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On a cool October evening in Lethbridge, a room full of citizens gathered not for a rally or a campaign event, but for something increasingly rare in Alberta politics: a thoughtful, in-person conversation about what is happening to public life. Shannon Phillips, the former MLA for Lethbridge-West, stood before the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs on October 15th to talk about the province’s upcoming referendum, and she did not mince words. Her central observation was at once simple and unsettling: sometimes a political problem needs a solution, but other times it just needs a new villain. As Alberta prepared to head to the polls on October 19th, Phillips argued that the referendum questions—on immigration, provincial-federal relations, and election rules—were never really about solving concrete problems. Instead, they had become vehicles for a political movement built on grievance, a movement that needed enemies more than it needed answers. She traced the roots of this moment all the way back through the COVID-19 pandemic, the trucker convoy, the rise of separatist sentiment, and the strange, angry ecosystem of online misinformation that rewards outrage far more generously than it rewards understanding. The referendum, she said, was not a genuine attempt to address public frustration. It was a way to redirect that frustration toward carefully chosen targets, while quietly reviving an agenda that had failed to gain broad support through normal political channels. The old rules of debate—where policies are presented, defended, and judged on their merits—had been replaced by something much more visceral. And at the center of it all, Phillips argued, was a political style that cannot afford to let anger fade, because anger is the fuel. As long as new villains can be found, the engine keeps running, and the real work of governing gets pushed further and further away.
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Phillips’s analysis went beyond the referendum itself, reaching into the very soul of Alberta’s governing party. She described a United Conservative Party that has increasingly been reshaped by its most aggrieved supporters, a transformation that has pushed aside the traditional, business-friendly conservatives who once dominated the province’s political culture. She drew a sharp contrast between two camps, giving them names that perfectly captured the divide. On one side were the “chamber of commerce conservatives,” the old-school pragmatists who cared primarily about corporate tax cuts, reduced regulation, and weakening labour protections. They were not always inspiring, but they were predictable, and they operated within a recognizable understanding of how politics and economics were supposed to work. On the other side, Phillips said, were the “disinformed far right,” a movement that lives and breathes in the online world, where resentment is cultivated like a crop, conspiracy theories are harvested daily, and distrust of institutions feeds on itself in a closed loop. This faction does not care about quarterly GDP reports or trade agreements; it cares about grievances, real and imagined, and it is always scanning the horizon for the next group to blame. Phillips pointed to the overlap between UCP support, the convoy movement, and Alberta separatism as clear evidence of this shift. What was once a fringe collection of internet malcontents and angry Facebook groups had become a powerful force inside the province’s dominant political party. The traditional conservatives, she suggested, had not simply been outvoted; they had been outmaneuvered by a movement that understands the emotional power of grievance far better than they understand the dry language of policy. And the result is a party that no longer speaks to the whole province, but instead performs constantly for its angriest base, a base that demands not competence but conflict, not results but retribution.
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Yet Phillips was careful not to dismiss the real pain that many Albertans have experienced. She acknowledged that the pandemic and its aftermath brought genuine hardship: layoffs that left families scrambling, housing costs that soared beyond reach, inflation that ate away at paychecks, wages that stayed stubbornly flat while the cost of everything else climbed. People’s expectations about their careers, their retirement, and their children’s future collided with economic realities that no one had prepared them for. That collision, she said, created fertile ground for political anger. It is easy to understand why someone who has lost their footing might look for someone to blame. But Phillips challenged the idea that immigration alone explains those frustrations. She walked her audience through the contradictions of government policy, pointing out that businesses were demanding workers after pandemic-era labour shortages, while governments at every level failed to anticipate the housing needs that population growth would create. Alberta itself had run the “Alberta Is Calling” campaign, actively recruiting workers from other provinces with promises of opportunity and affordability. Governments and employers had encouraged population growth, Phillips argued, and then, when housing and affordability pressures intensified, many of the same political voices turned around and directed public frustration toward newcomers. The referendum’s immigration questions offer yet another target, she said, a convenient villain for problems that were created by policy choices, not by the people who moved to Alberta to build a better life. The contradiction is glaring, but in a political environment built on grievance, consistency no longer matters. What matters is that the target feels satisfying. What matters is that anger finds an outlet. What matters is that the people who promised to fix the problem can instead blame someone else for it.
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Phillips also questioned the very legitimacy of the referendum’s questions. She noted that these policy ideas were absent from the UCP’s 2023 election platform and were not part of the earlier Free Alberta strategy. Voters were being asked to weigh in on questions that had never been put before them in an election, and that had not been debated in any meaningful public forum. Instead, the referendum seemed to offer another route to an old goal: greater provincial control over pensions, policing, and other institutions. This was the autonomy agenda, she argued, and it had struggled to gain traction when it was presented directly. So, rather than abandoning the idea, its supporters had found a new way to advance it. “They could find another ghost to box with,” Phillips said, a turn of phrase that captured the strange, artificial nature of the exercise. Political battles can continue, she argued, even when the original grievance loses momentum, provided that another target can be found. But the deeper problem is that public debate has become increasingly detached from policy details. People are no longer arguing about how many police officers are needed or how a provincial pension plan would actually work. They are arguing about loyalties, identities, and enemies. Phillips pointed to the role of hostile foreign actors and fake Canadian YouTube channels that promote separatism, saying that online platforms make it easier than ever to amplify division and profit from outrage. There is money in this, she said, and there is always a grift. But she warned against treating foreign interference as the whole explanation, delivering a line that hung in the air: “They don’t have to do much anymore. We’ll do it to ourselves.” It was a sobering reminder that the machinery of division is not just external. It has been internalized, normalized, and turned into entertainment.
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During the question-and-answer session, Phillips turned her attention to the role of technology in our collective unraveling. She called smartphones the “toxic rectangle,” a phrase that drew knowing nods from the audience. Her point was not that the devices themselves are evil, but that their algorithms are designed to reinforce whatever beliefs we already hold while keeping us in a state of constant, low-grade anger. The more outraged we are, the more we scroll. The more we scroll, the more isolated and disconnected we become. It is a vicious cycle, and it has changed the way we talk to each other, the way we argue, and the way we make political decisions. Phillips acknowledged that persuasion rarely comes from facts and figures alone. If anything, factual arguments often make people more entrenched, because they feel attacked and double down on their positions. Real persuasion, she said, happens with emotion, and it happens with values, and it happens with shared experience. The way to reach people is not to bombard them with statistics but to find common ground, to listen, and to remind them that we are all part of the same community. She was then asked why COVID-19 had proved so politically radicalizing for some people. Phillips admitted that she remained puzzled by the intensity of the reaction. She suggested that economic anxiety, social isolation, and increased time online had combined to create a lasting resentment that was never really about the virus or the public health measures at all. For many people, the pandemic was a trauma, and trauma does not always express itself logically. Her prescription was simple but difficult: rebuild connections, get involved in the community, and resist the pull of the toxic rectangle. In a world designed to make us angry and alone, the most political act may be showing up, in person, and refusing to give up on the people around us.
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In a brief interview after the meeting, Phillips offered a more hopeful message. She said that the loudest voices in the separatist movement do not represent most Albertans. “The vast majority of us are patriotic Canadians,” she said, noting that support for Canada crosses political and social backgrounds. She also rejected the notion that election outcomes are predetermined by Alberta’s political history. She pointed to four NDP victories in Lethbridge-West, three of them with her name on the ballot, as proof that hard work and credible representation can win elections. “The outcome is not necessarily predetermined,” she said, pushing back against the fatalism that leads people to believe their votes do not matter. With the referendum days away, Phillips urged voters to look beyond the rhetoric and consider what the questions would actually accomplish. Would they improve anyone’s life? Would they build a single home, lower a single bill, or create a single job? She argued that Albertans should not mistake a ballot full of grievances for a plan to solve their problems. A vote born of anger is not the same as a vote born of hope. The referendum offered an opportunity to make views known, but the harder task will be deciding whether the province wants to keep fighting yesterday’s battles or start addressing tomorrow’s challenges. The choice, she said, is not between two political parties or two policy platforms. It is between a politics that feeds on fear and division and a politics that tries to build something real. It is between treating our neighbors as enemies and recognizing that we are all in this together. In the end, Phillips’s message was not a defense of any particular party or policy. It was a plea for a different kind of conversation, one based on honesty, empathy, and a shared commitment to the future. Whether Albertans will heed that plea remains to be seen. But the room that night left with a little more clarity, and perhaps a little more courage, to face the challenges ahead.