Pandemic cases in Alberta are breaking records. CBC reporter Robson Fletcher’s daily accounting of the latest Alberta Health Services estimates indicated that probable and confirmed new cases of COVID-19 reached 1,888 yesterday – surpassing the previous single-day record, set on Dec. 4 during the second wave, of 1,874. CBC reporter
Continue readingTag: Jason Kenney
Alberta Politics: Kenney Government hastily cobbles together ‘working parents’ advisory panel’ to seek ways to undermine federal child care proposal
On April 19, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the Trudeau Government plans to spend $30 billion on a national child care plan with a target of reducing parents’ costs to $10 a day per child in five years. On April 22, Alberta Children’s Services Minister Rebecca Schulz announced that the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Kenney’s surrender to COVID: Has the Great Barrington Declaration become the Great Edmonton Declaration?
Did the Great Barrington Declaration just transition into the Great Edmonton Declaration? Remember that thing? The now discredited notion – with the thinnest veneer of transitory scientific respectability – that everything would be OK if we just shielded the old folks from COVID-19 and ignored almost everyone else while the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Kinney versus Kenney: Can a progressive gadfly offer unhappy Albertans a way to send their premier a message?
Progressive gadfly Duncan Kinney, executive director of the progressive news and advocacy organization behind the Progress Report newsletter and podcast, is the first Albertan to file his papers with Elections Alberta to run in the Kenney Government’s “Senate Nominee Election.” Such Senate votes – they’re not really elections as electing
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 73: Alberta politics is never boring
There is rarely a week in Alberta politics that is boring. On this episode of the Daveberta Podcast we discuss the recent fundraising numbers that show the NDP crushed the UCP in the first three months of 2021 and what that could mean for the rest of the year. And
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Kenney vs Freeland: National Child Care
“…this is going to be the most powerful step change in the Canadian economy since we did the NAFTA deal. It will really drive our economic productivity, our growth.” – Chrystia Freeland describing the Feds $10/day child care plan.* You’d think Jason Kenney, the premier who says the economy is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Rich Mendes reports on new research showing that the longstanding focus on physical distance as a means of avoiding the indoor transmission of COVID-19 has been misplaced. Erin Anderssen and Marcus Gee examine some of Canada’s hardest-hit intensive care units to show
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Small donors, potential election volunteers, flock to Alberta NDP as disillusionment with Jason Kenney grows
Alberta’s New Democratic Party raised twice as much as the ruling United Conservative Party in the first quarter of 2021. And we’re not just talking about chicken feed here, people. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party, as he is often seen – surrounded by flags (Photo:
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: A Man of Half-Measures
“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”—Winston Churchill. Lives and… When he’s not on the front line fighting covid, Dr Joe Vipond is busy analyzing the data and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Erin O’Toole’s startling course change on carbon taxes suggests Jason Kenney’s influence over Conservatives is waning
Federal Opposition Leader Erin O’Toole’s screeching smuggler’s turn on carbon taxes yesterday likely wouldn’t have been possible without the current disarray of Alberta’s Kenney Government. When word of Mr. O’Toole’s plan to put a price on carbon as part of the Conservative election platform leaked to the CBC on Wednesday
Continue readingAlberta Politics: More flimflam than usual in yesterday’s four-province news conference touting small nuclear reactors
By recycling some old news about their joint project to promote “small modular reactors” yesterday, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick have proved dubious ideas in Canada have a half-life worthy of a uranium isotope. Well, maybe not quite that persistent. Some of those suckers can hang around for four
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Another Alberta spring day: Premier lectures, Speaker apologizes, dissident pastor’s secret sermon revealed as anti-vaxxers chant ‘lock ’er up!’
Jason Kenney had barely decided what to do about his United Conservative Party’s dissident COVID-denial caucus when a mob of three or four hundred anti-vaxxers turned up on the steps of the Alberta Legislature yesterday and started yelling that Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw ought to be locked
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: A Broken Clock
is right twice a day. Or so they say. In this case Jason Kenney actually gets something right. This is of course to people protesting the fencing off of a church (from what I understand). These people decided to trespass on Enoch Cree Nation land, threaten and assault their members,
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others (The Alberta Edition)
In KenneyLand (aka Alaberta or Bertabama), it seems that there are two sets of rules at play. First, let me introduce you to the saga of GraceLife Church in Parkland County. This organization has been holding services and ignoring public health orders since Fall of 2020. The province has
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 72: The COVID 18 and the Curriculum Catastrophe
Alberta politics moves at a mile a minute and there’s no time to waste. On this episode of the Daveberta Podcast, we dive into the United Conservative Caucus rebellion against mild public health restrictions to fight COVID-19 and challenges to Premier Jason Kenney’s leadership, the controversial draft K-6 curriculum, and
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Does Mr Kenney Lie Awake at Night?
“With respect to MLAs who have stated their position, in this province we believe in freedom of speech. We believe in democracy.” – Jason Kenney after 16 UCP MLAs challenged his public health measures. Does Premier Kenney lie awake at night wondering how he got here? He should, because
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: 48 Hrs In Alberta Politics
The last couple of days in Alberta have been interesting … not good, but interesting. It all starts with a bunch of rural UCP MLAs putting out a joint letter complaining loudly about the return to a much stricter set of restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19. In
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Things fall apart? 18 UCP MLAs join full-blown rebellion against Alberta’s effort to control COVID-19 third wave
Having opted Tuesday for a return to restrictions on some business and social activities to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the face of virulent mutations of the coronavirus, Premier Jason Kenney immediately faced a full-blown rebellion yesterday by 15 members of his United Conservative Caucus in the Alberta Legislature,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: On a wing and a prayer, Alberta reluctantly adopts stricter measures to counter frightening upswing in coronavirus variants
Faced with rising infection rates and a frightening upswing in coronavirus variants, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney reluctantly announced a return to somewhat stricter measures to control the spread of COVID-19 in the province yesterday. Half-hearted though the reimposed restrictions announced at yesterday afternoon’s COVID-19 news conference may seem to advocates
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Canute-like Kenney confronts Canadians.
In the supposedly moralistic story of King Canute of the North Sea Empire, Canute was demonstrating that even a king could not control the tides. It is somewhat strange that premier Jason Kenney of Alberta never paid attention to this story when in grade school. Instead, Kenney challenges the facts
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