Give Ben Harper’s old man his due: he got his son a better first job in Alberta than the elder Mr. Harper’s pop got him. Readers with functioning short-term memories will recall that not so long ago much was made of the fact Stephen Harper’s father got the former Conservative
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Alberta Politics: If you want to know how an Alberta Provincial Police force would behave, read between the lines of yesterday’s announcement
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police may be no paragon of liberalism and progressive enforcement, but they’re apparently too liberal and progressive for the members of the so-called Fair Deal Panel that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney appointed to trot out his quasi-separatist hobbyhorses. Mr. Kenney’s supposedly cash-poor government announced yesterday it
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Riding high in the polls, B.C.’s New Democrat premier calls a snap election — the right, predictably, whinges
VICTORIA — Strangely, all those conservatives who are anxious to get us back to school and business as soon as possible didn’t seem to be very happy yesterday when B.C. Premier John Horgan called a snap election for Oct. 24. Supporters of B.C. political parties other than Mr. Horgan’s New
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Kaycee Madu, no stellar cabinet performer, is promoted to where he can do less harm; other stars fall
Kaycee Madu, possibly Alberta’s least successful cabinet member in the estimation of his portfolio’s key stakeholders, as Alberta justice minister? Who saw that coming? Former Economic Development, Trade and Tourism Minister Tanya Fir (Photo: Facebook). Of the three major political events affecting Alberta that took place while your blogger was
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The empire strikes back: Understanding the UCP obsession with how history is taught
Anyone who wonders what inspires the United Conservative Party Government’s peculiar obsession with how history ought to be taught, and to what end, probably needs to look no further than Christian P. Champion. Dr. Champion, PhD, as is now well known to social media readers in Alberta, holds startling views
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What’s making Ottawa’s environment minister suddenly give the Vista coal mine proposal the fish eye?
Yesterday we learned that Jonathan Wilkinson, the federal environment minister, is reconsidering a decision he made in December to leave it up to the industry-funded Alberta Energy Regulator to decide if a huge coal mine expansion should be approved near Hinton, just east of the Jasper National Park gate. Even
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Whatever it is, former PC MLA Dave Rodney apparently has what it takes to be Alberta’s agent general in Houston
There may have been peaks and valleys along the way, but thanks to a hand up from Alberta Premier Jason Kenney this week, it looks as if Dave Rodney has finally ascended to the summit of his career. That is to say, for some reason Mr. Rodney was the recipient
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Making Child Labour Great Again! Alberta’s new labour law breaks old ground while undermining unions
Alberta’s about to Make Child Labour Great Again! If you think this is a breakthrough, you’re probably a fast-food franchise owner. Cabinet’s “private sector union liaison,” MLA Searle Turton (Photo: Screenshot of Alberta Government video). Yesterday, Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party introduced a bill called the Restoring Balance in
Continue readingAlberta Politics: As predicted, ‘Fair Deal’ Panel reheats the Firewall Manifesto to manufacture consent for policies Albertans don’t want
Consider the report of Alberta’s “Fair Deal” Panel, released yesterday by Premier Jason Kenney with considerable fanfare. It strongly suggests the Harper-Kenney wing of the Canadian Conservative movement is made up of people who purport to be Canadian patriots when they’re in power in Ottawa but are Prairie separatists when
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s late for snowflakes, but UCP gas minister melts down over criticism at St. Albert Pride flag raising
St. ALBERT, Alberta — My goodness, it’s rough being a government minister in this province! Sometimes people will even criticize you! Dale Nally, associate minister of natural gas and electricity and MLA for Morinville-St. Albert (Photo: Government of Alberta). I mean, seriously, the nerve! This never used to happen to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Distinction Rebellion? There are plenty of reasons breaking up is hard to do, so don’t expect the UCP to do it
Is a rebellion brewing in Southern Alberta against Alberta Premier Jason Kenney among the United Conservative Party’s old Wildrose crowd? Is there a Prairie fire smouldering in the heart Wild Rose Country that might turn into another “upstart conservative party”? Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, as he looked in 2017 as
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta government has been sitting on pro-autonomy report or more than a month, Fair Deal Panel member indicates
Has the Kenney Government been sitting on the “Fair Deal” Panel’s report since Easter, wondering what the heck to do with it? Sounds like it. Ms. Kennedy-Glans during the Fair Deal Panel’s town hall in Fort Saskatchewan on Jan. 9 (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). In an annoyed Twitter exchange yesterday
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Hinterland Who’s Who: Hear the haunting call of the wild Deep South Alberta UCP MLA …
With friends like Drew Barnes, does the United Conservative Party really need enemies in these troubles times? The right-wing Frankenparty may have won the 2019 provincial election convincingly soon after it was cobbled together from the fringy Wildrose Party and the old Progressive Conservatives by former Harper Government cabinet minister
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Ted Morton, worst premier Alberta never had, has had another big idea, this time about a sales tax
From time to time it’s worth reminding ourselves that Ted Morton is the worst premier Alberta never had. That’s because now and then Dr. Morton, now 71, pops up like the proverbial bad penny with some scheme so ridiculous we need to give our heads a shake and recall this
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Smoke and mirrors aren’t cutting it — Alberta’s health minister still needs to go
Despite a lot of smoke and mirrors, Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government has never dispelled the queasy feeling many Albertans have that Tyler Shandro’s personal business dealings render him unsuitable to serve as minister of health. It was Mr. Shandro’s personal conduct, publicly berating a neighbour who posted a critical
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Budget Day: Creatures of the night return to the hallways of Alberta’s Legislature as boisterous protesters chant outside
The thing about Budget Day at the Legislature that news media seldom gets across is that the real news usually isn’t the budget. The budget’s broad strokes are all known long before the details roll off the press at the Queen’s Printer or its privatized equivalent. Alberta Finance Minister Travis
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP launches blitzkrieg on physicians as health care in Alberta returns to its normal state of chaos
If you’ve been operating under the misapprehension the United Conservative Party is just the latest version of the Progressive Conservative Party that ran Alberta from 1971 to 2015, yesterday’s blitzkrieg attack on the province’s 11,000 physicians should disabuse you of that notion. No, this crowd is unique in the history
Continue readingAlberta Politics: A Family Day toast to Don Getty, whose record is underwhelming, but whose best-known achievement was one for the ages
The winters around here are long. Even with social media Canadians need a February holiday. Come to think of it, given what the Internet has turned into in the few years since it arrived on the scene with such promise, we need a February long weekend even more than we
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What Brexit and Ottawa’s decision on the Teck oilsands mine have in common: Jason Kenney’s stubborn intransigence
Question: What do Brexit, which finally happened on Friday but the full implications of which are yet to unfold, and Ottawa’s impending decision on the Teck Resources Ltd. Frontier oilsands mine in northern Alberta have in common? Answer: Both are examples of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s stubborn tendency to cling
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The ‘War Room’ finally launches: $30-million and all we got was this lousy website?
The mighty voice of Alberta’s beleaguered oil industry, the long promised and much-touted $30-million “Energy War Room,” stumbled out of the starting gate yesterday after a news conference in Calgary graced by the presence of Premier Jason Kenney and Energy Minister Sonya Savage. At least, as the self-described purveyor of
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