On September 9, 2026, 90 people attended our very successful teach-in to break down the ten referendum ballots and clarify questions and issues that surround the UCP referendum. Estimated to cost $130M, the referendum betrays the UCP’s separatist impulses.
This panel features Ricardo Acuña, Director, Parkland Institute; Senator Paula Simons, Senate of Canada; Funke Olokude, Acting Director, Multicultural Health Brokers; and Dr. Matthew Wildcat, Native Studies & Political Science, U of Alberta. After 8-10 minute presentations from each speaker, a lively question and answer session explored the issues in diaglogue for the following 75 minutes.
Panelists: Ricardo Acuna, Funke Olekude, Paula Simons, Matt Wildcat & Moderator: Janice Williamson The evening sparked intense discussionUrban Green Housing Cooperative
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Anna & Amanda
Kristi, Nabila, & Janice B
Michell, Janice W, Laura, Don, Kristi, Nabila, Janice B, (front) Anna & AmandaJanice W, the Moderator (photo by Lorna Thomas)
Arrive curious about the issues. Leave informed and ready to fight back with joy! Time: Wednesday September 9 6-9p Location: Urban Green, 10115 88 Ave NW
October 19 is Referendum Day in Alberta. Join the Joyful Dinos for a free Referendum Teach-In Panelists: Ricardo Acuña, Director, Parkland Institute; Funke Olokude, Acting Director, Multicultural Health Brokers; Senator Paula Simons, Senate of Canada; Dr. Matthew Wildcat, Native Studies & Political Science, U of Alberta Break down all ten referendum questions and discover what they really mean for Alberta. Join in the Q&A and discussion.
Ricardo Acuña has been executive director of Parkland Institute since 2002. He has a degree in Political Science and History from the University of Alberta, and has almost 30 years of experience as a volunteer, staffer and consultant for various non-government and non-profit organizations around the province. He has spoken and written extensively on energy policy, democracy, privatization, and the Alberta economy, and is a regular media commentator on public policy issues. He is co-editor, with Trevor Harrison, of the 2023 book Anger and Angst: Jason Kenney’s Legacy and Alberta’s Right, available from Black Rose Books.
Funke Olokude, BA, BSW, M.Ed. (Adult Education), RSW, is the Interim Co-Executive Director of the Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative (MCHB).
The Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative is a member-owned Workers’ Cooperative, started by immigrants and refugees over three decades ago to serve their own communities and bridge across communities to empower migrant, immigrant and refugee communities to achieve their full potential in a peaceful and just intercultural society. Funke brings deep experience in cultural brokering, community organizing, equity-driven community-based research, and systems change. In addition, she brings lived experience as a first-generation immigrant and deep cultural and intercultural knowledge gained through years of working with ethnocultural communities and bridging with dominant culture organizations and institutions.
Senator Paula Simons
Appointed to the Senate of Canada in 2018, Senator Simons is a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications and the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, and the past deputy chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Senator Paula Simons has been a CBC radio producer and documentary maker, a playwright, and a popular historian. She spent 23 years with the Edmonton Journal as a reporter and opinion writer, winning two National Newspaper Awards. She has also won many other impressive awards. See: Her work has also been recognized with awards and honours. See: https://senatorpaulasimons.ca/en/
You can follow her on Mastodon @Paulatics@mstdn.ca and on BlueSky at @SenatorPaulaSimons
Matt Wildcat
Matt Wildcat is a member of Ermineskin Cree Nation and an Associate Professor and the Director of Indigenous Governance in the Faculty of Native Studies at UofA. Wildcat leads the Relational Governance Project – an Indigenous policy concept that explores the practice of how First Nations co-govern service delivery organizations. This emerges from his experience with the Maskwacis Education Schools Commission that led to the creation of a unified school system for the four Nations of Maskwacis. Wildcat is also the co-director of the partnership grant Critical Approaches to Indigenous Relationality.
Matthew Wildcat, PhD, is appointed to Indigenous Studies & Political Science at the University of Alberta. https://mattwildcat.ca/
The Joyful Dinos created our first video to inform Albertans that the best way to avoid the voting line on referendum day on October 19 is to order your mail-in ballot now.
This is where Canadian citizens in Alberta can apply for your mail in ballot
Sometimes Joyful Dinos put on our human disguises — we didn’t think they’d let a dinosaur near the pancakes. So in plain clothes, on the south lawn of the Alberta Legislature, at the Premier’s own pancake breakfast, I walked up and asked her a simple question.
Why is she supporting right-wing Christian nationalists — misogynist, racist, transphobic — and letting them run this province at the rest of our expense?
She said she hoped she wasn’t.
She is.
She told me: I’m talking about regular Albertans. Not the majority, I said. And I I named who I meant: the separatists — as in, she supports the separatists.
“I’m voting for Canada,” she said. “And I hope you do too.” Suddenly post-new-pipeline, she has become a federalist.
And then I asked her the question she didn’t answer, because security moved the line along before she had to:
Are you voting for trans kids? Are you voting for women? Are you voting for the immigrants you’re targeting with your nine referendum questions?
Twerking Dinos! On Saturday, June 27 at noon: The Joyful Dinos spoke and danced at the “Albertans for a United Canada” rally at the Alberta Legislature. There was a parallel demonstration in Calgary. The non-partisan, family-oriented rally was organized to protest separatist agendas in the province and to reaffirm support for Canada and Indigenous Treaties 6, 7 & 8.
“Let’s show Canada that Albertans are Canadians First, and that we all stand united behind Section 35 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Indigenous Treaty Rights.”
