Preston Manning is the bad penny of Canadian politics. So no one should be surprised he’s turned up again! Much good rarely comes from Mr. Manning’s interventions in politics, which never seem to end, so don’t expect positive results from his appointment by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney to what might
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The Daveberta Podcast: Episode 43: The UCP’s pick-a-fight budget
David Climenhaga from AlbertaPolitics.ca joins Dave and Adam on this episode of the Daveberta Podcast to discuss the cuts in Alberta’s provincial budget and the United Conservative Party’s growing list of public enemies, the federal election fallout in Alberta, and how the mainstream media is reporting on the Wexit group
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – George Monbiot makes the case for popular sovereignty mechanisms to supplement systems of representative government which fail to reflect the will of the people. And Ian Bremmer reports on Chile’s mass protest seeking a public voice to end economic unfairness. – Katrina
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Green Party candidate drops out in Edmonton Strathcona, urges supporters to switch to NDP
Michael Kalmanovitch, the Green Party of Canada Candidate in the tight Edmonton-Strathcona race, told an all-candidates’ forum at the riding’s King’s University College yesterday that he is dropping out and asking his supporters to vote strategically for the NDP’s Heather McPherson. “Based on polling projections, it has become clear that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Those elusive Liberals of Edmonton Strathcona: Where did Mainstreet’s pollsters find them?
Volunteers for NDP candidate Heather McPherson’s campaign in the federal Edmonton-Strathcona riding are asking themselves, where the heck are those mobs of Liberal voters one pollster claims to have identified in the riding? Door-knocking in 2019 in the progressive-leaning riding on the south side of the North Saskatchewan River feels
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Grace Blakeley writes that class politics are making a sorely-needed return, raising the prospect that people might again start to make gains against corporate forces: The reemergence of class politics is not a fad; it is a response to the material conditions created
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 40: Alberta Politics and Federal Election Q&A
We are back from our summer break with a special Question and Answer edition of the Daveberta Podcast. Dave dives deep into our mailbag to answer some of the great Alberta politics and federal election questions our listeners have sent in over the past few weeks. Thanks to our producer, Adam
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Calgary Flames Arena–Have We Got A Deal For You!!!
To paraphrase Jane Jacobs, the majority of Calgary City Council regard Calgarians as “empty-headed young ladies whose main duties were to see that their nails were clean, their curves properly distributed and their behavior seemly.” These councillors refuse to allow adequate public consultation on their decision to spend $275 million
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: A Letter to My Councillor About the Flames Deal
Dear Councillor Woolley, I am a constituent living in your riding. Thank you for bringing forward a motion to extend the time available for public consultation on the proposed deal with the Calgary Flames. I am deeply disappointed that the Mayor and most of Council rejected your motion. The
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Irony is dead but doublethink thrives as Calgary opts to cut services and subsidize hockey billionaires at once
Really, what can one say about the deal the City of Calgary struck with the Flames professional hockey club yesterday for the former Cowtown’s taxpayers to subsidize half the cost of a new arena for the team to the tune of $225 million at the same moment as this city
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Senatorial Selection Act explained – a farcical, faux exercise, for sure, but a clever one
Never mind the details for a moment, this is all you really need to know about Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s constitutionally meaningless Senate elections law, introduced as Bill 13 in the provincial Legislature yesterday. Mr. Kenney has presented Alberta’s progressives, of whom there are many, and the politicians they support
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brexit Redux: Looking back at Jason Kenney’s strange comments when the U.K. shot itself in both feet
Back in June 2016, hours after Britons had narrowly voted to leave the European Union, a lot of Albertans scratched their heads at Jason Kenney’s bizarre Brexit commentary on social media. At the time, Mr. Kenney was still drawing a paycheque as the Conservative MP for Calgary Midnapore. He was
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Calgary’s Olympic bid is dead, but don’t completely rule out a zombie moment
Moments after 10 p.m. last night, the few Albertans nervously paying attention outside Calgary received word voters in Cowtown had clearly said no to the idea of a re-do in 2026 of the city’s fabled 1988 Winter Olympics. I use the term fabled advisedly, as I suspect the vaunted success
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Report on Calgary civic election polling failures sharply criticizes Postmedia coverage of ‘radically mistaken’ polls by partner firm
A report by three high-profile academics with expertise in public opinion research who were commissioned to look into polling failures that marred the 2017 Calgary municipal election campaign sharply criticizes the role of the city’s media in covering and sponsoring the polls. Christopher Adams of the University of Manitoba, Paul
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The poll puts Jason Kenney’s UCP in slam-dunk range over NDP; the pollster has a bit of a history
Yesterday, United Conservative Party MLAs were Tweeting around a graphic from a new poll that showed their party with a wide lead over the New Democratic Party in all regions of Alberta, including the Edmonton area, which lately has been seen as an NDP stronghold. Mysteriously, the UCPers didn’t include
Continue readingAlberta Politics: So sorry to see you go so soon, Manning Centre … here’s your hat
Shed a tear for the Calgary-based Manning Centre, which Postmedia’s Cowtown website of record sadly reported yesterday is “stepping back from its advocacy work.” Since polishing up Tiny Tories to make them acceptable for election door-knocking and serving as a launch pad for development-industry-financed attacks on Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Public opinion research standards body to announce details of inquiry into Calgary election polling results this week
PHOTOS: Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, apparently as puzzled by the results of some polls last fall as many other Calgarians were. Below: Marketing Research and Intelligence Association CEO Dr. Kara Mitchelmore (Photo: Linked-In), Mainstreet Research President Quito Maggi (Photo: Mainstreet Research), Mount Royal University political science Professor Duane Bratt (Photo:
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Week 1 Update from the Calgary-Lougheed by-election
Photo: Former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed. The Calgary-Lougheed electoral district is named after Lougheed. It has been one week since the Calgary-Lougheed by-election was called. The by-election is being held on Dec. 14, 2017, but voters in this district also have the option of voting in advance polls on Dec. 6,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Counting up the Alberta Party’s leadership candidates, real and imagined, so far: a partial list, no doubt
PHOTOS: Former Morinville mayor Lisa Holmes. Below: Doug Griffiths, Thomas Lukaszuk, Stephen Khan and Chima Nkemdirim. These photos were chosen completely arbitrarily, mainly because they came from the author’s own collection and hadn’t been used a bunch of times before. If it weren’t for the takeover of the once-rather-liberal Alberta
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Will the Alberta Together takeover turn the Alberta Party into PC 2.0?
Photo: Alberta Party leader Greg Clark on the campaign trail in Calgary-Elbow in 2014. Source: Twitter. In the latest shakeup in Alberta politics, Greg Clark announced last Friday that he would resign as leader of the Alberta Party at the party’s upcoming annual general meeting on November 18, 2017. Clark
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