“…if you don’t mind my sayin’ I can see you’re out of aces. For a taste of your whiskey, I’ll give you some advice”—Kenney Rogers, The Gambler If there is one thing we should take away from Finance Minister Toews’ budget presentation last Thursday it’s this: the Kenney government has
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Alberta Politics: Unsustainable Alberta: Don’t expect the UCP to pay any attention to the Business Council of Alberta in tomorrow’s budget
It’s Alberta Budget Day tomorrow. Finance Minister Travis Toews will table a budget at an afternoon pop-up meeting of the Legislature. Then United Conservative Party MLAs will run like hell for their ridings and hunker down until the Legislature’s business resumes on March 8. Alberta’s pop-up Legislature will open for
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Alberta business proposes more taxes
We don’t generally think of proposals for more taxes coming from the business community but that’s exactly what happened in Alberta this week. The Business Council of Alberta has issued a report, Towards a Fiscally Sustainable Alberta, saying that the province not only needs a harmonized sales tax but it
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fossil fuels may be fading, but Alberta stands ready to supply bad economic ideas to Canada and the world
VICTORIA — We Albertans can be enormously proud, I guess, of our continuing influence on the Dominion. We surely must be the leading exporter of ridiculous, potentially destructive ideas in Canada. B.C. Premier John Horgan (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Consider Andrew Wilkinson, hapless leader of British Columbia’s Liberals (who are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Walkom writes about the Libs’ dangerous efforts to turn the page on COVID-19 as Canada’s primary political concern. – Murray Mandryk highlights how Scott Moe’s budget accomplishes nothing either to address our immediate crisis, or to chart a long-term course for Saskatchewan.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Loudest message from Fort Saskatchewan ‘Fair Deal Panel’ town hall? Hands off our CPP!
The visit of Premier Jason Kenney’s “Fair Deal Panel” to Fort Saskatchewan, an industrial oil town just northeast of Edmonton, may have been intended to be a separatist open-mike night when it was added as a stop on the travel itinerary by the UCP’s brain trust. Whatever they expected when
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney invites the tax-cut fairy back to Alberta! She’s bringing snake oil!
Oh for crying out loud! The tax cut fairy has returned to Alberta! She’s brought snake oil! United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney, lately rebranded The Policy Guy ™, has promised a massive cut in business taxes to create jobs. In Calgary yesterday, Mr. Kenney vowed to slash the lowest
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Now that he can’t be Mr. Congeniality any more, is Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall eyeing the exit?
PHOTOS: I’m sick of this shifty eyed shot of Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall too, but it’s the only decent royalty free photo of the guy I can find. Below top and bottom: Jason Kenney and Brian Jean, two Alberta Conservatives who used to have nothing bad to say about Mr.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Oh, there you go Bradsplaining again!’ Like it or not, Brads from Saskatchewan just can’t control their Bradsplaining
PHOTOS: Federal Conservative leadership candidate and Bradsplainer Brad Trost shows he’s hip to the jive with this newfangled technology stuff. (Photo from BradTrost.ca.) Below: Brad Wall, another well-known Bradsplainer, Bradsplaining, and blogger word-coiner Dave Cournoyer, kitted out to observe one of Rebel Media’s rallies. Uh-oh! We’re about to be “Bradsplained”!
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Notley’s Budget: Myths and Facts
The NDP government unveiled its budget on Thursday. The conservatives reacted as if the government dropped a neutron bomb on the people. Wildrose leader Brian Jean worried that parents driving their kids to hockey practice would end up in the … Continue reading →
Alberta Politics: If you were secretly relieved by yesterday’s NDP Alberta budget, you weren’t alone …
PHOTOS: Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci addresses the media during a lockup early yesterday afternoon in Edmonton before reading the 2016 Budget Speech to the Legislature. Below: CFIB Alberta spokesperson Richard Truscott, Edmonton-Centre MLA David S…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Meditations on booms, busts, oil prices, sales taxes, Albertans and their governments
PHOTOS: Alberta in the spring of 2014. Actual Alberta drilling operations may not have appeared exactly as illustrated. Below: Conservative premiers Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein. If God gives us another oil boom like the one us Albertans are all pray…
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: The Case for ‘Yes’ in Metro Vancouver’s Transit Referendum
Well, anybody could have called this one. According to a new survey by Insights West, 53 per cent of residents plan to vote No in the upcoming 2015 Metro Vancouver Transportation and Transit Plebiscite. Only 38 per cent say they will vote Yes to the proposed half-percentage-point sales tax increase
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The So-Called Transit Referendum: Don’t Be Duped!
By Emily Griffiths The Transit referendum “Yes” campaign has been asserting itself all over Facebook, Twitter, neighbourhood news boxes, and I can’t help but ask myself, Since when is increasing a flat tax a leftist thing to do? Oh! The word “transit” has been attached to the newest proposed consumer
Continue readingA sales tax for Alberta?
Alberta Premier Jim Prentice recently committed heresy. Faced with plummeting oil prices and the possibility of a $500-million deficit, the premier actually encouraged discussion about adopting a sales tax. “I don’t think Albertans generally advocate a sales tax,” he said, “but I’m prepared to be educated and to hear from
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: A Little Heresy – Alberta Style
So, according to Premier Prentice, the downturn in oil prices is going to create an $11 Billion hole in provincial revenues, and is now talking about putting the brakes on all kinds of infrastructure spending, including a new cancer hospital in Calgary. Okay, that’s a significant chunk of change. Let’s
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Alberta’s Sales Tax Phobia
Ever since I was a child growing up, Alberta has made a big deal about how we don’t have a sales tax. Back in the day, when resource revenues were perhaps more predictable because the markets didn’t move as fast as they do now, perhaps that was a good thing.
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: Cleaning Up Gordon Campbell’s Mess
According to every poll and every projection by every firm and every commentator, Christy Clark and her Liberal Party are about to be handed an unbalanced ass-whooping of the sort we British Columbians seem to enjoy dishing out to governing parties once every decade or so. Naturally, when this happens,
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Summit call for ATB Financial privatization sets stage for rural Alberta banking battle
The Alberta Treasury Branch agency brings rural financial services to Czar, Alberta. You’ve got to know offices like this are doomed if ATB Financial is privatized. Below: William Aberhart in 1937, the year before he founded Alberta Treasury Branches; banker George Gosbee, in his role as Doogie Howser, CEO. Assuming
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: Carrots and Sticks: How to Fund Public Transit
If we as a planet are going to avoid passing over the two-degree threshold of runaway climate change, we are going to have to start rationing greenhouse gas emissions. Efficiency gains in transportation will inevitably need to be part of that project. Put another way, emissions per person per kilometre
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