Someone told me there were 13 receptions around Parliament Hill on Monday night. That may well be true, I don’t keep an exhaustive list. But I did delay my nightly collapse onto my couch to venture to two that had caught my eye: Restaurants Canada at Riviera and Pacific Salmon
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Alberta Politics: COVID-19 measures put in place two weeks ago insufficient to reduce infections, Deena Hinshaw admits
Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw admitted yesterday that Alberta’s current response to soaring COVID-19 infection rates is “not likely to be sufficient to bring down our numbers.” Fielding uncharacteristically tough and focused questioning by reporters taking part in her afternoon COVID-19 briefing and news conference, Dr. Hinshaw wouldn’t
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta dithers on, replacing pandemic half-measures with slightly tougher half-measures
Premier Jason Kenney finally resurfaced yesterday, looking healthy enough, to respond to Alberta’s surging COVID-19 infection rate with new half-measures not all that distinguishable from the old half-measures. Bars, restaurants and non-essential businesses will be allowed to remain open with reduced capacity, ditto for megachurches that will still be permitted
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Happy Alberta Day, fellow Albertians! Don’t count on having two days off in September, though
Happy “Alberta Day,” my fellow Albertians! Does Jason Kenney have a plan to erase Labour Day and replace it with something called Alberta Day on or about September 1? It certainly wouldn’t be out of character. U.S. President Donald Trump (Photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons). Labour Day celebrates labour, which
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Would you like a nasal swab with your fries, sir? Health care comes to A&W, McDonald’s and Timmy’s in Jason Kenney’s Alberta
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney runs a government deeply committed to erasing the obvious connection between government and the services that are essential to the functioning of society. How else is he going to persuade Albertans to abandon public health care that works for the broken privatization model now destroying our
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: ‘How can we help you bust your union?’ Alberta Government launches ‘employee support program’
The Government of Alberta launched its promised “Employee Labour Relations Support Program” yesterday. Apparently they’ll not only tell you how to certify a union, they’ll tell you how to decertify one too! Busting a union used to be easier back in the days of the old Progressive Conservatives, who weren’t
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Kenney Conservatives find the perfect policy panel to push the working poor back to penury
If pushing the working poor back into penury is your policy objective, the United Conservative Party led by Premier Jason Kenney has found the right collection of ringers to stack its “expert panel” on rolling Alberta’s minimum wage back to pre-NDP levels. Labour Minister Jason Copping introduced the panel yesterday
Continue readingAlberta Politics: United Conservative Party introduces the Open for Fast Food Act – sorry about the 13% pay cut, kids
Premier Jason Kenney’s newly elected United Conservative Party introduced its second bill yesterday, calling it the Open for Business Act. The NDP immediately dubbed Bill 2 the Pick Your Pockets Bill, seeing as its provisions include a 13-per-cent pay cut to $13 an hour from $15 for students under 18
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Where’s the beef? Smells like what Restaurants Canada is serving you is nothing but baloney!
Baloney: a large smoked, seasoned sausage made of various meats. Where’s the beef? In an opinion piece in the Calgary Herald last week, Restaurants Canada claimed that “a perfect storm of tax increases and painful policy changes … have worsened conditions for restaurants over the past four years.” This was
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Happy Valentine’s Day! Don’t worry, even with a fair minimum wage, you can take your sweetie to a restaurant tonight!
Readers whose hearts are breaking at Restaurants Canada’s tale of woe supposedly caused by increases in the minimum wage and other calamities can take some Valentine’s Day comfort from the fact that despite all the tears Albertans have been dining out in record numbers. Last fall’s annual report on the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Restaurant lobby launches campaign to elect UCP, roll back $15-per-hour minimum wage
Alberta’s perpetually dissatisfied restaurant owners find themselves in such difficult straits they’re investing their hard-earned dollars in a high-profile PR campaign to make sure we all understand just how tough they have it – and while they’re at it, maybe they can get us to elect a right-wing government that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Tim Hortons brew-haha shows how the fast-food industry doesn’t get PR, Economics 101, or what Canadians think
PHOTOS: Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in a very old picture that has the dual advantages of showing her wearing a smile appropriate to the occasion being discussed and of having been taken by your blogger. Below: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives analyst Michal Rozworski (Photo: Twitter), the late but actual
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: No, reforming Alberta’s Labour Laws will not kill democracy.
It won’t come as a surprise to many political watchers in Alberta that the most vocal critics of the NDP government’s yet to be announced reforms to Alberta’s outdated labour laws have strong ties to the province’s Conservative establishment. “Keep Alberta Working” is a campaign of the “Alberta Growth Initiative,” which is a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Albertans hear the same old same old as fast-food restaurant owners grow hysterical over minimum wage
PHOTOS: Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray, who is sticking to her guns on the provincial government’s plans to raise the provincial minimum wage to $15 by 2018. Below: Notable fair wage campaigners, Joe Ceci, finance minister of Alberta; Frankli…
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Canada’s anti-union lobby is at the heart of the deceptive campaign for more Temporary Foreign Workers – why’s that, d’ya think?
Canadians need not apply? Actual Canadian store displays may not appear exactly as illustrated. But the intent of the AstroTurf TFW lobby is to bust unions and weaken the bargaining power of Canadian workers. Below: Employment Minister and former Canadian Taxpayers Federation operative Jason Kenney; former Canadian Federation of Independent
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Explaining the screams for easy-to-exploit Temporary Foreign Workers: Canadians are just too uppity for many low-wage employers
Chinese workers building Canadian railways – another sordid story of “temporary foreign workers.” Below: B.C. Premier Christy Clark and Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan. British Columbia Premier Christy Clark rose in that province’s Legislative Building in Victoria yesterday and apologized for a stream of racist laws and policies
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