Another day, another Alberta Government talking point exposed as codswallop. Yesterday, we compared and contrasted what the United Conservative Party Government used to say about the former NDP government’s carbon tax with reality. Viz., it was destroying the economy (UCP), versus, it effectively had no negative impact on the Alberta
Continue readingTag: Pipeline Policy
Alberta Politics: National Energy Board ruling on Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion leaves everyone deep in their message boxes
Common sense would suggest the recommendation of the National Energy Board yesterday that Ottawa approve the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project despite significant risks to the environment is a small but significant step toward eventual completion of the controversial multi-billion-dollar megaproject. But as was already evident in the immediate reaction
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Has Trudeau committed treason?’ The answer is no and the question is completely bonkers!
Donna Kennedy-Glans, by all accounts an intelligent and accomplished Alberta Conservative, recently posted and pinned a Tweet asking, “Has Trudeau committed treason?” If her intention was to grab the attention of Alberta’s chattering classes, she succeeded. If she was out for attention, though, I’m not sure she really wanted the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: In cutting oil production, Rachel Notley gives a bravura performance – but will it play in Ponoka?
As expected, Premier Rachel Notley announced tonight that her government will order an oil production cut of 325,000 barrels a day, 8.7 per cent of the province’s production, to squeeze some of the air out of the bitumen price differential that has bedevilled Alberta for several years. The short-term production
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Thoughts from the road: General Motors, China and Alberta, a new landscape emerges from Monday’s dust
OTTAWA Now that the dust is settling from Monday’s announcement General Motors Corp.’s last auto assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., will soon be closed, the emerging landscape is not promising for Alberta. Leastways, it’s not hopeful from the perspective of an Alberta that has no plan to transition from a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If other Canadians don’t think Alberta should go suck a lemon, they probably soon will
Alberta! Go suck a lemon! I don’t endorse that sentiment, of course. I’m an Albertan, after all. The person who did say something like that, as it happens, didn’t say it about Alberta. It was a long, long time ago, 1976 as a matter of fact, when Catherine Ford said
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The furious denunciations of Tzeporah Berman in Alberta are unprecedented, hypocritical and dangerous
Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. — George Orwell, 1984 + + + The stream of vituperation directed at B.C. environmentalist Tzeporah Berman for her consistent opposition to Alberta’s pipeline demands is unprecedented, hypocritical and dangerous. I am not just talking about the death threats
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Trudeau Liberals call the opposition’s bluff and ‘nationalize’ (sort of, maybe) the Trans Mountain Pipeline
OK, so Ottawa’s going to buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline for $4.5 billion and run it as a Crown corporation. That’s a good start. (Caveats to follow.) Theoretically, it could ensure transparency and accountability, even responsibility, to a business in which the private sector adamantly refuses to deliver any such
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘NRA Strategy’ to block connection of climate change dots won’t work when the climate disaster’s in B.C.
As fear rises in British Columbia this week along with the province’s record floodwaters, the likelihood B.C. voters will connect the dots between man-made climate change and “natural” catastrophes is rising too. Politically speaking, this is not exactly good news for the determined advocates in Alberta and Ottawa of aggressive
Continue readingAlberta Politics: New Kinder Morgan exit strategy hint emerges as tangled Trans Mountain tale twists the national knickers
Jason Kenney, leader of Alberta’s Conservative Opposition party, must’ve struggled yesterday to keep a smirk off his face as he bloviated piously about Kinder Morgan Inc. President Steven Kean’s rumination the time may be nigh to pull the plug on the controversial Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project that has the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: A Bill to Squeeze British Columbia Till Its Pips Squeak introduced in Alberta Legislature – but can it pass constitutional muster?
Is it just me, or is almost everyone from Alberta quoted in the media sounding a little overwrought these days? Yesterday, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Energy Minister Margaret McQuaig-Boyd rolled out Bill 12, rather tendentiously dubbed the Preserving Canada’s Economic Prosperity Act, the sole purpose of which seems to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Is just talking about restricting diluted bitumen in pipelines an unconstitutional impediment to trade?
PHOTOS: Some of the Fathers of Confederation looking, well, fatherly. Below: Steely eyed Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, B.C. Premier John Horgan, and would-be premier Jason Kenney. In case you missed it, a new constitutional doctrine seems to be developing in Alberta. To wit: the idea that creating business uncertainty violates
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Alberta NDP’s Sour Grapes Strategy will only strengthen Coastal B.C.’s nearly universal opposition to pipelines
PHOTOS: Grape vines grow in B.C.’s beautiful Okanagan Valley, one of the prime wine producing regions of the world (Photo: Kelowna Wine & Cuisine Flickr, Creative Commons). Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, B.C. Premier John Horgan, and Alberta Opposition Leader Jason Kenney. With Alberta’s Sour Grapes Strategy, the official boycott
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Having no potential national leader obviously helpful to Notley Government may be liberating to Alberta New Democrats
PHOTOS: Candidate Niki Ashton, in Edmonton during the 2012 NDP leadership race. (Photo: Olav Rokne.) Below: Charlie Angus, Jagmeet Singh, Guy Caron and the late Jack Layton. (Photos: All from the Wikimedia Commons.) Like a rural highway through northern Alberta, the federal New Democratic Party’s leadership race has seemed long,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What does climate change mean for Alberta’s growing dependence on a pipeline to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries?
PHOTOS: U.S. Climate Change Denier in Chief Donald J. Trump. (Photo: White House.) A woman is rescued from her Houston area home (Photo: U.S. Department of Defense.) “Wow – Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood!” So said an apparently astonished Donald J. Trump, First Tweeter
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Report questioning tidewater premium for Alberta petroleum undermines a powerful narrative … expect fireworks
PHOTOS: No Smoking … no kidding! An oil tanker sits in a Spanish port. B.C. environmentalists don’t want to see scenes like this on their coast. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons) A lot of Albertans believe they’re going to have to. Below: Report Author David Hughes and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Whether
Continue readingAlberta Politics: With Rachel Notley off to Texas, it helps to understand why Canadians and Texans are naturally simpatico
PHOTOS: The magnificent Texas State Capitol in Austin – taller that the U.S. Capitol in Washington! Below: The interior of that Texas dome and some musicians making the scene in Austin, which is not only warmer than Edmonton, it’s more liberal too, and the sort of thing I had in
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It won’t hurt NDP for centrist voters to understand how close Rachel Notley’s energy policy is to Jim Prentice’s proposals
PHOTOS: Jim Prentice during his time as premier of Alberta. Below: Premier Rachel Notley, Prentice co-author Jean-Sébastian Rioux (Twitter), and journalist Jason Markusoff (Twitter). The revelation that the moderate and thoughtful energy policy proposed by the late Jim Prentice soon after he left politics in 2015 was very similar to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Leduc No. 1 and all that: Was February 13, 1947, Alberta’s unluckiest lucky day?
PHOTOS: Dignitaries stand around and have their photos taken at the Leduc No. 1 well near Devon on – if the Internet is to be believed – this day in 1947. Not sure if I believe that, seeing as the first photo below was supposed to have been taken on
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Go figure! Jim Prentice, failed former politician, resurfaces with sweet gig at Washington think tank
PHOTOS: Those were the days! This time last year, Jim Prentice was everyone else’s favourite Albertan, or so it seemed. Now look at him, already the last Conservative premier of Alberta. Below: Woodrow Wilson, the only American president with a PhD a…
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