PHOTOS: Down on the Alberta farm, successive Conservative governments have made sure farm animals had more rights than farm workers. Below: Alberta Labour Minister Lori Sigurdson and Agriculture Minister Oneil Carlier, who may be about to fix this. It’s an embarrassing blot on the record of successive Progressive Conservative governments
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Alberta Politics: Are the Wildrosers eyeing public service pensions? It’s worth keeping an eye on what they get up to in Cowtown
ILLUSTRATIONS: Can the Wildrose Party control its Tea Party fringe? We’ll get a sense tomorrow and Saturday when the party considers its members’ policy proposals. Below: Party Leader Brian Jean, at right, in Terminator mode; with Wildrose Finance Critic Derek Fildebrandt in a stunt with big signs inspired by Mr.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta Budget 2015: You’d almost think Rachel Notley’s NDP has concluded its job is to govern this province!
PHOTOS: Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci answers reporters’ questions after delivering the NDP’s first Budget Speech in the Alberta Legislature yesterday. (CBC Photo) Below: Wildrose Opposition Leader Brian Jean and Finance Critic Derek Fildebrandt also answer questions – but only from reporters who aren’t on the Wildrose Party’s Enemies List.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: NDP brings to an end Alberta PCs’ bizarre experiment with one-person heath-care rule
PHOTOS: Alberta Health Minister Sarah Hoffman announces the restoration of normal board governance to Alberta Health Services at the provincial Legislature yesterday. Below: Newly appointed AHS Board members Linda Hughes, Glenda Yeates and Brenda Hemmelgarn. Below them: Premier Rachel Notley on the big screen at AUPE’s convention, as union President
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fireworks notably absent during final Edmonton royalty review public consultation
PHOTOS: Royalty review chair Dave Mowat, top left, addresses the small and polite crowd that showed up in Edmonton for the panel’s open house last night. Below: Mr. Mowat again and committee members Peter Tertzakian and Leona Hanson. The biggest challenge the Notley Government’s royalty review committee faces may turn
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Now that CAPP’s president has called for quick energy royalty review, Wildrose and PC leaders can be expected to fall into line
PHOTOS: Never mind the Opposition parties, guys like these want Alberta’s energy royalty review to get cracking right now! Below: CAPP President Tim McMillan, Wildrose Opposition Leader Brian Jean, Progressive Conservative Party Leader Ric McIver and NDP Labour Minister Lori Sigurdson. While Alberta’s New Democratic Party government has been pushing
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta Politics: NDP can’t afford to be slow to respond to Wildrose attacks
‘Risky,’ ‘ideological,’ ‘experimental,’ and ‘uncertain’ are all words that the conservative Wildrose Party opposition is using to describe Alberta’s New Democratic Party government.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Craig B. Chandler: He’s baaaack (in Ontario)! And he’s gonna get Linda McQuaig … elected!
PHOTOS: A screen grab of Craig B. Chandler telling immigrants to Alberta to vote Conservative or get lost back in 2007. Below: NDP Toronto Centre candidate Linda McQuaig. Brace yourselves, Toronto! Craig B. Chandler’s heading your way to campaign against Linda McQuaig, the NDP’s candidate in the Toronto Centre riding,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Sonic privatization mystery: what were the Tories thinking?
PHOTOS: More medical lab techs examining specimens, still not illustrated exactly as they’re likely to appear nowadays. Below: Progressive Conservative health ministers Gary Mar, Iris Evans, Stephen Mandel and Fred Horne, every one a would-be privatizer and every one in a picture personally snapped by your blogger. Viewed with 20/20
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta Politics: NDP needs to explain why they changed their mind on Carbon Capture and Storage
“The Tories have bet $2 billion taxpayer dollars and our oil and gas industry’s sustainability on CCS. There’s no scientific consensus that the technology is safe in the long term. Any report of a failed CCS project should have the… Continue Reading →
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alison Redford is back, relaxed and ready to rumble with anyone who blames her for her former party’s problems
PHOTOS: A screen shot of former Alberta Premier Alison Redford as she appeared in the CBC’s interview yesterday, relaxed and confident. Below: Ms. Redford on the day in October 2011 she was chosen as the Progressive Conservative Party’s leader and premier of Alberta, and on the day in March 2014
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Reunite Alberta’s right? The Great Wildrose Experiment is going to be hard to undo
PHOTOS: Wildrose Party Leader Brian Jean at the Calgary Stampede. Too country to be electable in the new Alberta? (Photo from Mr. Jean’s Flickr account.) Below: Former Harper strategist Ken Boessenkool and former Harper speechwriter Paul Bunner, both involved in Alberta’s “reunite the right” movement. (Photos grabbed from their Facebook
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Something new, and probably something old too: Reflections on the meaning of Alberta throne speeches, NDP and Tory
PHOTOS: Now that’s a throne speech! The Queen addresses Parliament in the Senate Chamber in Ottawa in 1957 as prime minister John Diefenbaker, on her right, listens to his government’s plans, no doubt with a great sense of satisfaction. Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Alberta Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: NDP health minister’s decision to drop Tories’ phony AHS ‘decentralization’ is no loss to anyone
PHOTOS: Alberta Health Services, as originally envisaged by the Tories and described by the Wildrose Party. Below: Another AHS reorganization as seen by the NDP. Below that train wreck, Alberta Health Minister Sarah Hoffman. Alberta’s two right-wing opposition parties are said to be in a lather because of Health Minister
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta Politics: Navigator hires Notley’s press secretary. Former NDP, Wildrose, PC MLAs go into business.
The realm of government relations and lobbying is a world that most Albertans will never be exposed to. The industry of influencing elected officials and government policy as practiced by private lobbying companies and government relations departments has been turned on its head by… Continue Reading →
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Sunshine, ice cream and a mellow multitude of 10,000 or so usher in the NDP era in Alberta
PHOTOS: Here’s my shot of the crowd as it began to break up after the ceremony had ended and I’d managed to run upstream to the steps of the Legislature. The Canadian Press photo below shows what the crowd looked like as Premier Rachel Notley and her cabinet were sworn
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley sets transition schedule for NDP government, gives impression grownups are in charge in Alberta again
Premier Designate Rachel Notley addresses reporters in the Alberta Legislature Building’s media room yesterday. (CBC photo.) Below: MLA Deborah Drever, new Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell. If Alberta’s Conservatives weren’t worried about the long-term effects of their surprise defeat in the May 5 general election, by gosh they should be now!
Continue readingAlberta Politics: So many premiers, so little time, so little space – it’s time to end the tradition of commissioning their portraits in oils
PHOTOS: Your blogger’s proposal for a portrait of outgoing premier Jim Prentice. Below: The modest photographic gallery of premiers in the B.C. Legislature in Victoria; a detail from the same wall showing, clockwise from top left, premiers W.A.C. Bennett, Bill Bennett, Bill Vander Zalm and Dave Barrett; the remaining space
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Parson’ Manning, in the pulpit, preaches a formula of failure to Alberta’s New Democrats
PHOTOS: Preston Manning, Godfather of the Canadian right. Below: Alberta Premier Designate Rachel Notley, Liberal prime minister Wilfrid Laurier, Social Credit premier E.C. Manning and United Farmers of Alberta leader Henry Wise Wood. Preaching from the highest pulpit in the land, the opinion pages of the mighty Globe and Mail,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Whither Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives? Nowhere, probably …
PHOTOS: Potential supporters eye all that’s left of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party, metaphorically speaking, after Jim Prentice got finished driving it off the tracks. Below: Mr. Prentice and Premier Designate Rachel Notley. Former premier Ed Stelmach’s sound advice notwithstanding, it seems unlikely Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives have much of a
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