Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has dropped his plans for referendums on taking over the Canada Pension Plan and replacing the RCMP with an easier-to-control provincial police force. For now. Finance Minister Travis Toews at yesterday’s news conference (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). But these two unpopular remnants of Stephen Harper’s notorious sovereignist
Continue readingTag: Jason Kenney
Alberta Politics: MLA Pat Rehn, cast into utter darkness by Jason Kenney last January, welcomed back to jittery UCP Caucus
On the morning of Jan. 14, a day after an Edmonton researcher revealed Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pat Rehn had spent almost all of April, May, June and July in Edmonton while constituents complained he was never seen in the riding, Premier Jason Kenney kicked the missing MLA out of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What possessed a prominent social conservative lawyer to hire a private investigator to follow a judge around?
What were John Carpay and the so-called Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms he heads trying to achieve when they hired a private detective to snoop on the chief justice of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench? The JCCF founder and president admitted yesterday it was his organization that hired the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: As Alberta opens for summer, hospital beds start to close – enjoy your flapjacks while they last!
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and his cadre of new Cowtown cabinet ministers will be flipping pancakes and engaging in cowboy cosplay at a Stampede breakfast in Harley Hotchkiss Gardens in downtown Calgary this morning. The premier’s Stampede breakfast, according to the notice from his press secretary yesterday, “celebrates Alberta being
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney shuffles his cabinet – and criticizing the boss, or John A. Macdonald, will not be tolerated!
Premier Jason Kenney’s cabinet shuffle yesterday had very little to do with supporting Alberta’s economic recovery and renewal, despite what the government would have you believe. This is not to say the claim in the official press release that “Alberta’s government is focused on Alberta’s Recovery Plan, a plan to
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: "A Kick In The Gut"
That’s what Alberta’s nurses are calling the move by Jason Kenney’s UCP to roll back their wages by 3%. In Kenneyland, contracts apparently are notional, not legal, documents. In 2020, a four-year contract with a 0% wage increase was signed, but Alberta Health Services, under the obvious direction of a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: PM Justin Trudeau, boyish, beardless and in campaign mode, shows up to bestow $1.5B on Calgary Green Line LRT
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
Continue readingAlberta Politics: There’s schadenfreude and irony aplenty in UCP outrage at anti-vaxxers’ Canada Day invective in Calgary
Most reasonable people would agree that getting up close and personal while shouting at a politician enjoying the sunshine with their spouse and young children on a national holiday is not an appropriate way to protest a government policy with which you disagree. Admit it, though, there was just a
Continue readingAlberta 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 readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan highlight how inequitable access to vaccines around the globe increases the risk of variants which will hurt everybody. Charles Schmidt takes note of the work being done to track variants – but also the massive blind spots which
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Christian Champion, Jason Kenney’s favourite curriculum advisor, risks becoming the UCP’s Tzeporah Berman
Jason Kenney did not seem pleased when the first reporter to ask a question at his June 18 news conference on his COVID-19 reopening plans raised the topic of offensive commentary about residential schools by the Alberta premier’s favourite curriculum advisor, Christian P. Champion. Dr. Champion, a PhD historian who
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta ‘public inquiry’ saga takes another confusing turn – but whatever’s going on, it’s a secret
Has Steve Allan finally gotten around to starting work looking into whether that supposed environmental conspiracy that became an issue during the 2019 Alberta election campaign is an actual thing? Or what? Late last week, Albertans learned the forensic accountant from Calgary who leads the so-called Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Kenney and the Autocrat’s Handbook
The Alberta Legislature ended the 2021 Spring Session on a particularly disturbing note. Members of the Opposition asked Jason Kenney to apologize for his role in pushing the niqab ban, a policy that contributed to growing Islamophobia, while he was a federal cabinet minister. Instead of an apology, Kenney stood
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Mission accomplished? Jason Kenney rolls the dice again on a swift reopening
Never mind the obvious risk or his expensive and expansive record of bad bets, Jason Kenney rolled the dice again yesterday on Alberta’s pandemic reopening. Delta variant or no variant, Alberta will be pulling the plug on almost all COVID-19 restrictions on July 1, Mr. Kenney confirmed yesterday – you
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Lotto Vaxx to include Mexican vacation prizes as bid to woo vaccine-hesitant UCP supporters nears peak irony
If “the Open for Summer Lottery is a once-in-a-lifetime response to a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic,” as Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro put it in a news release about vacation package prizes for Albertans willing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, what does that make Premier Jason Kenney’s $1.3-billion giveaway to TC Energy?
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Never mind the evidence, Jason Kenney insists he never called for a niqab ban in his Ottawa days
“I’ve always said that Canada is a country that protects and respects religious freedom and pluralism, and the government has no business regulating what people wear…” — Jason Kenney, yesterday. “Whaaat?” — Everybody else, also yesterday. Former prime minister Stephen Harper (Photo: Office of the Prime Minister). Is Jason Kenney’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Lotto Vaxx: Can the Kenney Government give away cash money without seriously messing up?
As a purely cynical effort to distract voters from the many failings of the Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government, it would be hard to top the decision announced yesterday to give away the first of three $1-million vaccination lottery prizes on the day the province drops most of its COVID-19
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Fighting Racism in Kenney’s Alberta
Sometimes it pays to sit through a 53 minute 42 second Kenney press conference because something unexpected will happen at the very end. In this case it happened at the 46:24 mark. Last week in the wake of the horrific attack on the Afzaal family in London, premier Kenney and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Tom Parkin calls out Jason Kenney’s defence of genocide and its architects in an attempt to keep his party’s white supremacist base onside. And PressProgress notes that Kenney’s insistence on turning an in-person Stampede into the greatest summer outbreak ever has large
Continue readingAlberta Politics: About that cash lottery idea for Albertans who sign up to get their COVID-19 jabs – cognitive dissonance, anyone?
It sort of makes sense that a fellow who gambled away $1.3 billion of other people’s money on the U.S. presidential horserace last summer would like the idea of a lottery to get vaccine skeptical Albertans to roll up their sleeves for a COVID-19 jab in sufficient numbers to justify
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