Many Albertans were shocked to learn last week that Opposition Leader Jason Kenney had promised an auto dealers association pouring money into a political action committee supporting his United Conservative Party that if elected he would hand enforcement of vehicle sale consumer protection back to the dealers. Twenty-six Alberta car
Continue readingTag: Alberta NDP
Alberta Politics: Rachel Notley’s pension announcement yesterday was an ironic coda to Alison Redford’s 2014 war on unions
When Premier Rachel Notley announced to the annual general meeting of the United Nurses of Alberta yesterday morning her government would keep a promise made to working Albertans 26 years ago by a Conservative government, it offered an ironic coda to one of the issues that contributed to the downfall
Continue readingAlberta Politics: NDP official demands ‘substantive penalties’ for ‘severe and wilful violations’ of election finance law by auto dealers’ PAC
Shaping Alberta’s Future, the Political Action Committee set up to help elect a United Conservative Party government led by Jason Kenney, is operating in open defiance of Alberta’s election financing laws, the Alberta NDP’s provincial secretary says in a letter to the Election Commissioner of Alberta. NDP Povincial Secretary Roari
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Wondering about Jason Kenney: Would you buy a used truck from this man?
So, who’re ya gonna believe? Jason Kenney? Or Alberta’s used car dealers? I’m sure readers will agree that this is a very tough question. Nevertheless, with the publication of third-quarter political donor data by Elections Alberta, the attention of the public has fallen on the significant fund-raising effort for the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta Party and Freedom Conservative Party leaders form weekend blips on provincial political radar
Here comes the leader of the One True Conservative Party! Here comes the leader of the other One True Conservative Party! Actually, there are three One True Conservative parties in Alberta nowadays. Maybe more if you don’t blink. But there are three that have the potential to play a consequential
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta honour for k.d. lang shows times are changing, but prompts memories of past Tory embarrassments
The elevation of Alberta-born chanteuse k.d. lang to the Alberta Order of Excellence last week is both a positive sign of change in Alberta and a timely reminder there’s nothing new about bozo eruptions from the back forty of the province’s conservative movement. Ms. lang, now 56, was born in
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Message to my American Cousins: It’s mellow up here; there is no communist revolution yet; no one wants to take Manhattan
Dear American Cousins, literal and metaphorical: The day before yesterday, medical and recreational cannabis became legal in Canada. The Canada correspondent for the New York Times reported excitedly that we Canadians were calling this C-Day. We were? Beats the hell outta me where she got that idea. I’m pretty sure
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 21: Jumpin’ Joe Anglin, UCP Interruptions Bozai, and the NDP’s $15/hour minimum wage
Joe Anglin’s return to Alberta politics, what happens when a white nationalist, anti-immigration group shows up to a United Conservative Party pub night, and what happens now that the New Democratic Party government has implemented its promised $15 per hour minimum wage, are a few of the topic Dave and Ryan discuss
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Hugh MacDonald, four-term Edmonton MLA and scourge of Tory governments, quietly resurfaces
With an election in the wind, it’s always worth remembering there’s life after politics. Consider Hugh MacDonald, once renowned as Alberta’s hardest-working MLA. The former Alberta Liberal Party stalwart served four terms as MLA for Edmonton-Gold Bar and certainly would have been elected to a fifth had he chosen to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP Leader Jason Kenney drops hints of radical plans during policy fan dance before Calgary Chamber of Commerce
A recent speech by Jason Kenney to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce indicates the Alberta Opposition leader intends to ram a radical program through the Legislature with minimal public consultation if his United Conservative Party wins the election likely to be held in 2019. Oddly, it took almost a week
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley and Tzeporah Berman present starkly different views of Alberta’s energy future
Thanks to invitations from the province’s teachers’ union, the two most influential people in Alberta presented their starkly different visions of the energy future in the same room yesterday. I speak, of course, of environmentalist Tzeporah Berman and … Premier Rachel Notley. I jest. Ms. Berman resides in Vancouver. Other
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP finally – after an ever-so-excruciating wait – shows rogue nomination candidate Lance Coulter the door
Give Lance Coulter credit: The guy seems to be a very hard worker. Leastways, the United Conservative Party nomination candidate in the Edmonton-Henday West Riding certainly had to work extremely hard to get himself kicked out of the party’s nomination process. Finally, late yesterday morning, the UCP – oh, so
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Stand by for renewed attacks on Tzeporah Berman as UCP tries to change channel on ‘Soldiers of Odin’ embarrassment
After a difficult weekend doing damage control about how members of an anti-immigration group with white supremacist links were welcomed to a United Conservative Party beer-and-selfies night last Friday by an Edmonton constituency association, expect the right-wing Opposition party to dip into its strategic playbook to try to change the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP candidates’ reaction to storm over photos with ‘Soldiers of Odin’: We had no idea!
They crashed the party, did they? But I wonder why they picked a United Conservative Party affair to crash? I speak, of course, of the “Soldiers of Odin,” the unsavoury anti-immigrant group founded by a Finnish white supremacist whose Edmonton chapter’s members dress like bikers and have been making a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On necessary measures
I’ve previously linked to columns by Paul Wells and Jen Gerson on the coordinated right-wing attack on carbon pricing. (And even the Notley government has made a show of withdrawing from a coordinated federal climate change plan, though without abandoning its own climate change policy.) But let’s not assume that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Carbon taxes are the Obamacare of Canada: invented, then cynically abandoned, by the right
“Putting a price on carbon” was always going to be unpopular with people who use fossil fuels out of necessity and for fun – viz., a large portion of the population in a well-off northern country that, climate change notwithstanding, still gets pretty cold in the winter. In other words,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Bromantics on stage: Jason Kenney and Doug Ford mount the rostrum in Calgary to attack Justin Trudeau and carbon tax
Give Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party their due: They got a large and enthusiastic crowd out last night to their rally in Calgary against taking action on climate change. Leastways, I’d say 1,500 warm bodies at a rally on any topic should concern the government they came out
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Rick Strankman ousted by Nate Horner in Drumheller-Stettler, UCP dumps Dale Johnson in Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland
Photo: Rick Strankman and Jason Kenney (source: Facebook) Rick Strankman is the first incumbent MLA to lose his party’s nomination in this election cycle as he went down to defeat at the hands of Pollockville rancher and political family scion Nate Horner in last weekend’s United Conservative Party nomination contest
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rick Strankman out as UCP candidate, latest Horner Dynasty scion in, deep in Alberta’s dinosaur country
Even if you’re no fan of Rick Strankman, United Conservative Party MLA for Alberta’s dinosaur country, you have to feel a little sympathy for the poor guy, skidded from his nomination by a candidate more appealing to party leader Jason Kenney. Mr. Strankman, 65, may not have been the sharpest
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘A disservice to our nation’ – Tzeoporah Berman fires back at Jason Kenney’s ‘crass, simplistic narrative’
In a blistering broadside on social media yesterday, prominent B.C. environmentalist Tzeporah Berman fired back at Opposition Leader Jason Kenney for his continuing effort to reduce her to a figure of hatred, ridicule and contempt as a way to undermine Alberta’s NDP government. “You keep simplifying what I am saying
Continue reading