There are those who say we should be bracing ourselves for the return of President Steve. Say it ain’t so! Stephen Harper (Photo: Remy Steinegger, Creative Commons). We can expect know today if Stephen Harper is going to re-emerge to make a re-run to re-lead the Conservative Party of Canada
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Accidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the criticisms which were used to push Andrew Scheer out of the Cons’ leadership role in fact reflect the fundamental problems with a party built around selfishness as the sole ideal to be pursued. For further reading…– David Akin reported on Scheer’s prolific spending when he was
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: The people and the resources of BC have been fooled again.
Don Maroc The people and the resources of BC have been fooled again. BC was born with the most lush and extensive Temperate Rainforest in the world. Through our own terrible management, today Read more…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Feeling blue? Don’t worry, Jason Kenney’s got a ‘blue ribbon panel’ sharpening its razors for you!
Brace yourselves, people. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has announced his “Blue Ribbon” panel to do a “deep dive” into the province’s books and figure out how to get them into the black in less than three years, eliminate debt, and do it all without raising taxes or introducing a sales
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Eli Wolfe discusses new research confirming how unions have saved thousands of workers’ lives – and how workers stand to pay the price for political attempts to undermine collective action: The new study focuses in particular on the extent to which state “right
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Review of Canada’s energy systems unlikely to cut through noise generated by pipeline hysteria
The furious debate about the merits of current and future pipeline projects underscores the need for an evidence-based long-term energy strategy for our country, the conclusions of a new review of Canada’s energy systems suggest. Alas, the report released yesterday by the Corporate Mapping Project and its partners at the
Continue readingIn-Sights: Liberal energy policy, blunder or costly malfeasance?
Considering the near endless ink and airtime dedicated to what Liberals called “Glen Clark’s folly,” people should compare the attention paid to a Campbell/Clark program that may have cost the province 15 or 20 times as much.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Why Alberta’s NDP would likely prefer a Liberal government in Victoria and B.C.’s NDP just might prefer the UCP in Edmonton
PHOTOS: Yoga enthusiasts on the lawn of the B.C. Legislature in Victoria, probably focusing the energy of the cosmos to make Alberta’s bitumen go away. Below: The Alberta Legislature in Edmonton at about the same time of year. There’s nobody on the lawn because it’s too darned cold. Below the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Which way will the wedge slice? Alberta NDP and UCP adopt opposite strategies on gay-straight alliances
PHOTOS: Jason Kenney may be the UCP’s leader now, but he’s still doing his best to appeal to his red-meat social conservative base. (Photo: Dave Cournoyer, Daveberta.ca.) Below: NDP Education Minister David Eggen, NDP Premier Rachel Notley, and UCP House Leader Jason Nixon. The impassioned, at times bitter, tone of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Too much overtime owed may have saved former PC staffers’ jobs as UCP purged their Wildrose counterparts
PHOTOS: Nick Koolsbergen, new chief of staff to United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney. (Photo: Lorian Belanger/Radio-Canada.) Below: UCP Deputy Chief of Staff Matt Wolf (Photo: Linkedin), UCP communications staffer Blaise Boehmer (Photo: Twitter), and Jamie Mozeson, former candidate to succeed Rona Ambrose as MP for Sturgeon River-Parkland (Photo: Jamie
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Equality Trust examines the UK’s increasing level of personal precarity – and how public policy needs to be changed to support the people who need it, not those who already have the most. And Eduardo Porter offers a reminder that tax cuts
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Stephanie Blankenburg and Richard Kozul-Wright comment on the rise of rent-seeking as a driver of stagnation and inequality. And George Monbiot argues that we shouldn’t let our common wealth be used for the sole benefit of a privileged few: A true commons is
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Documents show B.C. ‘Climate Leadership Plan’ was cooked up in Calgary boardroom of powerful petroleum industry lobby
PHOTOS: British Columbia’s beautiful Legislature Building in Victoria – not, as it turns out, where the province’s climate policy is set! Below: CCPA-BC’s Shannon Daub, former B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark (Photo: Wikimedia Commons), B.C. NDP Premier John Horgan, and environmentalist Tzeporah Berman. Using documents obtained through a Freedom of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta premier’s quietly capable chief of staff, John Heaney, returns to his family and law practice in B.C.
PHOTOS: John Heaney last spring at the Alberta Legislature. Below: Mr. Heaney’s predecessor as Premier Rachel Notley’s chief of staff, Brian Topp, and his successor, Nathan Rotman (Photo: Twitter). The departure of the low-key and highly capable John Heaney as Premier Rachel Notley’s chief of staff will not necessarily become
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Would Jason Kenney kill the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion for short-term political gain in Alberta? Just askin’
PHOTOS: Jason Kenney, at left, in his fevered imagination, visits the Alberta Army on the B.C. front. (Photo of an actual event, heaven only knows what, grabbed from Mr. Kenney’s Twitter feed.) Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, B.C. Premier John Horgan, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, all of them keeping
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Cathy Crowe writes that there’s no excuse for putting off action to provide housing to people who need it – not only because of the inhumanity of waiting, but because there’s plenty of evidence as to what works: Over the years big
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Sirota interviews Thomas Frank about the U.S. Democrats’ obsession with educational achievement as a cure-all – and their consequent loss of touch with the large numbers of citizens suffering from economic policies which left them behind: Sirota: What do you think
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Martin Lukacs discusses the need for collective action to fight climate change – and the dangers of allowing ourselves to be distracted by calls to focus solely on individual choices: These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – John Paul Tasker reports on the federal government’s plans to close some loopholes which allow the use of small corporations in order to avoid income taxes. And Andrew Jackson writes that we should support that first step toward a fairer tax system. But
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The view from different planets: connecting dots between fire and climate change proscribed only on Planet Alberta
PHOTOS: A wildfire in B.C. (Photo: B.C. Wildfire Service). Below: The Fort McMurray Fire (Photo: CBC/Tia Morari); Green Party of Canada Leader Elizabeth May (Twitter). Apparently Alberta and British Columbia exist on different planets. Literally, I mean. Not metaphorically. How else are we to explain the political discourse among, essentially,
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