Alberta Politics: Citing soaring prices, but with eye to shielding retailers’ profits, UCP stops collecting 13-cent-per-litre provincial fuel tax

If the United Conservative Party Government was serious about protecting Albertans from soaring fuel prices, it could move to temporarily control the retail price of gasoline and diesel fuel. Big fuel retailers would scream bloody murder, and market fundamentalist think tanks would suffer the vapours, but there wouldn’t be much

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Alberta Politics: Unsustainable Alberta: Don’t expect the UCP to pay any attention to the Business Council of Alberta in tomorrow’s budget

It’s Alberta Budget Day tomorrow.  Finance Minister Travis Toews will table a budget at an afternoon pop-up meeting of the Legislature. Then United Conservative Party MLAs will run like hell for their ridings and hunker down until the Legislature’s business resumes on March 8.  Alberta’s pop-up Legislature will open for

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Alberta Politics: New Zealand eyes reopening borders a crack while Calgary crowd protests ‘draconian’ COVID-19 restrictions

After being declared COVID-19 free last June, New Zealand is ever-so-cautiously moving toward reopening its watery borders to some international travel.  With Australia, that is. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (Photo: NewZild, Creative Commons). Australia hasn’t done quite as well countering the coronavirus as New Zealand has, but it’s

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Alberta Politics: Plan to roll back public employees’ pay is no surprise, but the way it’s being rolled out seems surprisingly inept

When Alberta’s finance minister announced the Kenney Government’s plan to roll back unionized public employees’ pay by 2 to 5 per cent yesterday, he blamed Alberta’s debt and deficit, not the huge hole he’d just blown in the province’s budget with $4.5-billion in tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations.

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