Almost completely missed in media coverage of Friday’s purge of NDP appointees to agencies, boards and commissions by Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government was the revelation that the same day the government abruptly cancelled a three-year-old memorandum of agreement with the Alberta Teachers Association to co-operate on curriculum development. While
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Alberta Politics: UCP’s Friday Morning Massacre purges NDP appointees from Alberta’s boards, agencies and commissions
You almost have to admire Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government for the thoroughness of its sudden purge of NDP appointees to government agencies, boards and commissions yesterday. The Friday Morning Massacre began with news the UCP was clearing out NDP appointments on the boards of 10 post-secondary institutions and the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Kenney Conservatives find the perfect policy panel to push the working poor back to penury
If pushing the working poor back into penury is your policy objective, the United Conservative Party led by Premier Jason Kenney has found the right collection of ringers to stack its “expert panel” on rolling Alberta’s minimum wage back to pre-NDP levels. Labour Minister Jason Copping introduced the panel yesterday
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Oh, dear, what can the matter be? They promised to bring us a pretty ‘Blue-Ribbon,’ but all they deliver is cant!
Once upon a time, your blogger worked for a famous newspaper publisher who announced one day that since we journos hadn’t had a raise for a couple of years we could expect a small one in six months. There was a caveat, though. We would only get the raise if
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta discourse may still be mired in climate change denial, but the rest of the world is moving on
Public discourse in Alberta may still be mired in climate change denial, but the rest of the world is changing and changing fast. Even the New York Times, which along with much of the mainstream media in the United States could be accused until recently of seriously underplaying the climate
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Conservative mismanagement of health care, which we’re about to see return to Alberta, is a feature, not a bug
Last Thursday, Tyler Shandro advised Albertans that the promised United Conservative Party review of Alberta Health Services is rolling ahead. Well, he did once tell us that things tend to happen in due course. This is pretty much the first we’ve heard from Alberta’s baby-faced health minister since he famously demonstrated
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Doug O’Halloran, UFCW 401 president, signs off with dignity and courage
When the United Food and Commercial Workers union held a solidarity barbecue last Friday for a group of Edmonton poultry plant workers it hopes will soon join its ranks, Doug O’Halloran wasn’t there. It’s almost unheard of for Mr. O’Halloran, leader of UFCW 401 for three decades, not to be
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The 2019 Where the Wild Things Fringe Festival Guide tops Audreys Books’ Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestseller List
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton during the week ended Aug. 4, 2019. The lists are compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. FICTION FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead 2. The Empress of Idaho
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Postmedia seeks new editor for Edmonton Journal – what became of the old one?
Postmedia is now advertising for a new editor-in-chief for the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Sun. It may come as something of a surprise to Edmonton readers that English Canada’s largest newspaper corporation is seeking “a dynamic, innovative journalistic leader to oversee the editorial vision and content of Postmedia’s Edmonton
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fallout from dual probes into 2017 United Conservative Party leadership campaign still drifting down
It may not be fair, and you may not like it, but politics is like French justice: Guilty until proven innocent. OK, the French say it ain’t so, and we have to take them at their word. They’ve signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, bien sûr! But in politics,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Symbolic MLA pay cut set stage for attack on public services – so why did the NDP support it?
Like neoliberals everywhere, Alberta’s Conservatives overrate the virtues of big business and undervalue those of democracy. This is not exactly news. This was a clear message yesterday from the vote of the Legislature’s Member Services Committee to cut MLA salaries by 5 per cent, and twice that for the premier’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney pledges ‘I will never give up on Canada’ while stoking Alberta separatist sentiment
Maybe Canada needs a Clarity Act for pollsters’ questions intended to gauge the level of support for provincial secession from Canada. The Clarity Act, of course, is the federal law passed in 2000 in response to the scary 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum that came within 1 per cent of destroying
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Journalists who are UCP members are not the problem; media companies that publish nothing but conservative views are
There was a fine old to-do on social media Friday night when a Toronto journalist revealed that a high-profile Postmedia columnist known for her enthusiastic support of Jason Kenney had been a member of the United Conservative Party at a key time during the Alberta premier’s rise to power. A
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky leads Audreys Books Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers List
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton during the week ended July 28, 2019. The lists are compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. Big Sky – Kate Atkinson 2. The Melting Queen – Bruce
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP Government, with no apparent short-term Plan B, seeks leave to appeal injunction suspending Bill 9
Unsurprisingly, the United Conservative Party Government has filed notice of appeal on the temporary injunction granted by the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench that halted application of Bill 9, playing havoc with Premier Jason Kenney’s strategy for putting off a crisis with the province’s public sector unions until after the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose? Former Postmedia journalist hired by Kenney Government to ‘reset the record’
Energy Minister Sonya Savage announced last night, in the words of her news release, that “award-winning oil and gas journalist Claudia Cattaneo has joined the fight against the lies and myths being spread about Alberta’s energy industry.” Ms. Cattaneo, who retired last year as Postmedia’s Western Canada business columnist, complained
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Regardless of Jason Kenney’s tweets, the Corporate Mapping Project is uncovering data of value to citizens
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has a well-known propensity to blame Justin Trudeau for things that were done by Stephen Harper, as the debate over who is responsible for the time it’s taken to complete the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project nicely illustrates. So condemning Liberal Prime Minister Trudeau for the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Injunction suspending application of Bill 9 leaves Kenney Government with egg on its face
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at United Conservative Party Headquarters last night! I imagine there were heated words spoken about Mr. Justice Eric Macklin’s decision just before the close of business yesterday to grant the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees an interim injunction suspending application of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The ‘Chicago Principles’ are code for the right of the powerful and privileged to shout down everyone else
“Free speech in universities” is nowadays a rallying cry for the snowflakes of the extremist right, who can dish it out but can’t take it. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that pushing post-secondary institutions to enforce the Chicago Statement on Free Expression, an ingenious manifesto that uses “free
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Postmedia pours it to bring home the bacon for Calgary’s hockey billionaires
You’ve got to know that when the likes of Licia Corbella, Danielle Smith, Chris Nelson, Rick Bell, and sundry other right-wing Postmedia bloviators all want you to think that now is the perfect time for the Calgary Saddledome to be demolished and replaced by the (Ken) King Dome, it probably
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