When this blog’s entirely fictional Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy “The Geek” Porcospino celebrated the first birthday of the United Conservative Party last summer by setting the next year’s resignation odds for each of the party’s remaining caucus members, he gave Drumheller-Stettler MLA Rick Strankman only 20-1 odds of heading for the
Continue readingAuthor: David Climenhaga
Alberta Politics: No truck convoy to Ottawa? No trucks, no glory, perhaps, but no Conservative PR disaster either
If you were one of those cynics who wondered how far that heavily publicized Ottawa-bound truck convoy demanding new pipelines and demanding them now would get, you have your answer: Nowhere. The promised slow-moving, horn-honking, eastern-bastard-annoying convoy from Alberta was supposed to depart Red Deer on Feb. 15. But Monday
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Everything you always wanted to know about Rand Paul and the Shouldice Hernia Hospital * but were afraid to ask
I’m sorry to report, Canada, that Rand Paul, the nutty libertarian son of the crazy uncle of the American Right, isn’t the only politician to stumble into a controversy for getting repairs at the Shouldice Hernia Hospital. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first there’s a backstory. According
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Enough already! It’s time for the NDP to implement the Bighorn park plan immediately
Were provincial officials taking part in town hall meetings on the Alberta Government’s plan to create a park in west central Alberta’s Bighorn Country really harassed and threatened by all-terrain-vehicle enthusiasts opposed to restrictions on their motorized activity in the environmentally sensitive Rocky Mountain Foothills between Banff and Jasper national
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq returns to top of Audreys Books Edmonton Bestseller List for week ended Jan. 6
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended Jan. 6, 2019. The lists are compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. Split Tooth – Tanya Tagaq 2. Washington Black
Continue readingAlberta Politics: University of Calgary acted like ‘Big Oil U’ in 2015 controversy, paper by B.C. academic researchers concludes
It’s not every day you see terms like “corporate obstructionism” and “institutional corruption” used to describe the way things are done at one Canadian university in a peer-reviewed academic paper written by scholars from two other institutions and published in a respected academic journal. This is one reason I think
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Just as well, no province-wide gender-reveal party to be required for Baby Jean, a girl
There will be no province-wide social media gender reveal party for Brian Jean’s and Kimberly Michelutti’s expected baby. True, this would have given all Albertans the opportunity to continue to take part in the fascinating Jean Family story. But not having a baby-gender-reveal party avoids the risk and disappointment associated
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Death of Gene Zwozdesky, the mellifluous smoothie of Alberta politics, an apt symbol of the end of the Progressive Conservative Era
The death Sunday of Gene Zwozdesky – first elected as a Liberal but for many years afterward a Conservative, a cabinet minister who could be counted on to smooth over messes made by others, and eventually Speaker of the Legislature – can be said to mark the symbolic end of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Donner Canadian Foundation, prominent funder of right-wing groups, helps bankroll new ‘think tank’ closely connected to CTF
A new “think tank” with close connections to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation received $50,000 last year from the Donner Canadian Foundation, a prominent funder of right-wing ideological organizations in Canada. SecondStreet.org describes itself on its website as “a new think tank that will be launching in early 2019.” The organization’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brian Topp, NDP strategist who led Rachel Notley’s 2015 war room, describes what Jagmeet Singh must do this year to win
With a federal election looming this fall, mainstream pundits have already written off the federal New Democratic Party and its leader, Jagmeet Singh, relegating Mr. Singh to history’s discard bin and declaring the party to have already returned to perpetual third-party status. Maybe they shouldn’t, suggests long-time NDP political strategist
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Washington Black by Esi Edugyan tops Audreys Books Edmonton Fiction Bestseller list for final week of 2018
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended Dec. 30, 2018. The lists are compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. Washington Black – Esi Edugyan 2. Wake for
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Guest Post by Olav Rokne: America’s Democrats need to saddle up a dark horse
Considering his scandal-ridden administration, a shaky economy, and his disagreeable public presence, it’s easy for progressives to assume that Tovarishch Trump will be a one-term president. But here’s the bad news: There’s a very real chance that Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, will be re-elected. For
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brief late-evening message from premier signals departure of Calgary MLA and former cabinet minister Stephanie McLean
If there’s an Alberta version of what used to be known as a “Kremlinologist,” they’ll be puzzling over yesterday evening’s social media announcement by Premier Rachel Notley about the departure of former Status of Women Minister Stephanie McLean. Premier Notley’s statement on Facebook at about 10 p.m. begged a few
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Not a lot of light between UCP and Alberta Party ‘Ministry of Truth’ schemes, or for that matter the NDP approach
Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel got a couple of things right about Jason Kenney’s plan to establish a “war room” in the Ministry of Energy to pump out belligerent propaganda attacking environmentalists, other governments and private citizens who fail to support of Alberta’s wishes for endless oilsands expansion with sufficient
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Happy New Year! What’s Brian Jean up to? Is the former Wildrose leader plotting a comeback?
Happy New Year! So, now that it’s 2019, what’s Brian Jean up to? Maybe it’s just me, but he’s sure acting like a guy who’s thinking about being a political candidate again! You remember Brian Jean, don’t you? He used to be the leader of the Wildrose Party. Indeed, he
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta’s Top Ten Political News Stories of 2018: It’s not all about that pipeline …
Trying to come up with a list of the most important Alberta political news stories of 2018 is more challenging than one might imagine since the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion brouhaha sucked all the oxygen out of this place for most of the year. A court challenge was inevitable. So
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Highwood Conservative discloses past conviction for failure to provide breath sample; UCP seems untroubled
With an investigation by the Alberta Elections Commissioner under way into allegations of irregularities in the United Conservative Party’s conduct of its nomination vote in the Highwood Constituency last fall, the winning candidate published a statement Friday admitting he was convicted and fined for failing to provide a breathalyzer sample
Continue readingAlberta Politics: MLA asks Elections Alberta to investigate claim Jason Kenney’s UCP leadership campaign ‘deliberately hid’ donation
“The UCP denies the allegations.” We should probably get used to reading this phrase. I suspect we’re going to be seeing it quite a lot in stories about Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party during the first half of 2019. It was included in an Edmonton Journal story yesterday about allegations
Continue readingAlberta Politics: AlbertaPolitics.ca: still here after 11 years writing about Canada’s most interesting provincial political scene
Today marks the 11th anniversary of the first post published on this blog, known at the time as St. Albert Diary. And thank God for that, since I’m in a post-Christmas funk with barely an idea in my head about what to write next. By the standards of the Internet,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Has Trudeau committed treason?’ The answer is no and the question is completely bonkers!
Donna Kennedy-Glans, by all accounts an intelligent and accomplished Alberta Conservative, recently posted and pinned a Tweet asking, “Has Trudeau committed treason?” If her intention was to grab the attention of Alberta’s chattering classes, she succeeded. If she was out for attention, though, I’m not sure she really wanted the
Continue reading