Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alisha Haridasani Gupta discusses how the anti-mask movement has developed from a culture of toxic masculinity. And Umair Haque points out the economic and cultural factors that have resulted in the U.S. and the UK standing out among wealthy countries in their woeful
Continue readingTag: Jason Kenney
Alberta Politics: Premier Jason Kenney, in isolation, blows off criticism of the lackadaisical UCP approach to COVID-19 restrictions as ‘political pressure’
It’s not very reassuring to learn Alberta Premier Jason Kenney treats calls for stricter measures to control resurgent COVID-19 infections as “political pressure.” But yesterday, after Alberta on Wednesday surpassed 400 new cases in a single day for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, Mr. Kenney did just
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Handpicked UCP advisors call for mention of residential schools to be erased from primary grades’ social studies curriculum
A recommendation by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s handpicked curriculum advisors to strip all mention of residential schools from the province’s Kindergarten-to-Grade 4 curriculum “will perpetuate systemic racism through whitewashing,” says Melissa Purcell, the Alberta Teachers Association’s staff officer for Indigenous education. “The Indian Residential School system was created to erase
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On failing health
The news that Jason Kenney’s UCP has approved a resolution demanding privatized health care – coupled with Kenney’s refusal to reject the concept – has been rightly recognized as a dangerous development in Alberta. But it hasn’t received much attention yet in Saskatchewan’s provincial election campaign. And there’s significant reason
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP launches ambitious legislative session, with 20 bills packed into six weeks and no time for COVID-19
An ambitious six-week fall sitting of the Alberta Legislature commenced in Edmonton yesterday with Premier Jason Kenney telling the House during Question Period that his government isn’t about to publish any updated COVID-19 modelling. As Opposition Leader Rachel Notley argued, it would be useful to know what the experts say
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Second COVID-19 wave rolls into Alberta as Premier Jason Kenney continues to emphasize ‘personal responsibility’
Alberta has now passed a significant milestone — more COVID-19 cases than at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, 3,138 compared to 3,022 on April 30. There were 898 new cases over the weekend if you count Friday, as Alberta Health Services does, and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Agustin Carstens discusses the need for our recovery from the coronavirus pandemic to include meaningful planning for the economy to come, not only an attempt to shovel money at existing businesses regardless of their future prospects. And Chris Giles writes that this may
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 readingSusan on the Soapbox: UCP AGM 2020: Awards Night
The UCP AGM is such a bizarre event. Sure, there were the typical UCP policies to create an Alberta Pension Plan, collect Alberta taxes here in Alberta, replace the RCMP with a provincial police force, “so there” referendums to show the Feds Alberta is miffed about transfer payments, and policies
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 readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It would never win a ‘QCJO.’
Let’s face facts, you rush things and you screw up. Mind you, I also found it funny. It makes you wonder just how many Alberta voters made the same mistake. Did you think it was Alberta’s Jason Kenny(stet) who had become a husband and father? It is unlikely that we
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Temptation to be Tory.
It appears that the leopard is still unable to change his spots. At least conservatives such as Ontario’s Doug Ford and Alberta’s Jason Kenney fail to stray long from their expected courses. Mean buggers, both of them. They are conservative to the core. Take Jason Kenney. Since college in San
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Throwing health care into chaos isn’t easy, but the UCP’s political staffers are willing to sacrifice to do it
Throwing Alberta’s health care system into chaos isn’t easy. It takes hard work and sacrifice. But thanks to the United Conservative Party’s front-line fighters in the war against fair and efficient public health care, what even Ralph Klein couldn’t achieve is finally happening: Clinical chaos! Hospital havoc! Medical mayhem! Just
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Math is hard, but not so hard you can’t spot the holes in Tyler Shandro’s cost-saving shell game
Math, apparently, remains hard. Except, perhaps, calculus of a political sort. The real Mr. Shandro (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). On its face, Health Minister Tyler Shandro’s claim that firing 11,000 low-paid public sector health care employees will save about $600 million makes little sense. Others have done the same calculation and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The UCP, in the middle of its war on doctors, picks a fight with nurses too
It seemed crazy for the United Conservative Party Government of Premier Jason Kenney to pick a fight with the province’s doctors in the middle of a pandemic. Still, if you believe the Roman proverb that fortune favours the brave and look at the world from Mr. Kenney’s ideological perspective, you
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Young Ben Harper gets a well-heeled start in politics, thanks to dear old dad’s former lieutenant
Give Ben Harper’s old man his due: he got his son a better first job in Alberta than the elder Mr. Harper’s pop got him. Readers with functioning short-term memories will recall that not so long ago much was made of the fact Stephen Harper’s father got the former Conservative
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alisha Haridasani Gupta discusses why so many women have been excluded from the workforce during the course of the coronavirus pandemic. And Kathryn Marshall comments on the epidemic of violence against women – as well as the need to intervene before abuse reaches
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On irrational forces
As Saskatchewan voters consider our options in this month’s provincial election, Alberta’s UCP could hardly be more clear in offering reminders of the cost of putting reckless right-wingers in charge. And this week, the most prominent development on that front has been the decision to pay $2 million for some
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Matt Gurney laments Ontario’s utter failure to use months of lead time and information from around the world to make any meaningful preparations for a foreseeable fall wave of the coronavirus, while Bruce Arthur notes that Doug Ford is too busy denying the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Shopping Alberta’s Future: Boycott-loving UCP is shocked, just shocked, when the tactic is aimed at its supporters
Alberta’s United Conservatives: They can dish it out, but they can’t take it. Well, Premier Jason Kenney’s UCP wasn’t the first political party to discover turnabout is fair play, and it’s unlikely to be the last. United Conservative Party Caucus Deputy Executive Director Ryan Hastman in 2011 when he was
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