It’s been two and a half months since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic; infections and deaths will continue until a vaccine is found. Economists and global thinkers may disagree on what the new world will look like, but they’re aligned on one thing: it’s not too soon
Continue readingTag: Energy & Natural Resources
Susan on the Soapbox: Gaslighting 101: Mr Kenney Responds to Mr Trudeau’s Aid Package
Gaslighting: abusive behavior where an abuser manipulates information to make his victim question their sanity by using denial, misdirection, contradiction and misinformation to destabilize the victim and delegitimize their beliefs. – Wikipedia Last week, Prime Minister Trudeau announced $2.4 billion aid package for laid-off energy workers. It includes $1.7 billion
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Jason Kenney and the KXL Deal
Last week Mr Kenney threw away (yet again) his belief in the sanctity of the free market by announcing his government (ie. us) would invest $1.5 billion in TC Energy (formerly TCPL) to complete Keystone XL and provide a $6 billion loan guarantee. Saved by the Alberta government Mr Kenney
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Leader and His Team
It’s been a tough week for everyone; especially that “young, energetic and diverse team with deep experience” that Jason Kenney (his words by the way) appointed to Cabinet. Health Minister Shandro took it upon himself to turn up at a Calgary doctor’s house and yell at him for reposting a
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Impact of COVID-19 on Democracy
James Madison said tyranny arises “on some favourable emergency”. The COVID-19 pandemic is today’s “favourable emergency.” It’s being used by unscrupulous politicians as a smokescreen for undemocratic behavior in Alberta’s Legislature and an excuse for Jason Kenney to enlist the crème de la crème of right-wing conservative thinkers to reshape
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: COVID-19: A Study in Leadership
“The first role of government is to help people in crisis or need. That’s why we have government.”– John McCain Crisis separates the leaders from wannabes. We will be watching our leaders and wannabes very carefully over the next few months to see how they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Budget 2020 and the Snake
On Feb 27, 2020 the Kenney government released Budget 2020. The day it was tabled it was under water, less than two weeks later it drowned. It sank beneath the surface once and for all because of a snake (or some other creature) in a wild animal market in Wuhan,
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Teck Withdraws the Frontier Application
Let’s try to have a sensible conversation about Teck, shall we? On Sunday, Feb 23, 2020 Teck Resources Ltd pulled its application for the Frontier oil sands project. The federal government was supposed to give Frontier the green light, or not, on Tuesday. Jason Kenney blames the feds, saying “It
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Teck Decision Provides a Lesson on Handouts
For a long time Ms Soapbox has been trying figure out what Mr Kenney and the UCP mean when they talk about a “hand up” and a “handout”. She knew from the context that a “hand up” was good and a “handout” was bad, but she was never quite sure
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Why Is It Always Someone Else’s Fault?
When Jason Kenney convinced Albertans that our economy is solely dependent on fossil fuels (diversification is a luxury, remember) and government policy, not the global marketplace, drives our economy; he needed a scapegoat when our economy failed to grow. Cue Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau, although with the passage of
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: In the Eye of the Storm
Here we are in the eye of the storm, a place of relative calm surrounded by a ring of thunderstorms (known as the eye wall). We passed through one eye wall to get here and we’ll have to pass through another eye wall to get out. This won’t be easy
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Day We Demonstrated Outside the UCP AGM
“Public services are under attack. What do we do? Stand up, fight back!” – Protest cheer Ms Soapbox, her husband and her good friend from Edmonton joined the public school teachers, healthcare workers, and deeply concerned Albertans at the huge rally outside the Westin Hotel where the UCP were holding
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Fog of Politics
The fog of politics is like the fog of war. It’s hard to see what’s really going on. Albertans are choking in UCP fog. We wonder why Mr Kenney who came to power on the Thatcher/Reagan ideology—small government, low taxes and less red tape—is wasting valuable time and resources
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Anti-Alberta Energy Inquiry (Thank God for Lawyers)
In his book On Tyranny historian Timothy Snyder sets out twenty lessons from the 20th century to help democracies resist the “the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit.” These lessons are as relevant for Alberta as
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: How did we get to Wexit?
“Is this democracy’s death spiral? Are we falling, in this and other countries, into a lethal cycle of fury and reaction, that blocks the reasoned conversation on which civic life depends?” – George Monbiot The cycle of conservative fury and reaction hasn’t stopped for Albertans. It started with relentless attacks
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Greta Visits Alberta
“So today is Friday and as always, we are on Climate Strike, young people all around the globe are today sacrificing their education to bring attention to the climate and ecological emergency.”—Greta Thunberg On Friday my friend Elaine and I joined more than 10,000 Albertans to show our support for
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: When Goliath Thinks He’s David
Ms Soapbox and her daughter were admiring the statues in the Borghese Gallery in Rome when Amnesty International published an open letter expressing its concern that Mr Kenney’s decision to fund a $30 million war room and a $2.5 million public inquiry into foreign funding of environmental groups undermines and
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Albertans: “People of Destiny”
On Sept 1 Premier Kenney wished Alberta a happy birthday. Not once in his video message did he mention Canada. It was as if Alberta became a province in 1905 only to float around in No Mans Land for the next 114 years. He did, however, acknowledge Alberta’s connection to
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Mr Kenney’s Announcements on TMX and KXL
This just in from the how-to-make-a-good-news-story-sound-bad department: Mr Kenney’s government issued two press releases this week, one about the restart of construction of the TMX pipeline project, the other about the favourable ruling of the Nebraska Supreme Court on Keystone XL. Both of these announcements are about a good result
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: What Do They Want?
When Ms Soapbox read the “open letter” to Canadians published by three oil executives she was reminded of Sigmund Freud. Freud spent 30 years asking himself: what do women want? After 70 years of riding the boom/bust roller coaster with the energy industry Canadians are wondering the same thing:
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