The battle between Alberta government officials and a Calgary construction company over long delays building a new hospital in Grande Prairie that boiled over this week is more than a mere political he-said/she-said story. There’s a backstory that started the late days of Alberta’s 44-year Tory Dynasty – partly acknowledged
Continue readingTag: Trans Mountain Pipeline
Alberta Politics: Nothing has changed since February except that Canada now really does own the Trans Mountain Pipeline – so keep it public!
If the Trans Mountain Pipeline is so essential to the economic wellbeing of Canada and the price of Alberta bitumen is going to rise dramatically as a result of our ability to get that stuff to “tidewater,” why the heck is the federal government, having paid a premium to buy
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Remember when those confident British voters chose ‘hope over fear’ with Brexit? What Would Jason Tweet now?
While much of the world looked on in dismay as the results of the Brexit votes rolled in two years ago last month, Jason Kenney Tweeted his congratulations to the people of Britain for “choosing hope over fear by embracing a confident, sovereign future, open to the world.” How’s that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brian Mason, who kept NDP flame alight in Alberta’s Legislature for a decade, to take his leave from politics
Brian Mason, who as party leader kept the NDP flame burning brightly in the Alberta Legislature from 2004 to 2014 even when the caucus was small enough to truly meet in a phone booth, announced yesterday he is about to pull the plug on a 29-year political career that has
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Neoliberal Friends With Benefits
Kinder Morgan couldn’t have a better friend than Justin Trudeau: Texas-based Kinder Morgan made a seven-fold return on the sale of its Trans Mountain pipeline system to Canada’s federal government, according to a new report that also warns the federal budget deficit could jump by 36 per cent because of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Trump’s anti-Canadian antics are good news for Alberta pipeline advocates – whether or not that was the plan
U.S. President Donald Trump may not actually have intended to deliver a blow to West Coast environmentalists opposed to the completion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project, but he has done so with his recent dubious allegations about Canada’s trading practices. Building a pipeline capable of carrying diluted bitumen
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Good News for the Environment = Bad Tidings for Prime Minister Pipeline
If it’s as good as they say it is – and, with these “breakthroughs” that’s always a very big “if” – the fossil energy industry could be kaput. Sorry, Justin. Sorry, Rachel. Sorry, Jason. Sorry, Andrew. Sorry, Big Oil. WooHoo, British Columbia. An article in Financial Post claims a BC company
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Kinder, gentler Kenney must be for real! UCP lavishes 13 words of praise on NDP for capping super superintendent salaries!
Alberta’s United Conservative Party generates a lot of noise. Other than the Trans Mountain Pipeline, however, not a lot of it seems to have much to do with the principal issues facing Alberta these days. Education Minister David Eggen’s decision to slap a cap on the outrageous salaries paid to
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: What do Jason Kenney, John Horgan and Elizabeth May have in Common?
This just in from the “strange-bedfellows” department: When it comes to the Trans Mountain pipeline, Jason Kenney, BC premier John Horgan and Green Party leader Elizabeth May are singing from the same song sheet. They all agree that the federal government’s decision to buy Trans Mountain changes nothing. Elizabeth
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Bill McKibben Sums Up Trudeau in One Sentence
“In case anyone wondered, this is how the world ends: with the cutest, progressivest, boybandiest leader in the world going fully in the tank for the oil industry.” That’s how climate change campaigner, Bill McKibben, sees this prime minister, Trudeau. And I think he nailed it. Justin Trudeau’s government announced
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Trudeau Liberals call the opposition’s bluff and ‘nationalize’ (sort of, maybe) the Trans Mountain Pipeline
OK, so Ottawa’s going to buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline for $4.5 billion and run it as a Crown corporation. That’s a good start. (Caveats to follow.) Theoretically, it could ensure transparency and accountability, even responsibility, to a business in which the private sector adamantly refuses to deliver any such
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Shark Jumping in Alberta: NDP and UCP strive to outdo each other with ridiculous statements
As the Alberta Government’s fight with British Columbia over the Trans Mountain Pipeline takes on comic opera proportions, Premier Rachel Notley’s New Democratic Party and Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party Opposition appear to be struggling to see which one can come up with the most ridiculous things to say about
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Enron’s Patsy. How Kinder Morgan Played Trudeau and Canada for Suckers.
Steve Kean knows how to play hardball from his days as senior vice president of government affairs with the long defunct Enron corporation. Now, on behalf of the son of Enron, Kinder Morgan, Kean is using those skills to roll Justin Trudeau, Bill Morneau and the people of Canada. The
Continue readingAlberta Politics: 11 days from the brink, and Rachel Notley’s dice roll brings back memories of Mulroney and Meech
Rachel Notley, Alberta’s tough NDP premier who has clearly concluded her government’s survival depends on there being shovels in the ground building a pipeline by the time she asks the lieutenant governor to call an election next year, rolls the dice a lot like Brian Mulroney. Well, not exactly like
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: A Question Worth Asking – Has Canada Been Captured?
As analysis and reports stack up laying bare how much we know and everything we don’t know about dilbit and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, it is looking like this has nothing to do with the “national interest” as claimed by prime minister Trudeau. Instead it looks as though Trudeau
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘NRA Strategy’ to block connection of climate change dots won’t work when the climate disaster’s in B.C.
As fear rises in British Columbia this week along with the province’s record floodwaters, the likelihood B.C. voters will connect the dots between man-made climate change and “natural” catastrophes is rising too. Politically speaking, this is not exactly good news for the determined advocates in Alberta and Ottawa of aggressive
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Your Neo-liberal Government At Work
Included in the Trudeau sellout is the following: – Prepared to indemnify the project from any financial loss; -Is willing to offer this financial security to any company who wants to build the pipeline, should Kinder Morgan back out; -and, the financial backing must be fair, and beneficial to Canadians.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Review of Canada’s energy systems unlikely to cut through noise generated by pipeline hysteria
The furious debate about the merits of current and future pipeline projects underscores the need for an evidence-based long-term energy strategy for our country, the conclusions of a new review of Canada’s energy systems suggest. Alas, the report released yesterday by the Corporate Mapping Project and its partners at the
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Country is Broken!
Just when Albertans thought things couldn’t get any worse, Jason Kenney declared the country was broken. What? Did Trumpism seep across the border while we were sleeping? Canada survived the FLQ Crisis and the War Measures Act, the bitter negotiations over the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution, and the Quebec
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Tory canoe and Trudeau too* – Liberals take advantage of Jason Kenney’s “Canada is broken” Tweet
Alberta Opposition Leader Jason Kennedy’s now famous “Canada is broken” Tweet a week ago may turn out to have been the symbolic starting point of the 2019 federal election campaign. Canada is broken. https://t.co/7tVwbAKPmc — Jason Kenney (@jkenney) April 15, 2018 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his federal Liberals were
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