An ambitious six-week fall sitting of the Alberta Legislature commenced in Edmonton yesterday with Premier Jason Kenney telling the House during Question Period that his government isn’t about to publish any updated COVID-19 modelling. As Opposition Leader Rachel Notley argued, it would be useful to know what the experts say
Continue readingTag: Canadian Politics
Alberta Politics: Alberta must learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, premier muses on the topic of energy and the environment
Jason Kenney may have missed it, but Lyndon Johnson’s famous comment about how certain people weren’t up to walking and chewing gum at the same time was an observation about their lack of intelligence, not their ability to get away with saying contradictory things at the same time. Alberta’s premier
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Sundre hospital renamed to honour MP Myron Thompson, long-time foe of equality for same-sex couples
“They’re trying to take away our culture, they’re trying to take away our history,” Donald Trump complained back in 2017 about activists who call for the removal statues of Confederate and colonialist heroes. Mr. Trump’s supporters have been loudly making their agreement known ever since, including here in Alberta where
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Young Ben Harper gets a well-heeled start in politics, thanks to dear old dad’s former lieutenant
Give Ben Harper’s old man his due: he got his son a better first job in Alberta than the elder Mr. Harper’s pop got him. Readers with functioning short-term memories will recall that not so long ago much was made of the fact Stephen Harper’s father got the former Conservative
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What was Saskatchewan’s media doing when it wasn’t reporting on Scott Moe’s driving record?
Seriously, what was the media in Saskatchewan doing when it wasn’t investigating Scott Moe’s history of drunk and, on one occasion, deadly driving? Wednesday morning, the province’s Saskatchewan Party premier got up on his hind legs at a campaign event and “spoke to an impaired driving charge he faced following
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Eco-socialist almost wins Green Party leadership: What does this mean?
Eco-socialist Dimitri Lascaris came within a narrow margin of winning the Green Party leadership race on October 3. With a call to “wrest power from private corporations and bring the economy under democratic control”, he gained 10,081 of 22,171 votes on the final ballot. How could this happen in a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If you want to know how an Alberta Provincial Police force would behave, read between the lines of yesterday’s announcement
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police may be no paragon of liberalism and progressive enforcement, but they’re apparently too liberal and progressive for the members of the so-called Fair Deal Panel that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney appointed to trot out his quasi-separatist hobbyhorses. Mr. Kenney’s supposedly cash-poor government announced yesterday it
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Down the authoritarian rabbit hole with Alberta’s United Conservative Party
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announces new measures to limit COVID-19 in the province, March 17, 2020. Photo courtesy of the Government of Alberta/Flickr. The many transgressions of Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government should be repugnant to all who value and celebrate democracy. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What did Finance Minister Travis Toews actually say about AISH in Grande Prairie last week?
So, what did Travis Toews actually say about Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped when he said whatever he said to a Grande Prairie local news website one week ago today? According to the first report on MyGrandePrairieNow.com, the finance minister, who is also MLA for Grande Prairie-Wapiti, said that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Happy Alberta Day, fellow Albertians! Don’t count on having two days off in September, though
Happy “Alberta Day,” my fellow Albertians! Does Jason Kenney have a plan to erase Labour Day and replace it with something called Alberta Day on or about September 1? It certainly wouldn’t be out of character. U.S. President Donald Trump (Photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons). Labour Day celebrates labour, which
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Trump’s Covid-19 positive test – the ultimate October Surprise.. the ultimate Karma
News that US President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and other high level Republican officials have tested positive for Covid-19 – and others awaiting test results after potential exposure to the above – has added another dimension of disarray to what was already one of (if not the most)
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Forever chaste? Or just chased? Former Reform MP and Kenney comrade Rob Anders faces new challenges
Rob Anders’ recent trouble with the law reminds us of the former Reform Party and Conservative MP’s past thoughts about the laws of nature. Twenty-one years ago, Mr. Anders made up half of the party’s much-remarked-upon Parliamentary chastity caucus, of which Jason Kenney was the other half, or the only
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Cooperative foreign policy for the multipolar world
The Reconciliation Monument in Ottawa, commemorating Canada’s role in international peacekeeping operations around the world. Photo by Michel Rathwell/Wikimedia Commons. Below, Canadian Dimension has reprinted the foreign policy platform of Dimitri Lascaris, an author, lawyer and eco-socialist running to become the next leader of the Green Party of Canada. Online
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The little-known Ontario tribunal standing in the way of defunding the police
A recent Ipsos poll showed 51 percent of Canadians support defunding the police, and yet there is no means by which this can be translated into policy in Ontario. Photo by Bobb Barratt/OPP/Flickr. The police murder of George Floyd in May of this year sparked what is likely the largest
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 reading52 Ideas: I wish Rex Murphy would understand that change is coming…
In 2018, the Toronto Paramedic Service (TPS) introduced 11 hybrid-electric ambulances into their fleet. Like many other North American cities, Toronto has been working on reducing its carbon footprint. The adoption of hybrid-electric ambulances was just one step in changing its consolidated vehicle fleet. In the City of Toronto Consolidated
Continue readingAlberta Politics: We have met the enemy and he is us — Alberta in the midst of a climate damn emergency
VICTORIA — The world is waking up to the fact the climate emergency is, well, an emergency. This certainly isn’t good news for Alberta, although, perversely, it may be good news in the short term of the United Conservative Party of Premier Jason Kenney and governments like his in other
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta takes over as Canada’s political Crazytown; privatized health care suffers a setback
VICTORIA — When I was growing up here in Lotusland, British Columbia had the reputation of being the Crazytown of Canadian politics. The late Allan Fotheringham, the Vancouver Sun columnist we all read religiously, famously summed up Canadian politics like this: “In the Maritimes, politics is a disease; in Quebec
Continue readingScripturient: Will communism as a dominant political ideology ever make a comeback
I took the title from a discussion on Quora about whether Communism is dead or will re-emerge, and if so under what conditions. I don’t believe that the author of the post (Susanna Viljanen, from Aalto University in Finland) who opens that discussion wanted to see Communism arise again, but
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Let John A. Macdonald fall
The statue of John A. Macdonald (not pictured) was toppled during an anti-racism demonstration in Montreal on August 29. Photo by Ray Ordinario/Flickr. On August 29, protesters toppled John A. Macdonald’s statue in Montréal’s Place du Canada, leaving our first prime minister’s headless, graffiti-stained effigy to lie in the square,
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