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 readingTag: Alberta Politics
Alberta 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: 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: 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
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Proposed federal clean-electricity rules are ‘unaffordable blackout regulations’? … UCP environment minister floods the zone
“Unaffordable blackout regulations”? Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). It wasn’t exactly a surprise that Alberta’s United Conservative Party started September by issuing a wildly misleading statement calling the federal Government’s proposed 2035 net-zero electricity generation regulations “unaffordable blackout regulations.” This kind of nonsense is the UCP’s schtick, after
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s hard to take Danielle Smith’s hysterical outburst at federal environment minister very seriously
Apparently Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is determined to make the flagging Trudeau Liberals look like the grownups in the room! Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault (Photo: UN Biodiversity, Creative Commons). What other explanation is there for Ms. Smith’s childish official outburst yesterday assailing federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault for his
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Social-conservative groups gear up for stealth takeover of Alberta school boards in coming elections
There’s plenty of chatter on social media about the plan by the United Conservative Party’s powerful and secretive Take Back Alberta faction to stealthily take over the province’s school boards in the next round of board elections and set the stage for indoctrinating children with social conservative ideology. Alberta Education
Continue readingAlberta Politics: 2,500-word Alberta ‘fact sheet’ tries to counter critics of freeze on new renewable electricity project approvals
Obviously feeling enough heat to overlook the political folk wisdom that if you’re explaining you’re losing, the Alberta government released a wordy “fact sheet” yesterday attempting to explain why no one should fret about its freeze on new renewable-energy electricity-generation projects. Alberta Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). According
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Estimated 24,000 jobs, $33B in investments at risk because of renewables freeze: Pembina Institute
An estimated 24,000 jobs and $33-billion in investments are at risk because of the Alberta Government’s seven-month moratorium on renewable energy development, the Pembina Institute said this morning. Pembina Institute spokesperson Courtney Smith (Photo: Pembina Institute). Courtney Smith, spokesperson for the Calgary-based clean energy think tank, said Pembina researchers reviewed
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Today is last day on job for AHS VP Deb Gordon, highest-ranking woman in the province-wide health agency
On Aug. 18, Alberta Health Services President and CEO Mauro Chies sent a memorandum to the province-wide public health care agency’s senior managers telling them that the highest ranking woman in their ranks would be leaving the organization today. AHS President and CEO Mauro Chies (Photo: Alberta Health Services). Deb
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Environment minister in government that won’t approve geothermal projects visits new geothermal project in Germany
Alberta’s environment minister, Rebecca Schulz, is in Germany today, getting set to celebrate the opening of a large geothermal electricity-generating project that uses technology designed by a Calgary company. Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). At the same time, back home in Wild Rose Country, geothermal projects
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Meanwhile, across the continent in Maine, citizens are fighting to create a publicly owned, not-for-profit state electrical utility
In case you missed it, Enmax Energy Corp., the public utility owned by the City of Calgary, has poured millions of dollars into a campaign to persuade voters in the U.S. state of Maine not to vote to create a publicly owned utility to take over generation and distribution of
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