A lousy memory might be a bad sign if you can’t remember what you went downstairs to fetch, or where you left your glasses, but sometimes in politics it can be a blessing. Consider the report of Marguerite Trussler, Q.C., the Alberta Legislature’s ethics commissioner, into complaints about how Education
Continue readingTag: B.C. Politics
Alberta Politics: COVID-19? Forget about it! Alberta restaurants to stay open, Premier Jason Kenney vows
“Alberta restaurants to stay open, barring ‘catastrophe,’ premier says,” the CBC’s online headline writer summarized yesterday. Here, as they say on social media, let me fix your headline: “Alberta restaurants to stay open, sparking ‘catastrophe,’ premier says.” Premier Kenney visits an Alberta Restaurant that presumably will be staying open no
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Second COVID-19 wave rolls into Alberta as Premier Jason Kenney continues to emphasize ‘personal responsibility’
Alberta has now passed a significant milestone — more COVID-19 cases than at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, 3,138 compared to 3,022 on April 30. There were 898 new cases over the weekend if you count Friday, as Alberta Health Services does, and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Math is hard, but not so hard you can’t spot the holes in Tyler Shandro’s cost-saving shell game
Math, apparently, remains hard. Except, perhaps, calculus of a political sort. The real Mr. Shandro (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). On its face, Health Minister Tyler Shandro’s claim that firing 11,000 low-paid public sector health care employees will save about $600 million makes little sense. Others have done the same calculation and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fossil fuels may be fading, but Alberta stands ready to supply bad economic ideas to Canada and the world
VICTORIA — We Albertans can be enormously proud, I guess, of our continuing influence on the Dominion. We surely must be the leading exporter of ridiculous, potentially destructive ideas in Canada. B.C. Premier John Horgan (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Consider Andrew Wilkinson, hapless leader of British Columbia’s Liberals (who are
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Riding high in the polls, B.C.’s New Democrat premier calls a snap election — the right, predictably, whinges
VICTORIA — Strangely, all those conservatives who are anxious to get us back to school and business as soon as possible didn’t seem to be very happy yesterday when B.C. Premier John Horgan called a snap election for Oct. 24. Supporters of B.C. political parties other than Mr. Horgan’s New
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Pay and benefits for long term care workers must be protected — and not just during the COVID-19 crisis
It should be obvious by now that if a society wants to keep long-term care for the frail and elderly from turning into a deadly nightmare during pandemics, it must ensure privately run long-term-care centres provide their employees with the same wages, benefits and working conditions as those who work
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Investment advice: If you have the choice, don’t trust right-wing politicians with your retirement money
After my father died in Victoria in 2008 at the age of 91, my sister opened his safety deposit box and discovered $5,000 in shares in the British Columbia Resources Investment Corp., better known as the BCRIC, universally pronounced at the end of the 1970s as the “brick.” When I
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Can Canada’s Conservatives resist temptation to try to sabotage the accord with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs?
It will be interesting to see how the Conservative Opposition in Ottawa and Alberta’s Conservative government react to yesterday’s announcement the federal and British Columbia governments have reached an accord with the Wet’suwet’en First Nation that would recognize its system of hereditary governance. Participants said the agreement reached yesterday in
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Stephen Harper and Preston Manning, joined at the hip by history and not particularly liking it, make changes
On Wednesday, former prime minister Stephen Harper abruptly quit the Conservative Party of Canada’s fund-raising board, supposedly to give himself time to prevent Jean Charest from becoming leader of Canada’s Conservatives or prime minister of Canada. Yesterday, we learned that Preston Manning would quit his eponymous market-fundamentalist call centre in
Continue readingAlberta Politics: From the first nail in the Velvet Coffin to the death of Star Metro — the decline of Alberta’s newspapers
The bad news was delivered on social media yesterday by employees of Star Metro newspapers in cities outside Ontario. Whatever was behind the Toronto Star’s decision in April 2018 to hire real journalists and publish free print newspapers in five major cities across Canada, including Calgary and Edmonton, apparently it
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Andrew Weaver to Jason Kenney: ‘Every day you keep opening your mouth, more people come to the B.C. Greens!’
When it comes to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, Andrew Weaver is not a fan. This will not come as a complete surprise to anyone who follows either Alberta or British Columbia politics. Dr. Weaver, after all, is the leader of the B.C. Greens. He is also a climate scientist. In
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It was a delight to talk with Andrew Weaver about Jason Kenney, details to follow soon
VICTORIA, B.C. — If Jason Kenney’s ears were burning today, perhaps it was because of what Andrew Weaver had to say about him. Mr. Kenney, as all readers of this blog should know as part of the price of admission, is now premier of Alberta; Dr. Weaver is the leader
Continue readingAlberta Politics: How will Alberta politicians respond now that groups like Canada’s nurses are demanding action on climate change?
FREDERICTON – On the last day of their national convention in New Brunswick’s capital city today, the approximately 900 delegates of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on Canadian governments to recognize climate change is a global crisis and a health emergency, and to act
Continue readingAlberta Politics: B.C. Appeal Court’s Trans Mountain ruling may not be quite the slam-dunk Alberta thinks it is
The unanimous ruling Friday by the British Columbia Court of Appeal that the B.C. Government does not have the constitutional authority to control what goes inside the federally regulated Trans Mountain Pipeline is being hailed as a great victory in Alberta. Church bells didn’t actually ring on Friday, but the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Quebec premier vows drive to slash oil use; Alberta premier calls climate worry ‘flavour of the month’
Over the weekend, Quebec Premier François Legault vowed to implement an ambitious electrification drive that would reduce the province’s use of oil by 40 per cent by 2030, which in case you’re not counting happens to be in only 11 years. Quebec will electrify transportation systems, buildings and businesses to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Albertans, in their ‘bitumen bubble,’ may have missed the significance of West Coast Green goings on
We Albertans have been living in a bit if a bubble – a bitumen bubble. As a consequence, we may not all have noticed what’s been happening on Canada’s West Coast. So the potential significance of the victory in a federal by-election Monday by Paul Manly of the Green Party
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fielding questions about Jason Kenney’s apparent effort to channel Vladimir Putin, B.C. premier sounded like the grownup
CALGARY – For those of us used to listening to Alberta politicians on the topic of pipelines, British Columbia Premier John Horgan made for a refreshing change yesterday, sounding remarkably like the grownup as he responded to Premier Jason Kenney’s proclamation into law of the NDP’s unconstitutional bill to shut
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney, having delivered victory to his UCP, sounds like man with his eye on Ottawa
Give Jason Kenney his due: The man delivered a convincing enough victory for his United Conservative Party last night that no one can call him a political flop if at some point soon he wants to make a return trip to Ottawa. And his long-winded victory speech at the Calgary
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Nearly a third of Alberta’s electorate voted in advance polls – whatever can it mean?
One of the mysteries of the 2019 Alberta election campaign that comes to an end with today’s election is the truly astonishing number of advance ballots cast. Nearly 700,000 Albertans voted in advance polls. That is close to 30 per cent of the electorate. This is unheard of in Alberta,
Continue reading