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 readingTag: Rachel Notley
Susan on the Soapbox: The Day the Market Broke
It finally happened. Someone broke the free market and the NDP government has to fix it. Weird, eh? Albertans spent the last few weeks being whip-sawed between companies (Cenovus) who said the market was broken and companies (Imperial, Husky, Suncor) who said the market was just fine, thank you very
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If Rachel Notley caps Alberta oil production tonight, how quickly will Jason Kenney change his tune?
If Rachel Notley uses the Alberta Government’s power to put a cap on oil production tonight, as she hinted she would do in a newspaper op-ed Friday, how long will it take Opposition Leader Jason Kenney to change his tune? Not long, one imagines. Of course, if Mr. Kenney does
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Professors protest Moe Government plan to shutter archives in four locations, including University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon
SASKATOON, Sask. No sooner did the government of Saskatchewan oh-so-discreetly announce it is about to close four branches of the provincial archives and consolidate it all in one location in Regina than more than 30 Canadian scholars had an open letter of protest circulating on the Internet. When the branch
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: Alberta’s Bill 27 may not take the politics out of pensions, but it will certainly help
Tabling on Tuesday of Bill 27, Alberta legislation that will wrest control of public service pensions from the sole hands of the minister of finance and hand it to joint boards run by public service employees and employers, should be the denouement of a long and sometimes dramatic story. “This
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Criticism of John Carpay, who compared pride flags to swastikas, called the work of a ‘left wing mob’
According to an increasingly influential segment of the United Conservative Party’s social conservative base, Albertans who have taken to social media to assail an ally of party leader Jason Kenney for the bigotry evident in his comparison of the pride flag to the Nazi swastika are nothing more than “the
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 23: Special guest Kristin Raworth
Kristin Raworth joined Dave and Ryan on the podcast this week as we discussed women in politics and how Alberta’s political parties are addressing harassment and sexual violence. We also delved into the latest political news about Alberta’s new municipal election finance legislation, Robyn Luff and the plight of disgruntled backbenchers, the fallout from John Carpay’s most-recent
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 readingSusan on the Soapbox: Why Carpay’s Comment About the Rainbow Flag Matters
“History can familiarize, and it can warn.” – Timothy Snyder On Thursday Mr and Ms Soapbox attended Rachel Notley’s Octoberfest in November event. In her speech, Premier Notley mentioned that Jason Kenney, the leader of the UCP, is still supporting John Carpay, who in a speech at a conference organized
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: Religious schools defy David Eggen; John Carpay hangs in; and Jason Kenney isn’t the Decider after all!
NDP Education Minister David Eggen’s warning yesterday he could defund 28 religious private schools if they won’t obey the law and implement diversity policies and UCP Leader Jason Kenney’s refusal to expel a high-profile social conservative party member who compared pride flags with Nazi swastikas seem like separate stories. They
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: Lake of Fire Update: Stuff is still hitting the fan, and it may not be lava!
Well a certain kind of stuff has certainly hit the fan since it was reported here and elsewhere that John Carpay, the well-known social conservative warrior, had dipped his toe into Alberta’s always-dangerous Lake of Fire. Since the story broke over the long weekend, Mr. Carpay and his old comrade
Continue readingAlberta Politics: NDP introduces to post-secondary tuition-fee setting a measure of fairness for students
Alberta’s Legislature returned to work yesterday as Rachel Notley’s NDP Government got the ball rolling with a bill that will keep a lid on post-secondary tuition and ensure foreign students don’t get stuck with unscheduled tuition increases part way through their studies. This may be a long way from what’s
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 22: Special guest Jamil Jivani, author of Why Young Men
Jamil Jivani joined Dave and Ryan on the podcast this week as we discussed his new book, Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity, and delved into how Political Action Committees are shaping politics in our province and how they might impact the next election, this weekend’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: No apologies: Rachel Notley sure didn’t sound as if she were conceding anything at campaign-style speech Sunday
In what was probably the first speech of the 2019 Alberta provincial election campaign, if not quite officially, Premier Rachel Notley was comfortable, confident, funny, hopeful, energized, charismatic, fiery and, yes, inspiring. She sounded, in other words, like a winner. By any measure, it was a terrific speech. And the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Former NDP leader Brian Mason says farewell with words of wisdom and warning
Former Alberta New Democratic Party leader Brian Mason has been a gale force presence in Alberta politics for so long it’s hard to imagine the place without him. Yet there he was yesterday at lunchtime, on stage in the ballroom of Edmonton’s Westin Hotel, saying farewell to politics, the NDP
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Backstory from 2014 explains why Alberta car dealers might want to unseat the NDP
Many Albertans were shocked to learn last week that Opposition Leader Jason Kenney had promised an auto dealers association pouring money into a political action committee supporting his United Conservative Party that if elected he would hand enforcement of vehicle sale consumer protection back to the dealers. Twenty-six Alberta car
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley’s pension announcement yesterday was an ironic coda to Alison Redford’s 2014 war on unions
When Premier Rachel Notley announced to the annual general meeting of the United Nurses of Alberta yesterday morning her government would keep a promise made to working Albertans 26 years ago by a Conservative government, it offered an ironic coda to one of the issues that contributed to the downfall
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