John Carpay is a clever man. The high-profile Alberta social conservative leader puts careful thought into what he says and how he says it. A lawyer by profession, he constructs his sentences precisely and deliberately. He knows exactly what he is saying when he says something. So one has to
Continue readingTag: Jason Kenney
Alberta Politics: Has anyone thought about the impact regime change in Venezuela will have on Alberta’s oilpatch? It won’t be pretty!
In the stampede by Canadian politicians of all ideological stripes to support Venezuela’s self-declared “interim president,” has anyone given even a nanosecond’s thought to the impact the handover of the troubled South American petrostate’s government to Juan Guaido would have on Alberta’s oilpatch? It won’t be pretty. The federal government’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jonathan Watts interviews David Wallace-Wells about the existential threat posed by climate breakdown – and our gross failure to act in the face of a disaster of our own making: The sense of speed comes across very strongly. It is as if
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Unveiling of portrait of Jim Prentice, premier of Alberta, accompanied by warm words and a non-partisan moment
A dignified official portrait of Jim Prentice, last Progressive Conservative premier of Alberta, was unveiled in the Alberta Legislature yesterday. It’s a very nice piece of official portraiture that does justice to the beautiful third-floor hallway of the Alberta Legislature’s Rotunda where portraits of the province’s former premiers hang. Its
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP Leader Jason Kenney, political lifer elected at 29, mocks 29-year-old NDP candidate with sophomoric and offensive joke
I hear, “a gay 19 year old.” Quite clearly. I speak, of course, of Jason Kenney’s notorious cheap shot in Cochrane last Thursday, in which he mischaracterized the NDP’s newly acclaimed candidate in the Airdrie-Cochrane riding for a few laughs. Speaking at a United Conservative Party rally at an upscale
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: CAPP Meet Mr Kenney
Recently Mr Kenney told municipal leaders in Cochrane that in addition to multi-billion dollar deficits and rising debt levels Alberta was drowning in red tape. To illustrate his point Kenney said it takes a week to approve a conventional oil well in Texas but a year or more to approve
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Edward Luce writes about the reckless greed of the U.S.’ billionaire class which includes far too many people willing to see Donald Trump re-elected as the price of avoiding paying a fair share toward a civilized society. And Noah Smith compares a wealth
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Say No to Bubble Boy
There are already more than enough galling stories circulating in Alberta’s political scene to emphasize why Jason Kenney and his party are grossly unfit to exercise any power. But it’s worth pointing out one more problem which matches the combination of deeply-rooted corruption and austerian disregard for the public good
Continue readingAlberta Politics: A little homily for churchgoers: Thou shalt do no tweeting from thy pew!
Preachers of many faiths wonder if anyone in their congregations ever pays attention to what they have to say. That complaint was common in clerical circles long before everybody had a direct line to the Internet, instead of God, right in their pocket or purse. Could social media be about
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 27: When is Alberta’s next election? And will Don Iveson be the next Prime Minister of Canada?
In this episode of the Daveberta Podcast, we stare deep into our crystal ball to figure out when Premier Rachel Notley will call Alberta’s next election, dissect some of the key messages from the party leaders, discuss how the United Conservative Party reacted to the controversy over Jason Kenney’s residency,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Justice Minister needs to ask for RCMP investigation of Election Commissioner’s concerns, and quickly
Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley needs to ask the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate concerns raised by Alberta Election Commissioner Lorne Gibson that someone is trying to interfere with his office’s inquiry into alleged irregularities in the 2017 United Conservative Party leadership race. Mr. Gibson expressed his alarm in a
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: An Election is Coming, Some Policies Would Be Nice
UCP leader Jason Kenney wants Rachel Notley to call the election on Feb 1, 2019 so Albertans can go to the polls in the first week of March. He has scheduled an election readiness conference from Feb 15 to 17, after that it’s full steam ahead…except for the fact the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP leader’s tweet fumbles response to Islamophobic group’s harassment of worshipers at Edmonton mosque
Perhaps United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney needs to engage someone new to compose his tweets for him. Mr. Kenney is a bright guy, so I’m assuming for reasons that will soon become apparent he doesn’t come up with his own contributions to Twitter, the antisocial medium. Last fall, when
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney then and Now: UCP critics face abuse now, unlike a certain critic of PC housing allowances back in 1992
Public anger at politicians who bill taxpayers for their living expenses when in reality they live close to their work is nothing new in Alberta. Abusive attacks on their critics, up to and including death threats, are new. Back in April 1992, Progressive Conservative municipal affairs minster Dick Fowler, who
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney’s domestic arrangements: A wonkish look at how MPs identify their primary and secondary residences
Members of the Canadian Parliament like Jason Kenney in the days he was MP for Calgary Midnapore are permitted to charge expenses for a secondary residence, either in the National Capital Region or within 100 kilometres of the riding they represent. To avail themselves of this benefit, MPs like Mr.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Duffy 2.0? Ottawa lawyer’s allegations about then-MP Jason Kenney’s expenses sets off Internet tempest
Allegations about United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney’s Calgary domestic and travel arrangements during the years he was the Conservative MP for Calgary Midnapore circulating on social media over the weekend had turned into a full-blown Internet tempest by last night. Parliamentary expenditure reports and flight records as well as
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Will Canadian Taxpayers Federation credibility suffer from fine for failing to register as third-party election advertiser?
The $6,000 administrative penalty levied against the Canadian Taxpayers Federation for failing to register as a third-party advertiser under Alberta’s election financing law is a long-overdue official recognition of the true role the self-described “tax watchdog” plays in Canadian politics. The CTF has been disproportionately influential in Canadian political discourse
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Derek Fildebrandt and that rule of law thing: it’s for pipeline protesters, not law-abiding gun owners …
It shouldn’t surprise us, I suppose, that Derek Fildebrandt has publicly gone all Charlton Heston on us. I speak, of course, of the recently rebranded Freedom Conservative Party leader’s Hestonesque Twitter outburst yesterday in response to talk the federal Liberal government might actually make an election issue out of banning
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Former UCP MLA warns more scandals are coming for party as election nears … but don’t count on it unravelling fast enough!
It would be a huge mistake to count on the United Conservative Party unravelling fast enough to blow its big lead in public opinion polls by the time the next Alberta provincial election is upon us, which will be almost before we know it. It is a virtual certainty that even
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Blown off by Jason Kenney’s UCP last fall, former Wildrose MLA Rick Strankman heads for the Independent benches
When this blog’s entirely fictional Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy “The Geek” Porcospino celebrated the first birthday of the United Conservative Party last summer by setting the next year’s resignation odds for each of the party’s remaining caucus members, he gave Drumheller-Stettler MLA Rick Strankman only 20-1 odds of heading for the
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