Astonishingly, the Prab Gill saga appears to have legs. Yesterday, the Star Metro arm of the Toronto Star’s effort to create a national footprint, informed Alberta readers there’s no way the United Conservative Party will be revealing the contents of its insider investigation of ballot stuffing and snatching by Mr.
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Alberta Politics: By-elections conveniently over, United Conservative Party pushes out MLA accused of ballot stuffing at nomination meeting
With many Albertans apparently in a mood to take Jason Kenney’s claim at face value his year-old United Conservative Party is renewed, reformed and ready to govern, you can’t be too careful about evidence that the same-old-same-old Tory entitlement continues to lurk on the Opposition benches of the Legislature. Not
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP by-elections wins in central and northern Alberta are no surprise, but offer little cause for optimism to NDP
It’s Friday the 13th, and after two by-elections yesterday in central and northern Alberta, supporters of the province’s NDP government are awaking to a new reality that’s pretty much the same as the old reality. That is, rural Central Alberta is deeply Conservative country pretty well no matter what, and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brian Mason, who kept NDP flame alight in Alberta’s Legislature for a decade, to take his leave from politics
Brian Mason, who as party leader kept the NDP flame burning brightly in the Alberta Legislature from 2004 to 2014 even when the caucus was small enough to truly meet in a phone booth, announced yesterday he is about to pull the plug on a 29-year political career that has
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Effort by religious schools to halt enforcement of Alberta’s GSA protection law tossed out by Medicine Hat judge
An effort by the so-called Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms to get a court injunction to halt enforcement of the Alberta law that prevents schools from informing parents when students join gay-straight alliances fell short in a written ruling of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench in Medicine Hat yesterday.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Money from wealthy right-wing ideologues helps fuel group challenging Alberta’s protections for GSA members
The so-called Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms achieved its first goal yesterday, generating plenty of publicity for itself and its social conservative supporters at the first day of its court bid to overturn the Alberta NDP Government’s legislative effort to protect students who join gay-straight alliances. By the sound of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: No Progressives Allowed! No entry without secret decoder! UCP serves up private Pride pancakes only today
While thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, were taking part in Pride events throughout Edmonton today, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party held a private, conservatives-only “Pride Breakfast” a few blocks from the route of the parade along fashionable Whyte Avenue on the city’s south side. This reflects the unique problem Mr.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The United Conservative campaign strategy after Red Deer: Tom Olsen and the Wreckage offer hints
I think I’ve figured out the United Conservative Party election strategy for 2019. In light of the embarrassingly revealing policy resolutions passed at the UCP’s founding convention in Red Deer over the weekend and the party leadership’s subsequent effort at damage control, not to mention the emerging behaviour of candidates
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Admirably true to their Iron Age code, UCP delegates defy their leaders and the zeitgeist
Modern Conservatives indeed! The Wildrose Party base – by which I mean the United Conservative Party base, they are the same people – is a wild horse that cannot be ridden safely or broken easily for reasons of mere political expedience. This is partly because it contains many people of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta then and now: Marking the third anniversary of the unexpected victory of Rachel Notley and the NDP
CALGARY Three years ago today, Albertans did the unexpected in the province’s 29th general election and elected a majority New Democratic Party government. In truth, despite Albertans having been instructed for generations by those who are supposed to know better that they lived in the most conservative province in Canada,
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: The Ontario Regressive Conservative Party.
Voters eventually get tired of governments, and the Liberals have been in power for a long time; combine that with a particularly questionable policy decision on partially privatizing Ontario Hydro which dramatically increased Hydro bills. The government’s attempts to subsidize some of the bill’s costs to consumers did not particularly
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney joins attack on David Suzuki; complains too many U of A honorary degrees go to progressives
Where is the Globe and Mail, the National Post, federal Opposition leader Andrew Scheer? After all, they were all such convincing defenders of intellectual freedom on campus when the barbs were being directed at Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto professor who is “the Darth Maul of tenured campus bad
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: The Vriend Case has been closed for 20 years, but the Alberta political story continues
PHOTOS: The front page of the Toronto Globe and Mail on the day after the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in the Vriend case. Below: A screenshot of Delwin Vriend taken from a recent CBC video; the late Ralph Klein, premier of Alberta (Photo: Chuck Szmurlo, Wikimedia Commons); Jason Kenney, circa
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci, a New Democrat, delivers a traditional Progressive Conservative budget
PHOTOS: Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci, Below: A slimmed-down Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party, and Stephen Mandel, Leader of the Alberta Party, at the Legislature for Mr. Ceci’s Budget Speech yesterday. Despite the predictably apocalyptic tone of Opposition political spokespeople and the unenthusiastic analysis by mainstream media
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Daydreaming in Technicolor’ … the Alberta Party and Derek Fildebrandt present alternative budgets
PHOTOS: The Alberta Legislature gets the Technicolor treatment with publication of two Opposition “alternative budgets.” There was nothing from the United Conservative Opposition, of course. Below: Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel and a costumed Derek Fildebrandt, the Independent “Liberty Conservative,” late of the UPC and Wildrose Party (Photo: Derek Fildebrandt
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Climate change, climate denial and climate ironies in the wake of Alberta Legislature’s pipeline demand vote
PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Below: Soon-to-retire Alberta Liberal MLA and former party leader David Swann, Shannon Daub of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and United Conservative Party MLAs Grant Hunter, Drew Barnes and Rick Strankman. Happy Ides of March. On Tuesday, the Alberta Legislature passed a motion declaring
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta’s NDP borrowed more than export-cut threats from Peter Lougheed for yesterday’s Throne Speech
PHOTOS: Premier Rachel Notley speaks with well wishers in the Alberta Legislature Rotunda yesterday after her government’s Speech from the Throne was read by Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell. Below: Finance Minister Joe Ceci, Ms. Mitchell and Premier Peter Lougheed, back in the day. (Mitchell and Lougheed photos: Government of Alberta.)
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brian Jean, former Opposition leader and unsuccessful contender to lead United Conservative Party, quits Alberta politics
PHOTOS: Brian Jean, when he was still running for the leadership of the United Conservative Party in 2017. Below: Mr. Jean feeling the love during the race to lead the UCP, and as he would probably like his political career to be remembered. (The second and third photos were grabbed
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Annals of Alberta Political Discourse: Wildrose/UCP MLA Grant Hunter compares NDP to 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
PHOTOS: Cardston-Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter, with a suitably dramatic backdrop created by Press Progress. Below: Mr. Hunter and UCP Leader Jason Kenney shake on it, soon after the former Wildroser endorsed Mr. Kenney’s ultimately successful party leadership bid (Photo: Screenshot of Global News broadcast), and Mr. Hunter’s economic exemplars, Ronald
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