If the latest Alberta voter intention polls are right – and who would be bold enough to predict that? – Canada’s richest province could soon end up in an excruciating political predicament. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on the campaign trail (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). Well, at least it would be a
Continue readingTag: Angus Reid Institute
Views from the Beltline: Here’s a surprise—relatives supportive of long-term care facilities
After all the horror stories to emerge from long-term care facilities during the early stages of the Covid pandemic, one might expect that relatives of those in care would be outraged. After all, there was mass death in some facilities with conditions described as appalling. Yet a solid majority of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Two bad polls in one day for Alberta’s UCP don’t tell us what will happen in 2023, but suggest some interesting possibilities
Two bad new polls in one day for the United Conservative Party do not guarantee NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley will return to power in 2023 or that we will soon see the back of Premier Jason Kenney. Still, they suggest some interesting possibilities. Opposition Leader and former premier Rachel
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Latest leak shows AHS modelling forecasts Intensive Care Units packed with COVID-19 patients by mid-December
In the first unauthorized information leak of December, Alberta’s NDP Opposition revealed yesterday Alberta Health Services case modelling projects about 775 Albertans will be in hospital with COVID-19 in just two weeks. More than 160 of them will be in intensive care units, further straining the overstressed provincial health system’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Order saying Alberta schools won’t have to enforce social distancing lands like a sucker punch
Whoever it was in the Alberta Government that decided it would be a good idea to risk springing the news on the public that COVID-19 social distancing rules won’t apply to classrooms just hours before schools reopen was seriously mistaken. The United Conservative Party government’s “near-normal” back-to-school scheme was already
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney’s bloviations about medical matters may have found a friendly audience south of the Medicine Line
Stuff UCPers Say! Epidemiologists and other scientific types may not like it very much when Alberta Premier Jason Kenney equates COVID-19 with influenza, but at least Fox News seems to be on side. Last Wednesday in the Legislature in a prepared speech arguing for the government’s understandable desire to get
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Can Jason Kenney pass the UCP budget, prorogue the Legislature, and get out of town before COVID-19 really hits the fan?
Beware the Ides of March! It’ll be interesting to see if Premier Jason Kenney can find a way to pass his budget, prorogue the Legislature, and get the heck outta Dodge before the really bad stuff from the COVID-19 pandemic’s arrival in Alberta starts to hit the fan. Alberta Chief
Continue readingAre the Blockades Backfiring?
If the objective of those protesting the construction of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory was to bring attention to the issue, they have certainly done that. If their objectives were to gain support for reconciliation and opposition to the pipeline, they appear to not only have failed but
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Without Rachel Notley’s reviled but effective social license strategy, support outside the Prairies drops for pipeline’s expansion
According to a well-known pollster, support for the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project has dropped in Canada outside the Prairies since this time last year. In the same time frame, opposition to the multi-billion-dollar pipeline expansion project is growing at an even faster rate. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney (Photo: David
Continue readingBig Bump for PR (take note Mr. Trudeau)
Has this election awakened Canadians to the need for proportional representation? The results of a recent Angus Reid poll certainly suggest so. From the support of under half the electorate following the last election, PR is now supported by over two-thirds. Support has increased with voters of all parties but
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: New Kinder Morgan exit strategy hint emerges as tangled Trans Mountain tale twists the national knickers
Jason Kenney, leader of Alberta’s Conservative Opposition party, must’ve struggled yesterday to keep a smirk off his face as he bloviated piously about Kinder Morgan Inc. President Steven Kean’s rumination the time may be nigh to pull the plug on the controversial Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project that has the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley does remarkably well in face of unrelenting campaign of vilification … Sun newspapers? Not so much …
PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Below: Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, the Mr. Congeniality of Confederation if you believe his press clippings; Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister. Notwithstanding a flagging economy and an unprecedented campaign of continual vilification by mass media, Astro-Turf agitators, corporate-bankrolled think tanks, right-wing academics and a nearly hysterical online conservative rage machine, Alberta […]
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Continue readingAlberta Politics: The refugee crisis: Harper Conservatives just can’t spin it both ways
PHOTOS: Refugees from the Syrian civil war clog a road near the Syria-Iraq border. (UNHCR photo.) Below: Saskatchewan Conservative MP Kelly Block’s constituency leaflet; Ms. Block herself; Immigration Minister Chris Alexander. For several years, the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has played to the worst instincts of a significant
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