“They’re trying to take away our culture, they’re trying to take away our history,” Donald Trump complained back in 2017 about activists who call for the removal statues of Confederate and colonialist heroes. Mr. Trump’s supporters have been loudly making their agreement known ever since, including here in Alberta where
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Alberta Politics: Throwing health care into chaos isn’t easy, but the UCP’s political staffers are willing to sacrifice to do it
Throwing Alberta’s health care system into chaos isn’t easy. It takes hard work and sacrifice. But thanks to the United Conservative Party’s front-line fighters in the war against fair and efficient public health care, what even Ralph Klein couldn’t achieve is finally happening: Clinical chaos! Hospital havoc! Medical mayhem! Just
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Math is hard, but not so hard you can’t spot the holes in Tyler Shandro’s cost-saving shell game
Math, apparently, remains hard. Except, perhaps, calculus of a political sort. The real Mr. Shandro (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). On its face, Health Minister Tyler Shandro’s claim that firing 11,000 low-paid public sector health care employees will save about $600 million makes little sense. Others have done the same calculation and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP government announces massive health care layoffs at hastily called news conference
If you think this morning was a crazy moment for Health Minister Tyler Shandro to announce a major restructuring of public health care in Alberta, including the layoffs of 11,000 public health care workers, right in the middle of the most serious health care crisis in 100 years, you’re right.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The UCP, in the middle of its war on doctors, picks a fight with nurses too
It seemed crazy for the United Conservative Party Government of Premier Jason Kenney to pick a fight with the province’s doctors in the middle of a pandemic. Still, if you believe the Roman proverb that fortune favours the brave and look at the world from Mr. Kenney’s ideological perspective, you
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Young Ben Harper gets a well-heeled start in politics, thanks to dear old dad’s former lieutenant
Give Ben Harper’s old man his due: he got his son a better first job in Alberta than the elder Mr. Harper’s pop got him. Readers with functioning short-term memories will recall that not so long ago much was made of the fact Stephen Harper’s father got the former Conservative
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue remains atop Alberta independent booksellers’ bestseller list
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020. The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books in Edmonton and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What was Saskatchewan’s media doing when it wasn’t reporting on Scott Moe’s driving record?
Seriously, what was the media in Saskatchewan doing when it wasn’t investigating Scott Moe’s history of drunk and, on one occasion, deadly driving? Wednesday morning, the province’s Saskatchewan Party premier got up on his hind legs at a campaign event and “spoke to an impaired driving charge he faced following
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If you want to know how an Alberta Provincial Police force would behave, read between the lines of yesterday’s announcement
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police may be no paragon of liberalism and progressive enforcement, but they’re apparently too liberal and progressive for the members of the so-called Fair Deal Panel that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney appointed to trot out his quasi-separatist hobbyhorses. Mr. Kenney’s supposedly cash-poor government announced yesterday it
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Shopping Alberta’s Future: Boycott-loving UCP is shocked, just shocked, when the tactic is aimed at its supporters
Alberta’s United Conservatives: They can dish it out, but they can’t take it. Well, Premier Jason Kenney’s UCP wasn’t the first political party to discover turnabout is fair play, and it’s unlikely to be the last. United Conservative Party Caucus Deputy Executive Director Ryan Hastman in 2011 when he was
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What did Finance Minister Travis Toews actually say about AISH in Grande Prairie last week?
So, what did Travis Toews actually say about Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped when he said whatever he said to a Grande Prairie local news website one week ago today? According to the first report on MyGrandePrairieNow.com, the finance minister, who is also MLA for Grande Prairie-Wapiti, said that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue returns to top of Alberta independent booksellers’ bestseller list
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Sept. 27, 2020. The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books in Edmonton and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Happy Alberta Day, fellow Albertians! Don’t count on having two days off in September, though
Happy “Alberta Day,” my fellow Albertians! Does Jason Kenney have a plan to erase Labour Day and replace it with something called Alberta Day on or about September 1? It certainly wouldn’t be out of character. U.S. President Donald Trump (Photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons). Labour Day celebrates labour, which
Continue readingAlberta Politics: One cheer for the UCP politician who made Alberta Cheezies a household word!
Take it from an old newshound old enough to remember when newshounds were an actual thing: When someone accuses a reporter of taking their words out of context, what they usually mean is, “I wish I hadn’t said that.” Or, at least, I wish I hadn’t got caught saying it.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Forever chaste? Or just chased? Former Reform MP and Kenney comrade Rob Anders faces new challenges
Rob Anders’ recent trouble with the law reminds us of the former Reform Party and Conservative MP’s past thoughts about the laws of nature. Twenty-one years ago, Mr. Anders made up half of the party’s much-remarked-upon Parliamentary chastity caucus, of which Jason Kenney was the other half, or the only
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fossil fuels may be fading, but Alberta stands ready to supply bad economic ideas to Canada and the world
VICTORIA — We Albertans can be enormously proud, I guess, of our continuing influence on the Dominion. We surely must be the leading exporter of ridiculous, potentially destructive ideas in Canada. B.C. Premier John Horgan (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Consider Andrew Wilkinson, hapless leader of British Columbia’s Liberals (who are
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Riding high in the polls, B.C.’s New Democrat premier calls a snap election — the right, predictably, whinges
VICTORIA — Strangely, all those conservatives who are anxious to get us back to school and business as soon as possible didn’t seem to be very happy yesterday when B.C. Premier John Horgan called a snap election for Oct. 24. Supporters of B.C. political parties other than Mr. Horgan’s New
Continue readingAlberta Politics: We have met the enemy and he is us — Alberta in the midst of a climate damn emergency
VICTORIA — The world is waking up to the fact the climate emergency is, well, an emergency. This certainly isn’t good news for Alberta, although, perversely, it may be good news in the short term of the United Conservative Party of Premier Jason Kenney and governments like his in other
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta takes over as Canada’s political Crazytown; privatized health care suffers a setback
VICTORIA — When I was growing up here in Lotusland, British Columbia had the reputation of being the Crazytown of Canadian politics. The late Allan Fotheringham, the Vancouver Sun columnist we all read religiously, famously summed up Canadian politics like this: “In the Maritimes, politics is a disease; in Quebec
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Order saying Alberta schools won’t have to enforce social distancing lands like a sucker punch
Whoever it was in the Alberta Government that decided it would be a good idea to risk springing the news on the public that COVID-19 social distancing rules won’t apply to classrooms just hours before schools reopen was seriously mistaken. The United Conservative Party government’s “near-normal” back-to-school scheme was already
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