Who can forget the “Big Society”? Just about everyone, it turns out. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Photo: Justin Trudeau/Flickr). “The Big Society,” cooked up by a senior aide to former British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, was the ridiculous idea neoliberal governments could shuffle off their key responsibility for assuring
Continue readingTag: Danielle Smith
Alberta Politics: Hinterland Who’s Who: Hear the haunting call of the wild Deep South Alberta UCP MLA …
With friends like Drew Barnes, does the United Conservative Party really need enemies in these troubles times? The right-wing Frankenparty may have won the 2019 provincial election convincingly soon after it was cobbled together from the fringy Wildrose Party and the old Progressive Conservatives by former Harper Government cabinet minister
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Ted Morton, worst premier Alberta never had, has had another big idea, this time about a sales tax
From time to time it’s worth reminding ourselves that Ted Morton is the worst premier Alberta never had. That’s because now and then Dr. Morton, now 71, pops up like the proverbial bad penny with some scheme so ridiculous we need to give our heads a shake and recall this
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta’s UCP deploys the red tape weapon: an example from the War on Education
Never let it be said Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government hates red tape. On the contrary, Premier Jason Kenney’s Government loves the stuff – at least if you define red tape as most dictionaries do, to wit, excessive bureaucratic rules that make it more difficult to get stuff done. Advanced
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Things just keeping getting weirder in Alberta as Jason Kenney sings the Moody Blues!
If a tree falls in the forest and Jason Kenney isn’t there to hear it, is it still the sound of European environmentalists and the Rockefellers plotting against Alberta’s ethical oil industry? Is it still Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s fault? Your blogger only spent three days on B.C.’s misty and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What’s with the United Conservative Party’s emerging fury at nurses, of all people?
What’s with the sudden hate on for nurses by United Conservative Party supporters? It comes from somewhere. Your average UCP internet troll doesn’t just come up with this stuff on his – or occasionally her – own. The traditional Conservative approach to attacking nurses and other predominantly public and female
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fifty-four forty or what? Is this Wexitopia’s last territorial demand in British Columbia?
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any nuttier out here in Wexitopia, former Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith took to the Twittersphere to promote a territorial corridor from Alberta to the B.C. Coast. I know what you’re thinking, but as regular readers of this blog well understand, I never
Continue readingAlberta Politics: First reading of Bill 207 reveals zero UCP votes for women’s reproductive rights
Here are two important statistics about the United Conservative Party’s Bill 207, the Conscience Rights (Health Care Providers) Protection Act, which was introduced in the Alberta Legislature yesterday … Just a minute, you say, Bill 207 is a private member’s bill, brought forward by Peace River UCP MLA Dan Williams,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Wexit’ isn’t likely, but that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous
“Wexit” is dangerous, but not because it’s ever likely to come to pass. The economic case for Prairie separatism is so obviously lame — because of what’s happened to the world market for fossil fuels and because people who actually live where there’s tidewater aren’t interested and never will be
Continue readingAlberta Politics: This just in from washed-up Wildroser: Alberta separation if necessary, but not necessarily separation!
It looks as if Rob Anderson has found a new gig — Alberta separation if necessary, but not necessarily Alberta separation. For those of you scratching your heads and asking the most obvious question — Rob Who? — Mr. Anderson is one of the few Alberta politicians to have crossed
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Court’s decision to turn off Alberta’s turn-off-the-taps law should surprise no one
Alberta’s so-called turn-off-the-taps law was pretty obviously unconstitutional when Rachel Notley’s New Democratic Party passed it and it continued to be unconstitutional when Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party had it proclaimed into law. So yesterday’s ruling of the Federal Court of Canada granting British Columbia a temporary injunction blocking application
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP Government, with no apparent short-term Plan B, seeks leave to appeal injunction suspending Bill 9
Unsurprisingly, the United Conservative Party Government has filed notice of appeal on the temporary injunction granted by the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench that halted application of Bill 9, playing havoc with Premier Jason Kenney’s strategy for putting off a crisis with the province’s public sector unions until after the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Postmedia pours it to bring home the bacon for Calgary’s hockey billionaires
You’ve got to know that when the likes of Licia Corbella, Danielle Smith, Chris Nelson, Rick Bell, and sundry other right-wing Postmedia bloviators all want you to think that now is the perfect time for the Calgary Saddledome to be demolished and replaced by the (Ken) King Dome, it probably
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s time for a frank talk about the T-word: Just who’s advocating treason here anyway?
It’s time, my fellow Canadians, for us to have a frank talk about the T-word. Albertans who have been paying attention to politics for the past few years cannot have missed the fact certain elements of the right-wing ideological ecosystem have been sloppy and irresponsible in their use of terms
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney fiddles (with climate policy) while Alberta burns
It is an irony, though not a particularly satisfying one to observe, that while Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party Government moves swiftly to repeal Alberta’s carbon tax, the province is aflame, with more than 5,000 Albertans required to leave homes and communities in imminent danger of destruction. It is
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Has former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith become a (not so) secret admirer of NDP Premier Rachel Notley?
Danielle Smith nearly became the first woman to be elected premier of Alberta. As leader of the Wildrose Party, which despite her efforts was never quite successful at portraying itself as a party of the centre right, she came close, tantalizingly close. Alas for Ms. Smith, the Wildrose Party’s opportunity
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Prodigal Roughneck returns – Bernard the Roughneck throws his hardhat into the ring for FCP in Grande Prairie
The good news for Alberta’s Freedom Conservative Party is that it’s recruited a national figure as one of its candidates. The bad news for the FCP may be the national figure in question is Neal Bernard Hancock, better known as “Bernard the Roughneck.” A three-paragraph news story on Mr. Hancock’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Beware the Ides of March: Brian Jean, Jason Kenney, Joe Anglin and the annals of Alberta conservatism
I suppose today, the day before the date in 44 BC made famous by the demise of Julius Caesar, would be an appropriate moment to remind all potential victims of political plots … beware the Ides of March! It says something for both the ruthlessness and absent likeability of United
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Happy New Year! What’s Brian Jean up to? Is the former Wildrose leader plotting a comeback?
Happy New Year! So, now that it’s 2019, what’s Brian Jean up to? Maybe it’s just me, but he’s sure acting like a guy who’s thinking about being a political candidate again! You remember Brian Jean, don’t you? He used to be the leader of the Wildrose Party. Indeed, he
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Peak Separatism has passed in Alberta, no thanks to Postmedia’s sly campaign to undermine the Trudeau Government
Happy Holidays! It may take a few days for its perpetrators to admit this, but Alberta has all but certainly already passed Peak Separatism. The current 2018 spasm of Alberta separatist sentiment peaked late last week, probably some time Thursday afternoon. By the time we’re all saying Happy New Year
Continue reading