EDMONTON — A Medicine Hat bakery doubled down on the fictional story about a deadly ICE raid at the local high school on Sunday, despite the post misleading many community members and sparking online criticism for being insensitive and ill-timed. "My story is timely, relevant and important," reads a caption posted on the McBride's Bakery Facebook page on Sunday. "It is violent. It is dystopian. It is fiction. It hits close to home, and it is a warning. If it bothered you, it was supposed to."The bakery faced heat over the weekend as Albertans reacted to a story that they posted on Thursday on Facebook, detailing an ICE raid at the local high school where officers ambushed a school to arrest illegal immigrants, killing or injuring many other individuals in the process. The fictional story aims to warn and make a political statement against Premier Danielle Smith’s blaming immigration policies for Alberta’s $9.4 billion deficit, her plans for a new provincial police force, and commentary on U.S. immigration raids. It did not state that the story was fictional, though, and it led to an emotional afternoon for Medicine Hat community members who believed it depicted an event actively happening at the high school.McBride's Bakery argues that it did not need to explicitly state that, and that it is not its fault that people could not see that. ."The story is obviously fictional," McBride's Bakery's post from Sunday reads. "If you didn’t get that right away, there are two explanations:"Some people never read anything. They are unable to recognize an obviously fictional story because they have no experience reading any stories. This is unfortunate, but it’s not my fault.""Some Separatists and other trolls recognized that the story is fictional, but took the opportunity to make noise on the internet because that’s how they contribute to Separatism. I’m not responsible for their noise, they are."The bakery, which stated that they were adding because they told the Medicine Hat Police Service that they would do so, then goes on to explain why they believe that the story was justified. It points to deadly raids in Minneapolis, such as the death of Alex Pretti, as proof that these deadly incidents are happening. While also saying that the raids in the U.S. are being issued by a President who campaigned on anti-immigration principles, similar to Smith's recent rhetoric. Their argument was that Smith has created an issue and eight month conversation ahead of Alberta's October referendum, as a way to distract Albertans from her failed budget and the fact that she has handed the UCP party over to "separatists." "Danielle Smith benefits from chaos, from flood-the-zone messaging," the Sunday post read. "It benefits her when our heads are spinning from trans kids to teachers’ strikes, from coal mines to ER wait times, from federal judges to pipelines, from CPP to library books.""It looks like she’s fighting everywhere, doing something. But she’s not getting anything done. She’s shadow-boxing, making noise, and wasting a ton of our money doing it.".McBride's Bakery has been subject to criticism over recent months, beginning when they allowed Recall Danielle Smith petition canvassers to use the bakery's interior as a signature-collection station. In response to the hate in December, the bakery's owner told the Canadian Press that his message to individuals boycotting his bakery was, "bite me." "The bakery is spending all its social capital these days," the post from Sunday reads. "By next winter, I hope, we will get things back to normal. All we have to do is Stop Electing Fascists.""And read more books."
