New season of SACPA to begin with three hot-button topics

Three hot-button topics are on the agenda, as the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs resumes meeting in early September.

White nationalists in the U.S., and Truth and Reconciliation efforts in Canada will be the focus of the first two sessions, Thursday and Sept. 14. Then on Sept. 21, Senator Pamela Wallin will offer her views on attempts to reform the Canadian Senate.

On Thursday, Ontario history professor Lynn Kennedy will outline what’s likely to happen following the recent deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., involving white nationalists.

During a white nationalists’ protest rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 2, a 20-year-old man allegedly accelerated his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman.

But the conflict over the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert Lee from Charlottesville had been brewing for months, she points out. The racial tensions have deep roots. Some say it has been simmering since Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia there in 1819.

But is the violence in Charlottesville part of a larger movement? Have KKK, white nationalists/supremacists and Nazi sympathizers been emboldened by mixed messages from U.S. President Donald Trump in condemning the violence? Is the violence likely to escalate? Kennedy will

examine the evolving history of racism in the southern U.S. and give perspective to how the current violence fits into that narrative.

Much closer to home, how is Lethbridge responding to recommendations from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommendations?

Roy Pogorzelski, recently appointed to a four-year term as a director for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, will explain a “Reconciliation Implementation Plan” recently approved by city council after collaboration with Elders from the Blackfoot Confederacy.

It provides recommendations for municipal action as along with initiatives the broader community can take. Pogorzelski will also outline events planned for Lethbridge Reconciliation Week, Sept. 18-23.

While Canada’s House of Commons and other governmental institutions face searching questions today, the nation’s appointed Senate has long been a target of considerable criticism.

So a group of senators is now working on reforms to make the institution less partisan and more effective, though not everyone agrees with recommended changes.

Longtime TV personality Wallin, appointed to represent Saskatchewan in 2008, will share her views on senate reform and describe how partisanship sometimes can be beneficial — and other times not.

SACPA sessions, open to all interested, are held from noon to 1:30 p.m. each Thursday at Country Kitchen Catering, below The Keg on Mayor Magrath Drive South. They include a half-hour presentation, a hot lunch and a 30-minute question period.

The lunch remains at $12 this year, with a coffee-only alternative at $2.

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