One of the enduring myths of our era is that Albertans (or Canadians, or whomever) don’t like negative political advertising, and therefore that political attack ads won’t work here. Now that Alberta’s New Democratic Party has published a website attacking Opposition Leader Jason Kenney’s record as a federal Conservative MP,
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Alberta 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 readingPolitical Potshots: Andrew MacDougall: The Haze Runner
If you observe politics long enough, you will witness moments of pure political amnesia. Its almost as if the commentator/pundit forgets their own past in a moment of faux moral outrage meant to generate clicks, or set up their next serving of revisionist political pablum in Maclean’s, or the National
Continue readingPolitical Potshots: The Long Con And The Overton Window
I have been thinking a lot lately about the Overton window. I am beginning to apply it to long term strategy being employed by Conservative thinkers/politicians in Canada, what I like to refer to as the long con. What is the Overton window? The Overton window is a concept developed
Continue readingPolitical Potshots: Durham, We Need To Have A Talk About Erin
Dear people of Durham, we need to talk about Erin O’Toole. Your Minister of Parliament is becoming a national joke when it comes to Twitter. Times Erin O’Toole has directly tweeted about GM since the closure announcement? 16. A majority of those tweets were criticizing Justin Trudeau, 3 were criticizing
Continue readingPolitical Potshots: Conservative Memory Lane Is A Nightmare On Elm Street
The best part of being a conservative it seems is not remembering the recent past. Why is that conservative rhetoric never seems to pass the historical smell test, and the mythology of strong fiscal conservative is exactly that, mythology. “Is Kelowna Courier still interested in moderating a debate on defence
Continue readingPolitical Potshots: Andrew Scheer Goes Full Rebel Media
Lets follow a string. Andrew Scheer hired Hamish Marshall to be his campaign manager. First for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, in fact Andrew Scheer ran his campaign from the offices of Rebel Media and paid them money for advertising. Now, Hamish Marshall is running the national
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The best solution to gun violence actually possible in Canada in 2019 is an outright ban on handguns
Scream as they might about the idea of a ban on handgun ownership by Canadians, it is interesting to note that the tactics used by advocates of wide-open ownership of firearms against the so-called long-gun registry combined with the legislative strategy pursued by their allies in the Conservative federal government
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Duffy 2.0? Ottawa lawyer’s allegations about then-MP Jason Kenney’s expenses sets off Internet tempest
Allegations about United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney’s Calgary domestic and travel arrangements during the years he was the Conservative MP for Calgary Midnapore circulating on social media over the weekend had turned into a full-blown Internet tempest by last night. Parliamentary expenditure reports and flight records as well as
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta’s Top Ten Political News Stories of 2018: It’s not all about that pipeline …
Trying to come up with a list of the most important Alberta political news stories of 2018 is more challenging than one might imagine since the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion brouhaha sucked all the oxygen out of this place for most of the year. A court challenge was inevitable. So
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Has Trudeau committed treason?’ The answer is no and the question is completely bonkers!
Donna Kennedy-Glans, by all accounts an intelligent and accomplished Alberta Conservative, recently posted and pinned a Tweet asking, “Has Trudeau committed treason?” If her intention was to grab the attention of Alberta’s chattering classes, she succeeded. If she was out for attention, though, I’m not sure she really wanted the
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: FAQ: Perfesser Dave returns after a long absence to explain Alberta Politics to the Rest of Canada
Some stories are just too confusing for ordinary bloggers to explain. That’s when we turn to the expert knowledge offered by distinguished academics such as Perfesser Dave, The Answer Guy™, Canada’s No. 1 expert on Alberta politics. As a result of his years of studying Alberta politics, Perfesser Dave knows
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Think rail cars, guns and Liberals, this stuff will hit the fan!
Having bought Canada a pipeline it may or may not want at considerable expense, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to spend political capital on Alberta as well, now saying the federal government is prepared to help the province finance the purchase of additional railroad tanker cars to raise the volume
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Alberta the Ugly and the Toxic Trudeau Haters
I don't know when Alberta first became the vile hate mongering place it is today. Maybe it was before my time.Or maybe ten years of the greasy oil pimp Stephen Harper made it think that it was better than all the other provinces put together. A little bit of ugly America in Canada.But
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brexit Redux: Looking back at Jason Kenney’s strange comments when the U.K. shot itself in both feet
Back in June 2016, hours after Britons had narrowly voted to leave the European Union, a lot of Albertans scratched their heads at Jason Kenney’s bizarre Brexit commentary on social media. At the time, Mr. Kenney was still drawing a paycheque as the Conservative MP for Calgary Midnapore. He was
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Donald Trump, Stephen Harper, and the Canadian Trumplings
It was quite the scene the other day. Emmanuel Macron at the Arc de Triomphe warning about the dangers of the new far-right nationalism, and accusing those who support it, of betraying patriotism.While Donald Trump sat there looking like he was about to explode.And in fact did explode, when he returned
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 readingMontreal Simon: Is Maxime Bernier Hurting Andrew Scheer’s Cons Already?
Ever since Maxime Bernier left the Cons to form his own party, the People's Party or Max Party, Andrew Scheer has been desperately trying to ignore him. Trying to pretend, in public at least, that Mad Max is not a real threat to Scheer's fevered plan to DESTROY Justin Trudeau. And no
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Michael Harris: Why Justin Trudeau Should Win The Election
It's been three tough years. Demolishing Stephen Harper's grim legacy took longer, and was probably harder than Justin Trudeau had imagined.And no prime minister has ever been attacked as viciously as he has, by the Cons and their media stooges.But with less than a year to go before the next
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