Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, boyish and freshly beardless as if a summer election is blowin’ in the wind, showed up in Alberta yesterday to bestow $1.5 billion in federal cash on Calgary’s Green Line LRT, a mega-project unpopular with many of the well-heeled donors who support Premier Jason Kenney’s
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Alberta Politics: Something is dragging the federal Conservatives down in Alberta – is it Jason Kenney?
It sure looks as if Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s abysmal performance is not merely threatening the survival of his United Conservative Party Government, but is dragging down the federal Conservatives in Alberta as well. Alberta’s Conservatives are too strong and too entrenched even for Premier Kenney to destroy them completely.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If you like going to the bottle depot, you’ll love the Conservative carbon tax, says Calgary MP Ron Liepert
I hear that Calgary Signal Hill Conservative MP Ron Liepert – who the Canadian Press kindly described as an experienced Alberta politician – has been using the deposit you pay on a bottle of beer to explain party Leader Erin O’Toole’s carbon tax proposal. This is a flawed metaphor, but
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Erin O’Toole’s startling course change on carbon taxes suggests Jason Kenney’s influence over Conservatives is waning
Federal Opposition Leader Erin O’Toole’s screeching smuggler’s turn on carbon taxes yesterday likely wouldn’t have been possible without the current disarray of Alberta’s Kenney Government. When word of Mr. O’Toole’s plan to put a price on carbon as part of the Conservative election platform leaked to the CBC on Wednesday
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Conservatives stumble over the big issue
Hanging over our heads is one overwhelming issue. It’s not the pandemic, and it’s not the economic disruption caused by the pandemic. It’s our rape of the planet, the most immediate aspect being climate change. If a political party can’t get a grip on this issue, they aren’t of much
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Awkward! What can Erin O’Toole do now that Conservative Party delegates have ignored his plea to acknowledge climate change?
Question: What is Erin O’Toole supposed to do now that we all know 54 per cent of the delegates to his online Conservative Party of Canada policy convention have formally refused to acknowledge climate change is an actual thing? Answer: Pretend it never happened, of course. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Canada’s lack of vaccine capacity really is a scandal, but there’s no way Conservatives are actually serious about fixing it
The fact Canada lacks capacity to manufacture its own coronavirus vaccine should be a scandal. But there’s a certain irony in Conservative leaders like Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta’s Jason Kenney jumping on this bandwagon now that its potential to be used against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Conservative Party of Canada’s malaise with its loony right runs deeper than Derek Sloan
If Erin O’Toole were serious about making the Conservative Party of Canada a less congenial place for the far right, he would have kicked out Derek Sloan weeks ago for his odious xenophobia, homophobia and racist online commentary. Mr. O’Toole was picked to replace the desperately awful Andrew Scheer last
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta’s Hawaiigate Scandal grows, uncovering new non-essential Conservative trips to Mexico, Arizona, California, Las Vegas
Alberta’s Hawaiigate travel scandal continued to grow yesterday with four more United Conservative Party MLAs and one Conservative Party of Canada MP from Calgary confirmed to have been out of the country in defiance of COVID-19 restrictions on non-essential travel. In addition, rumours about several more Conservative politicians are circulating.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Tire-screeching reversal on COVID-19 vaccine timing shows Canada’s Conservatives can turn on a dime!
You can hardly blame The United Conservative Party’s leaders from trying to get out there as quickly as possible to take credit for the arrival of the first planeloads of COVID-19 vaccine in Alberta. Premier Jason Kenney, who evidently enjoys cosplay, even got dressed up as a UPS deliveryman and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Why did China’s government pluck the Two Michaels from among 300,000 Canadians in China?
Soon after Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver two years ago at the behest of U.S. authorities, Chinese state security officers arrested two Canadian men, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. It was clear from the get-go the arrest on Dec.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Canada should quit stalling to let the U.S. save face and send Meng Wanzhou home now
Anyone who still imagines the Trump Administration’s partly successful effort to get Canada to seize and extradite Meng Wanzhou to the land of chaos and COVID had anything to do with “the rule of law” needs to consider the implications of yesterday’s report in the Wall Street Journal that the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Oppositional by nature, the UCP acts as if Rachel Notley’s NDP was still the government
Perhaps because he’s the only United Conservative Party MLA in Edmonton, Justice Minister Kaycee Madu seems to have become the Kenney Government’s main spokesperson responsible for yelling at the NDP. Whether Mr. Madu writes his own social media material or has an aide to perform that function for him, his
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Canada’s progressive politicians need to pay attention to Erin O’Toole’s pivot to unions
If Erin O’Toole was sincere when he surprised everyone last month by bemoaning the decline of unions, you’d think he’d publicly rebuke Premier Jason Kenney for his ongoing campaign to turn Alberta into a right-to-work state. So far, though, the new Conservative Party of Canada leader has had nothing to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: U.S. election exposes ‘Triple-E’ Senate myth once and for all as a democratic disaster
Does anyone recall the Reform Party of Canada’s campaign starting in the late 1980s to impose on our country a “Triple-E Senate” – that is to say elected, effective, and, above all, “equal”? Pushed by the likes of Calgary-area farmer Bert Brown and would-be philosopher king Preston Manning, this call
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Say what? Conservative Alberta MP’s riding association buys pro-life transit ads in Vancouver
Regardless of exactly how Garnett Genuis’s Vancouver bus advertisement asking how there can be too many children was paid for, the Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan MP well known for his vocal opposition to reproductive rights and the Conservative Party of Canada should both have some explaining to do. Mr. Genuis boasted
Continue readingAlberta Politics: How propaganda became memory: Pierre Trudeau, Alberta and the National Energy Program
On this day 40 years ago, prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s finance minister and deputy PM, Allan MacEachen, rose in Parliament to introduce a new national budget. Warning that Canada could become increasingly dependent on foreign supplies of oil and subject to the vagaries of the world oil market, Mr. MacEachen
Continue readingAlberta 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: 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
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