Eugenics and the Firewall: Why AlbertaÕs UFA/Social Credit Legacy Matters to 21st Century Canadians

It's a dirty little secret the heirs to Alberta's populist legacy don't want Canadians to talk about.In Alberta, the non-partisan United Farmers of Alberta passed the first Sexual Sterilization Act in the British Empire in 1928. The UFA's successor, Social Credit governments led by a radio-evangelist, William Aberhart and then Ernest Manning, removed the need for obtain consent to sterilize mental defectives or Huntington's Chorea patients with dementia. If that wasn't shocking enough, patients were abused, lied to, and used as human guinea pigs.In Alberta, where nearly three thousand citizens were sterilized, lied to, experimented on; and subjected to daily abuse at hands of provincial staff, the politicians and the pundits have shown little empathy for the victims.Conservative bloggers and columnists in Canada continue to blame the Liberals and CCF for Alberta's eugenics horror story. It's time to set the record straight. Most Albertans have forgotten the victims whose names made headlines in the 1990s. The tar sands, oil royalties, health care budgets; environmental policies, and making sure the province's interests remain high on the federal agenda top the provincial headlines. Canada's Eugenics Board horror story has largely been buried in Canada's mainstream national media. And the politicians don't want you to talk about it. But the questions must be answered: How did a province that claims that "strong and free" as its motto deny basic freedoms to so many of its own citizens? Why does the extent of Alberta's eugenics past and its link to the UFA/Social Credit legacy remain the unacknowledged moral blind spots in Canadian politics?