PHOTOS: Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray. Below: Opposition MLAs Greg Clark and Richard Starke, who contributed amends to the act passed in the wee hours of yesterday morning. In the wee hours of yesterday morning, the NDP MLAs in the Alberta Legislature dragged the province’s labour laws into the late
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Alberta Politics: Wildrose to members: Want to break a law? No problem! We’ll just get elected and change it
PHOTOS: The Alberta Legislature, about the best your blogger can do on the road to illustrate this illustration-resistant story (Photo: Wikimedia Commons). Below: Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, Progressive Conservative Leader Jason Kenney and Wildrose Treasurer James Cole, every one of them people mentioned in this story of whom photos exist.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: David Khan elected to lead Alberta Liberals 100 years less a day after party’s last election victory
PHOTOS: New Alberta Liberal Leader David Khan, at left, in a hopelessly self-referential photo with your blogger. (Photo: Dave Cournoyer.) Below: Liberal leadership candidate Kerry Cundal, leadership dropout Nolan Crouse and would-be centre uniter Stephen Mandel. CALGARY Members of the Alberta Liberal Party elected David Khan to what has to
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: David Khan wins leadership of obscure Liberal Party
Photo: Liberal Party executive director Gwyneth Midgley and newly elected party leader David Khan (photo from March 2017). Calgary – In a battle of Calgary lawyers, David Khan defeated Kerry Cundal to become the next leader of the Alberta Liberal Party. Khan earned 54 percent of the vote in the two-person race,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If failure to appear at Pride goeth before a fall, what will Jason Kenney do?
PHOTOS: Progressive Conservative Leader Jason Kenney, back in 2010 when he was a Calgary MP, taking part in the Calgary Stampede Parade. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.) Will he show up for the Edmonton Pride Parade next Saturday as well? Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, flanked by Education Minister David Eggen and
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Looking past pipelines, the NDP-Green agreement looks pretty good for BC
“Mark my words, that pipeline will be built, the decisions have been made.” – Alberta Premier Rachel Notley Alberta politicians, media and pundits are unsurprisingly focused on what the governing agreement between British Columbia New Democratic Party leader John Horgan and Green Party leader Andrew Weaver will mean for the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Report questioning tidewater premium for Alberta petroleum undermines a powerful narrative … expect fireworks
PHOTOS: No Smoking … no kidding! An oil tanker sits in a Spanish port. B.C. environmentalists don’t want to see scenes like this on their coast. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons) A lot of Albertans believe they’re going to have to. Below: Report Author David Hughes and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Whether
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Edmonton Election Update: 137 days to go.
Photo: Kris Andreychuk launches his campaign for city council in Ward 7. We are now 137 days away from the October 2017 municipal elections in Edmonton. Here are some of the latest updates to the list of candidates running in Edmonton’s municipal election for City Council, the Edmonton Public School Board and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Genial and in control, Alberta premier fields questions about B.C. politics with aplomb at hospital announcement
PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Health Minister and Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman announce a new hospital on Edmonton’s south side. Alberta Health services CEO Verna Yiu is visible on the right. Below: Infrastructure Minister Brian Mason, controversial B.C. environmentalist Tzeporah Berman and some of the crowd at the hospital
Continue readingAlberta Politics: How but as a leadership campaign brochure are we to interpret Derek Fildebrandt’s paean to ‘Max’ Bernier?
PHOTOS: Derek Fildebrandt, the Alberta Wildrose Party’s finance critic and, possibly, third unofficial candidate to enter the non-race to lead the still-nonexistent United Conservative Party. Below: Maxime Bernier (Photo: CBC), who is apparently Mr. Fildebrandt’s ideological hero, and British Columbia NDP Leader John Horgan, who seems very close to grasping
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Corporate media have reached consensus about Andrew Scheer: He’s Stephen Harper with a human face!
PHOTOS: Andrew Scheer, demonstrating his vaunted smile. (Photo: Rabble.ca.) This fills corporate media with hope. It shouldn’t. In Canada, with or without a smile, social conservatism is ballot-box poison. Below: former prime minister Stephen Harper, who really doesn’t have a very nice smile at all. Below him, former PM Joe
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ANDREW WHO? Oh, wait! I grabbed the wrong picture from the file cabinet!
PHOTOS: Andrew Scheer … I mean Joe Clark, a then-almost-unknown MP from Alberta, celebrates his victory in the Tory party leadership contest with his wife, Maureen McTeer, on Feb. 22, 1976. (Photo: Toronto Public Library.) The real Andrew Scheer, seen below, an almost-unknown MP from Saskatchewan, was doing the same
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: A quick look at the Interim Report of Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission
The Interim Report of Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission was released yesterday. I plan to take a more in-depth look at the interim report in the coming days, and plan to write more about it, but I do have a quick few observations after a first glance at the recommendations. First
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Media readers deserve the whole story about the sources reporters quote in public policy stories
PHOTOS: The question isn’t just whether Alberta’s students are getting the information they need, but whether media is giving the rest of us all the facts we require when we read news stories about education policy. Below: Former Edmonton Public Schools curriculum director Stuart Wachowicz, a frequent source used in
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Wildrosers and Progressive Conservatives act as if fighting the NDP’s workplace fairness law is their hill to die on
PHOTOS: Edmonton labour lawyer Andrew Sims and Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray at yesterday’s technical briefing on the NDP Government’s new labour legislation. (Photo: CBC) Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, and Alberta Liberal interim Leader David Swann and Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark, both of whom supported introduction of the
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: NDP finally introduce their Labour Law modernization bill
Labour Minister Christina Gray introduced Bill 17, the Fair and Family-friendly Workplaces Act, into the Legislative Assembly today. This bill includes long-awaited reforms to modernize Alberta’s Labour Code and Employment Standards Code. Some parts of Alberta’s labour laws have remained untouched since the 1970s. The 249-page bill includes a wide-range of amendments from
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Foreign influence’ had nothing to do with Tory Joan Crockatt’s Calgary Centre election defeat in 2015
PHOTOS: Joan Crockatt, during her brief spell as Conservative Member of Parliament for Calgary Centre. Below: Liberal Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr, who beat Ms. Crockatt in 2015; environmentalist Chris Turner who ran against her for the Greens in 2012 and did very well; and environmentalist Harvey Locke, who ran
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: No, reforming Alberta’s Labour Laws will not kill democracy.
It won’t come as a surprise to many political watchers in Alberta that the most vocal critics of the NDP government’s yet to be announced reforms to Alberta’s outdated labour laws have strong ties to the province’s Conservative establishment. “Keep Alberta Working” is a campaign of the “Alberta Growth Initiative,” which is a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: There’s no life like it! Alberta’s right-wing troll army is recruiting
ILLUSTRATIONS: Poster thanks to the U.S. Army, circa 1941-42 or whenever they finally got around to joining the fight, with a little help from PhotoShop. Below: Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi – is he the target of the Troll Army’s latest Alberta campaign? The ad in question. Alberta’s right-wing Troll Army
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Don’t look for dramatic change to Alberta labour laws in revisions NDP will likely introduce this week
PHOTOS: Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray (Photo: Chris Schwarz, Government of Alberta). Below: Labour Lawyer Andrew Sims and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley (Photo: Dave Cournoyer, Wikimedia Commons.) Alberta’s New Democratic Party Government is expected to introduce changes to the province’s main labour relations laws this week, quite possibly on Wednesday.
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