularly in Alberta, where premier Jason Kenney has been stoking anger with a combination of lies and snake oil promises because he hopes to use the underlying frustrations in his province to his political advantage.  The "£350 million" falsehood as part of the Brexit sales pitch is very much like the "$20 billion in equalization" talking points that Kenney loves to deploy, particularly in the way that he and his supporters try to construct it as being a cheque that goes directly to Quebec, which it most assuredly does not or the fact that he was in the Cabinet that last decided on the very equalization formula.  Add to that the complete falsehoods around what happened with Northern Gateway, the mythical Energy East, or even the delays to Keystone XL, all of them are constructed lies that are built to inflame anger at Justin Trudeau as Kenney's chosen scapegoat, while real life paints a very different but more complex picture.

Add to those lies, there has been the stoking of anger about Quebec supposedly choosing "dictator oil" over what Alberta produces (despite it being uneconomical to ship it east) has some of the same xenophobic echoes that fuelled Brexit.  I also find there to be a little too much similarity in the way in which Kenney keeps pushing for a "Fair Deal" (and making propositions that make no sense, such as those around collecting federal income taxes provincially or withdrawing from the Canada Pension Plan to create a provincial plan), and the Brexit slogan of "Taking Back Control," which appealed to a sense of false nostalgia.  Alberta has a historic sense of grievance that Kenney was keen to tap into instead, but the mechanic is similar.

While there are some pundits and commentators who see Kenney as trying to replicate what Preston Manning did in the early 1990s with the Reform movement, and describing it as tapping a "relief well" for the anger and resentment, before it blew up in a dangerous fashion.  But to be perfectly frank, I don't see Kenney as trying to divert any sentiment, but rather trying to stoke and channel it in a direction that diverts attention in a direction that is useful to him in the moment.  Those who push the Manning comparison also ignore the fact that when the Reform Party came to Ottawa in 1993, they did so with an eye to tearing down institutions at the heart of the government, and they did significant and lasting damage for which we have never recovered.

So why else should this be concerning?  Because Kenney is promising multiple upcoming referendums on things like property rights, and equalization (which is something he has no ability to actually do), along with things like Senate "elections."  But referendums are problematic in democracies like ours, purporting to distill complex situations into a false binary, and given Kenney's penchant for falsehood and snake oil, these could open up yet another Pandora's Box of problems that he can't contain.

And let's face it sooner or later, Kenney will run out of distractions and the problems he has created for himself at home will reach a breaking point.  All of the cuts he's making now not only to nurses and teachers, but also things like volunteer firefighters and libraries are going to start coming back to bite him, and his ability to manipulate the conversation with his false "fiscal crisis" (a crisis that is a choice because he refuses to implement the modest sales tax that would ensure that the province was out of its self-imposed deficit) will only carry him so far.  And while he's been careful to keep his hands clean conveniently missing votes on contentious bills, using his "war room" and his paid shitposter to attack his critics (including academics) while he tries to comport himself as a statesman that only goes so far.  What Kenney has been stirring up is dangerous to the body politic of this country, and he can't just put what he's unleashed back in the bottle.  Like Brexit, we could soon find ourselves in a crisis that he has fomented for his own ends, and the country will be in trouble when it happens.

Photo Credit: Calgary Herald