From time to time, Calgary Herald columnist Rick Bell has been used by Alberta Conservatives to float their trial balloons. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). So when Mr. Bell reported yesterday morning that Premier Danielle Smith was thinking about holding a referendum on whether Alberta should dump the
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Alberta Politics: Does spat between once-simpatico columnist and Jason Kenney signal the end of the road for Alberta’s premier?
Et tu, Brute? Was political columnist Rick Bell’s news conference question yesterday about allegations of cash being funnelled from political action committees to Jason Kenney’s supporters in advance of this weekend’s United Conservative Party annual general meeting a sign the end is near for Alberta’s increasingly unpopular premier? Alberta Premier
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Defiant Kenney on minister’s Hawaiian hijinks: No rules were broken, so no consequences
Aloha, Alberta! Jason Kenney doesn’t give a hoot* what you think. Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard’s Christmas post on Instagram, published while she was in Hawaii (Photo: Instagram). That’s the key takeaway from the premier’s defiant news conference early this afternoon about the cabinet minister who jetted off for a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Guest Post by Cam Westhead: COVID-19 public health advice – armchair epidemiologists need not apply
By Cam Westhead One of the first things I learned in nursing school was not to panic during times of crisis. Medical professionals are trained to act like a duck – appearing calm on top of the water but paddling like mad underneath. Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena
Continue readingAlberta Politics: As COVID-19 cases soar, UCP MLA tells constituents the pandemic is behind us
Alberta set a new daily record for COVID-19 yesterday, with 1,105 confirmed new cases reported over the previous 24 hours. No fear, though. Apparently the worst of the pandemic is already behind us! Ms. Rosin during her tenure as a member of Premier Jason Kenney’s “Fair Deal” Panel (Photo: David
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s not up to the premier’s staff to decide who’s a journalist — except when it is
Responding yesterday to criticism for letting Alberta Premier Jason Kenney take a question from a reporter for a controversial right-wing news site during Tuesday’s virtual COVID-19 update, Press Secretary Christine Myatt tweeted defensively that “I don’t think anybody wants the government deciding who is or is not a journalist.” Taken
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney calls Elizabeth May, Yves-François Blanchet ‘un-Canadian,’ accuses them of ‘blaming the victim’
Now that Premier Jason Kenney has declared it “un-Canadian” to say oil is dead, I wonder if it’s OK to admit Alberta’s fossil fuel industry is on the ropes? Probably. Mr. Kenney said as much himself in a remarkable rant yesterday directed at the Parliamentary Leader of the Bloc Québécois
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Inside Jason Kenney’s troll factory: the UCP propaganda ecosystem goes after Alberta’s registered nurses
The president of the Alberta Federation of Labour called out the Canadian Taxpayers Federation yesterday for the partisan role it plays supporting of the Kenney Government’s contract demands in negotiations with the union that represents the province’s front-line registered nurses. Calling the CTF “a secretive anti-union lobby group,” Gil McGowan
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Postmedia pours it to bring home the bacon for Calgary’s hockey billionaires
You’ve got to know that when the likes of Licia Corbella, Danielle Smith, Chris Nelson, Rick Bell, and sundry other right-wing Postmedia bloviators all want you to think that now is the perfect time for the Calgary Saddledome to be demolished and replaced by the (Ken) King Dome, it probably
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jobs! Pipelines! Help is on the way! Or … maybe not: Election hot takes from Alberta
Tuesday night’s Alberta election results pretty well put paid to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “Grand Bargain” with Alberta on climate change, the terms of which were basically that the province could have a pipeline to tidewater if we play nice and put a price on carbon. Premier-elect Jason Kenney has
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney then and Now: UCP critics face abuse now, unlike a certain critic of PC housing allowances back in 1992
Public anger at politicians who bill taxpayers for their living expenses when in reality they live close to their work is nothing new in Alberta. Abusive attacks on their critics, up to and including death threats, are new. Back in April 1992, Progressive Conservative municipal affairs minster Dick Fowler, who
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Peak Separatism has passed in Alberta, no thanks to Postmedia’s sly campaign to undermine the Trudeau Government
Happy Holidays! It may take a few days for its perpetrators to admit this, but Alberta has all but certainly already passed Peak Separatism. The current 2018 spasm of Alberta separatist sentiment peaked late last week, probably some time Thursday afternoon. By the time we’re all saying Happy New Year
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: Dispatches from the front lines of Alberta politics: Jason Kenney reveals his nasty streak … again
My, my, Jason Kenney’s vow to become the new Mr. Congeniality of Confederation sure didn’t last very long, did it? Twitterists are having fun comparing the Alberta Opposition leader’s response to a gentle jab by Premier Rachel Notley in the Alberta Legislature Tuesday afternoon with what he had to say
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Notley NDP pass bill to halt oil and gas to BC as Jagmeet Singh finally shows up to the pipeline party
What a day. Turn off the taps: Bill 12: Preserving Canada’s Economic Prosperity Act passed third reading Alberta’s Legislative Assembly and once the bill is given royal assent, proclaimed into law and accompanying regulations are written, New Democratic Party Premier Rachel Notley‘s government would have the power to halt the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Forget Postmedia’s paranoid propaganda: Becoming an environmental pariah won’t restore the ‘Alberta Advantage’
PHOTOS: An Alberta oilsands operation (Photo: Kris Krug, Creative Commons). Below: Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid, Calgary Sun political columnist Rick Bell, and United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney. According to the United Conservative Party and its media echo chamber, there’s “a growing national push to suppress Alberta’s economy.”
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Is rural crime actually getting worse in Alberta? What we know and what we don’t
PHOTOS: Unlike these guys, real RCMP officers cost money to train, pay and outfit. When he promised many more of them to rural Alberta, Jason Kenney didn’t explain how he proposes to pay the freight. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.) Below: Mr. Kenney and Postmedia political columnists Don Braid, Rick Bell and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: In case you missed it … Conservatives are in the news, making sure today’s bad ideas are tomorrow’s horrible reality! For you!
PHOTOS: Former Canadian Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, now leader of the Conintern. (Photo: Remy Steinegger, Wikimedia Commons.) Below: Margaret Thatcher, just another moderate leader of the “centre right.” Dig those pointy collars! Mr. Harper’s former lieutenant Jason Kenney, who is now the leader of Alberta’s “centre right.” Stephen Harper
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The race is on … unity voting starts tomorrow and UCP candidates are already at the clubhouse turn
PHOTOS: The race is on and it looks like … “a dangerous leader.” (Old horseracing print with that title found on the Internet, artist unknown.) Below: Would-be United Conservative Party leaders Brian Jean, Jason Kenney, Doug Schweitzer and Derek Fildebrandt. Calling an effort to merge two large mammals into a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Pigs will fly before the fantasy that Ottawa’s carbon tax ‘invades provincial jurisdiction’ will ever persuade a court
PHOTOS: Who says Jason Kenney is full of baloney? These guys do! And they’re the Fathers of Confederation! Below: PC leadership candidate Mr. Kenney; federal Liberal Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr, MP for Calgary Centre; and Brian Jean, leader of the Wildrose Opposition in the Alberta Legislature (Wildrose.ca photo). Ottawa’s
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