Alberta Politics: $9.8M lawsuit targets Ottawa occupation leaders; GoFundMe cuts off $10M fund; Tamara Lich quits Maverick Party board

Ottawa lawyer Paul Champ filed a statement of claim in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice yesterday seeking $4.8 million damages for “private nuisance” and $5 million in punitive damages for the beleaguered residents of the national capital’s downtown core from the outlaw truckers occupying the city.  The $9.8-million class

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Scripturient: Conservatives Eat Their Own

So the alt-right segment of the Conservative Party dumped Erin O’Toole, its latest leader, for being too moderate. Too much like a human, methinks, and that made him vulnerable. The alt-right members are dragging the party into the Repugnican side of politics: an authoritarian, pseudo-Christian, racist, and separatist/libertarian ideology. The

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Alberta Politics: Convoys, COVID and Conservative discord dominate Jason Kenney’s return from Washington governors’ clambake

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, back from an ill-timed and seemingly mostly fruitless trip to Washington D.C., pleaded for federal Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole’s political life yesterday at a typical Alberta Government news conference about nothing in particular. “I would just say this to my friends in the federal Conservative

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Alberta Politics: A not-so-bold prediction: that $9.5-million GoFundMe pot will be a tempting target for Ottawa civil lawyers

The mysteriously sourced “Freedom Convoy 2022” account on the GoFundMe crowd-funding site sat at more than $9.5 million yesterday. Its fund-raising goal, which has been repeatedly ratcheted up over the past two weeks, is now $10-million.  Meanwhile, as the occupation of their city by far-right “freedom convoy” anti-vaccine-mandate protesters continues

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Alberta Politics: Did Jason Kenney’s support for Ottawa anti-vaxx-mandate convoy protest encourage copycat Coutts blockade he now condemns?

It would be ironic if Premier Jason Kenney’s baseless claim a week ago that Ottawa’s vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers had led to empty shelves in Alberta grocery stores ended up causing real shortages. Mr. Kenney’s tweets of photos of empty grocery shelves and his tendentious assertions that “with a

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Alberta Politics: Very fine people on both sides? Jason Kenney defends convoy participants; says NDP welcomes ‘eco-terrorists’ to protests

Yesterday, the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons warned Members of Parliament that individuals associated with the anti-vaccine-mandate truck convoy nearing the nation’s capital have been trying to suss out the location of their Ottawa residences. House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Patrick McDonell (Photo: Creator not identified). Also yesterday, Jason Kenney

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Alberta Politics: Maverick Party obviously has no problem with its party secretary’s role in anti-vaccine-mandate truck convoy protest

The Medicine Hat woman who is the public face of the GoFundMe campaign that has now theoretically raised more than $5 million to support the “Freedom Convoy 2022” motorcade protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates remains a senior officer of the separatist-leaning Maverick Party. The Maverick Party website identifies Tamara Lich

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Alberta Politics: Not much edification in yesterday’s COVID-19 newser as Premier Kenney and officials ‘filibuster’ the hard questions

There was little informative or edifying about the mostly successful effort by Premier Jason Kenney and three of his senior health care enablers to run out the clock on reporters’ questions at yesterday’s COVID-19 news conference. Facing not only the potential for difficult questions about the chaos in Alberta’s schools

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Alberta Politics: Research paper argues Canadian Taxpayers Federation pushed ‘anti-Indigenous political rhetoric and policy’ over 21 years

Locating the Canadian Taxpayers Federation clearly in the ecosystem of neoliberal advocacy, a recent paper in the Canadian Review of Sociology analyzes more than 400 documents published by the CTF over 21 years to argue the organization has pushed “anti-Indigenous political rhetoric and policy.” Lead author Kyle Willmott, a professor

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