“I am your density…I mean your destiny.” — George McFly, Back to the Future (1985) All eyes were riveted on Lois Mitchell, Her Honour the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor, last Wednesday as she delivered the Kenney government’s first Throne Speech…er…your eyes weren’t riveted on HHHLG? You were having coffee with
Continue readingTag: Peter Lougheed
Alberta Politics: UCP Health Minister Tyler Shandro hesitates over risky ideological plan to pull plug on medical ‘Superlab’
When it opted to build a $590-million “Superlab” in Edmonton, Alberta’s former NDP government was relying on sound advice from the Health Quality Council of Alberta, which recommended medical lab services be consolidated under “a single public sector platform.” But never mind the HQCA was set up under legislation created
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: A Guide to UCP “Conservatives”
The Peter Lougheed Progressive Conservatives parted company with the Kenney “conservatives” when Kenney created the free enterprise unity party. Those three little words signaled the transformation of the conservative party into one that cares only about money. With the Lougheed PCs gone the UCP turned elsewhere to fill out their
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Norway Shines a Light We Don’t Care to See
Little Norway and it’s big sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, are once again leading the way, this time by plunging into alternative clean energy investment. Not for the first time Norway is demonstrating how screwed up Canadian energy policy has become and will continue to be until we get
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Yesterday marked a century of public sector trade unionism in Alberta
There will be no update on the Alberta election campaign today; your blogger was at church last night. Let me explain: 100 years ago last night, a small gathering of people met in the basement of Edmonton’s First Presbyterian Church to do something pretty brave. To wit, they founded a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley drops hint about affordable child-care plan, mocks recent UCP bozo eruptions
It sure sounds as if Alberta Premier Rachel Notley will announce an affordable child-care plan for Alberta today. At any rate, at a rally in downtown Edmonton’s Polish Hall yesterday afternoon, she boldly told more than 1,000 enthusiastic supporters – who sounded like an Oilers crowd back in the days
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Has former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith become a (not so) secret admirer of NDP Premier Rachel Notley?
Danielle Smith nearly became the first woman to be elected premier of Alberta. As leader of the Wildrose Party, which despite her efforts was never quite successful at portraying itself as a party of the centre right, she came close, tantalizingly close. Alas for Ms. Smith, the Wildrose Party’s opportunity
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What would Green Party of Canada Leader Elizabeth May do in Rachel Notley’s shoes? Not the same thing as Alberta’s premier
What would have Elizabeth May have done in Rachel Notley’s shoes? The leader of the Green Party of Canada says she would have summoned up the memory of Peter Lougheed, founder of Alberta’s 44-year Progressive Conservative Dynasty, but not the way the province’s first NDP premier has. “I think that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: A holiday toast to Don Getty, the father of Family Day, even if it was pretty much the only thing he achieved in office
Lord knows, Canadians need a February holiday! So thank God for small favours and, come to that, for Don Getty! As favours go, Mr. Getty, 11th premier of Alberta, was a pretty small one. Just the same, this was one for the ages! So, 30 years ago today, with an
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
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Think rail cars, guns and Liberals, this stuff will hit the fan!
Having bought Canada a pipeline it may or may not want at considerable expense, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to spend political capital on Alberta as well, now saying the federal government is prepared to help the province finance the purchase of additional railroad tanker cars to raise the volume
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Day After: Alberta heavy crude prices squirt upward in wake of Rachel Notley’s production cap announcement
It was nice for Alberta’s New Democratic Party Government that the first thing the price of Alberta heavy crude did the morning after Premier Rachel Notley’s announcement her government would cap production of Alberta oil by 8.7 per cent for three months was to squirt upward. On Friday night, Western
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Author Andrew Nikiforuk tells a bleak tale of squandered opportunities, wilful blindness on energy policy
By adopting an energy policy founded on low royalties and pipeline development, the NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley squandered an opportunity to implement a program that could have strengthened Alberta’s economy while preparing it to deal with the inevitable decline in fossil fuel demand, author Andrew Nikiforuk told the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Big Oil wants a milk break … and supply management’s foes are all over the media – except when they’re not
On Tuesday, the president of Cenovus Energy Inc., one of the Big Five players in the Alberta oilsands, called for temporary production cuts across the Canadian oil sector to push the sinking price of oil back up again. It’s all about supply and demand, as the well-educated readers of this blog
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta Party and Freedom Conservative Party leaders form weekend blips on provincial political radar
Here comes the leader of the One True Conservative Party! Here comes the leader of the other One True Conservative Party! Actually, there are three One True Conservative parties in Alberta nowadays. Maybe more if you don’t blink. But there are three that have the potential to play a consequential
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley and Tzeporah Berman present starkly different views of Alberta’s energy future
Thanks to invitations from the province’s teachers’ union, the two most influential people in Alberta presented their starkly different visions of the energy future in the same room yesterday. I speak, of course, of environmentalist Tzeporah Berman and … Premier Rachel Notley. I jest. Ms. Berman resides in Vancouver. Other
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rick Strankman out as UCP candidate, latest Horner Dynasty scion in, deep in Alberta’s dinosaur country
Even if you’re no fan of Rick Strankman, United Conservative Party MLA for Alberta’s dinosaur country, you have to feel a little sympathy for the poor guy, skidded from his nomination by a candidate more appealing to party leader Jason Kenney. Mr. Strankman, 65, may not have been the sharpest
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP leader discovers there’s no affliction more persistent than an outbreak political theatrics in India
Jason Kenney’s mid-September sojourn to India with a couple of his United Conservative Party sidekicks was pure political theatre, likely aimed as much at the Alberta Opposition leader’s real main enemy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as at Alberta’s NDP premier, Rachel Notley. Still, lots of Albertans were wondering last week
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Doug Ford achieves the impossible: he’s gotten Canadians interested in constitutional reform!
Office-holding Conservative politicians and operatives of their well-funded Astro-Turf and think tank support network across Canada have now virtually to a man and woman jumped aboard Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford’s runaway constitutional train, defending his use of Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ override clause to gerrymander electoral districts in
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Who might and might not be invited to the Leaders’ Debate in Alberta’s 2019 election?
Photo: Alberta political party leaders – Rachel Notley, Jason Kenney, Stephen Mandel, David Khan, and Derek Fildebrandt. We are now somewhere between seven and ten months away from the next provincial general election in Alberta. For the past seven provincial elections, leaders of the main political parties have participated in
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