There were two speeches at the Alberta Legislature yesterday! Lieutenant Governor Lakhani (Photo: Legislative Assembly of Alberta/Flickr). The Speech from the Throne was long, boring, unpersuasive, evasive, unoriginal, and weirdly aspirational in a way that defies the growing international consensus about the role of fossil fuels in global climate change.
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Alberta Politics: Alberta’s Legislature shudders back to life this afternoon – what will the UCP get up to next?
With the Alberta Legislature resuming sitting today with a Throne Speech, one has to wonder what the United Conservative Government of Premier Danielle Smith will get up to next? Government House Leader Joseph Schow (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). The headline on the government’s news release Friday about the inaugural session of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Help was on the way? Looks like the goal of UCP’s $70M+ ‘Tylenot’ stunt was simply to own the Libs
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party government may look like fools for having paid $70 million up front to a Turkish drug manufacturer last December for a huge supply of children’s pain medication most of which will likely never reach Alberta. A bottle of ‘Tylenot’ (Photo: Alberta
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Continuing CPP uproar means Danielle Smith and the UCP are getting what they want: the grownups are paying attention!
Like any teenager acting out, Danielle Smith must be delighted to have the entire country in a swivet about her government’s preposterous claim that even though Alberta has only about 16 per cent of Canada’s population less Quebec, which has its own pension plan, the country owes it 53 per
Continue readingAlberta Politics: International Energy Agency predicts fossil fuel use will peak by 2030 – whatever will Alberta have to say?
Maybe Alberta Premier Danielle Smith can send an open letter to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, to accuse him of trying to frighten Alberta’s seniors. International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol says the transition to clean energy is unstoppable (Photo: World Economic Forum, yeah, that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Congratulations on your appointment, Mr. Dinning, your pension ‘consultation’ has a few flaws: CPP public affairs leader
Michel Leduc, the Canada Pension Plan’s head of public affairs and communications, recently demonstrated how to swiftly and skilfully eviscerate a goat, metaphorically speaking. Canada Pension Plan public affairs and communications chief Michel Leduc (Photo: Linked-In). I speak of Mr. Leduc’s Oct. 17 letter to Jim Dinning, the old Tory
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre joins Alberta pension plan uproar, proffers weak endorsement of Canada Pension Plan
In an obvious effort to inoculate himself against being identified as an enemy of the Canada Pension Plan, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre yesterday inserted himself into the open-letter uproar over the Alberta Government’s plan to force the province’s citizens out of the CPP with a statement of his own.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Will Danielle Smith’s pension scheme drive a wedge right into the heart of Conservative support?
In the past few hours, a lot of metaphorical ink has been spilled on the duelling open letters about the Alberta Government’s scheme to pull the province’s still-skeptical population out of the Canada Pension Plan, the first from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday and the response from Alberta Premier
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Guest Post: Alberta has already killed the notorious Grassy Mountain coal mine, so why is it still alive?
It’s a true Alberta mystery. The notorious Grassy Mountain open-pit coal mine proposal on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in southern Alberta near the Crowsnest Pass keeps getting killed by the regulatory process – and somehow keeps being resurrected by its deep-pocketed Australian backers who seem to have
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Canadian Ditchley Foundation tells TBA’s David Parker he’s out as a director; Premier Smith does damage control
According to Take Back Alberta Executive Director David Parker, he has been informed by the Canadian Ditchley Foundation he’s being dumped as a director of the organization. Canadian Ditchley Foundation President Pierre Lortie (Photo: The Ditchley Foundation). In a bitter sounding tweet on the social media site known as X
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Take Back Alberta’s David Parker: MAGA rabble rouser or establishment elitist?
David Parker, executive director of the Take Back Alberta faction of the United Conservative Party, was tweeting about Alberta Health Services’ new enhanced-masking directive first thing Thursday morning, the day the provincial health authority’s lame buck-passing response to a resurgence of COVID-19 in Alberta hospitals took effect. Take Back Alberta
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Local decision making comes to Alberta acute care facilities, potentially undermining patient and public safety
Alberta Health Services yesterday announced it will dump the responsibility for masking to slow the spread of COVID-19 in its acute care facilities on the leadership of its regional zones throughout Alberta and individual sites. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). In a memorandum on “enhanced masking at AHS
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Babylon, once the apple of the UCP’s eye, is fallen! A pre-Halloween tale from the Alberta health care crypt
Just in time for the run-up to Halloween, we learn that Babylon the Great is fallen. The fall of Babylon, as imagined in the 15th Century – the Babylon brand, so to speak (Image: Wikipedia). I speak, of course, of Babylon Health, creator of the Babylon app with which our
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Junket to Germany: Rural MLAs from Alberta fly to Berlin and Essen to ‘learn about energy and climate transition’
Presumably the last thing Canada needs right now is another diplomatic incident, so we should all send heartfelt thoughts and prayers to accompany United Conservative Party MLAs Shane Getson and Garth Rowswell on their junket to Germany. Garth Rowswell, UCP MLA for Vermilion-Lloydminster-Wainwright (Photo: United Conservative Party Caucus). The two
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Calgary E. coli poisonings too serious a matter to be left to a committee led by a former Conservative candidate
Food safety, children’s safety and public health are topics too important to be left to a committee chosen and led by a Conservative sinecure holder and former star candidate. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). Nevertheless, that’s precisely how Premier Danielle Smith and Health Minister Adriana LaGrange propose to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Manitobans elect an NDP government; the province’s Conservatives richly deserve their defeat
At the risk of being negative about a positive story, I cannot recall a Canadian election in which the governing party more richly deserved to lose than did the Manitoba Conservatives last night. Manitoba Progressive Conservative Leader Heather Stefanson (Photo: CBC). Provincial politics in other provinces are a black hole
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Conservative Danielle Smith vows to dismantle Alberta Health Services, Conservative Ed Stelmach’s greatest achievement
Today’s political weather forecast: Ill winds that blow no good will begin throughout Alberta on Wednesday. Mr. Stelmach’s health minister, Ron Liepert, in 2012 (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). After that, conditions will get worse. Wednesday is when Premier Danielle Smith has promised us her health minister will present a plan
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If you don’t know basic facts about who was fighting whom in World War II, you’re not fit to hold public office
If the embarrassing events in Canada’s House of Commons last Friday after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to MPs and Senators illustrate anything, it ought to be the value of teaching history – and remembering your history lessons. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Photo: Justin Trudeau/Flickr). Key takeaways from everyone’s modern
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Talk about embarrassing! Jim Dinning lends his faded credibility to Danielle Smith’s pension snake oil scam
What a pathetic coda to the respectable if not quite illustrious political career of Jim Dinning! Mr. Dinning at last week’s news conference about the Alberta government’s effort to hijack more than half the Canada Pension Plan fund (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). Once the whiz kid and heir apparent of Alberta’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: We’re closed … but not for long (and we hope you had a happy Labour Day)
Labour Day – the traditional end of the Canadian summer and supposedly the moment when we all get seriously back to work, or school, or whatever – has come and gone. Blogger and podcaster Dave Cournoyer (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). To Alberta’s United Conservative Party government, Labour Day was worth
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