It sure looks as if Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s abysmal performance is not merely threatening the survival of his United Conservative Party Government, but is dragging down the federal Conservatives in Alberta as well. Alberta’s Conservatives are too strong and too entrenched even for Premier Kenney to destroy them completely.
Continue readingTag: United Conservative Party
Alberta Politics: Definitive answers about AIMCo’s investment strategy weren’t forthcoming at Heritage Savings Trust Fund Committee meeting
If anyone expected definitive answers about the Alberta Investment Management Corp.’s underperformance compared to that of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board at Friday’s meeting of the Legislature’s Standing Committee on the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, they were disappointed. Unlike the previous 26 of the committee’s quarterly meetings over
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP plan to grab CPP contributions for underperforming AIMCo would be ‘worst investment decision in Alberta’s history’
With representatives of the Alberta Investment Management Corp. scheduled to appear before the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund Committee today to explain their recent laggard performance, the NDP Opposition reminded Albertans about Premier Jason Kenney’s scheme to snatch their retirement savings from the Canada Pension Plan and hand them over
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Christian Champion, Jason Kenney’s favourite curriculum advisor, risks becoming the UCP’s Tzeporah Berman
Jason Kenney did not seem pleased when the first reporter to ask a question at his June 18 news conference on his COVID-19 reopening plans raised the topic of offensive commentary about residential schools by the Alberta premier’s favourite curriculum advisor, Christian P. Champion. Dr. Champion, a PhD historian who
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Lotto Vaxx to include Mexican vacation prizes as bid to woo vaccine-hesitant UCP supporters nears peak irony
If “the Open for Summer Lottery is a once-in-a-lifetime response to a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic,” as Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro put it in a news release about vacation package prizes for Albertans willing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, what does that make Premier Jason Kenney’s $1.3-billion giveaway to TC Energy?
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Lotto Vaxx: Can the Kenney Government give away cash money without seriously messing up?
As a purely cynical effort to distract voters from the many failings of the Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government, it would be hard to top the decision announced yesterday to give away the first of three $1-million vaccination lottery prizes on the day the province drops most of its COVID-19
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Keystone XL, the pipeline that just keeps dying, officially pronounced dead
Keystone XL, the pipeline that just keeps dying over and over again, was officially pronounced dead yesterday. After TC Energy Corp. issued a statement saying it was walking away for good from the project that has obviously been doomed for months, the U.S. business press declared the pipedream of successive
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Worst news conference ever? Jason Kenney apologizes for Sky Palace patio party, touts silly equalization referendum
The rebellion that now has United Conservative Party Premier Jason Kenney looking as if his career is on the ropes is strongly reminiscent of the circumstances that brought Progressive Conservative Party premier Alison Redford’s political career to an end in 2014. Ironically, both feature the “Sky Palace” as a powerful
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Buoyed by overwhelming leadership approval vote, Rachel Notley sketches outline of Alberta NDP’s 2023 campaign
Acting like someone with a serious chance of returning to the Premier’s Office in 2023, Alberta New Democratic Party Leader Rachel Notley received a 98.2-per-cent approval vote in the Opposition party’s leadership review Sunday. The former Alberta premier set out a hopeful vision of how her next government would “transform
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Two defiant UCP ministers tell Jason Kenney to apologize for breaking COVID-19 restrictions at Sky Palace patio party
The good ship United Conservative Party, the vessel carrying Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s ambitions, sprang a couple more leaks yesterday. This time it was two female members of the UCP cabinet who dared to criticize the boozy pandemic patio party last Tuesday on the roof of Edmonton’s notorious Sky Palace,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney’s chuckleheaded response to Sky Palace patio party uproar reanimates rebellion in UCP Caucus ranks
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s pandemic patio party at the Sky Palace and his chuckleheaded response to the inevitable criticism of it seems to have loosed the spirit of rebellion again in some of the Wildrosy corners of his United Conservative Party Caucus. Responding to constituents who mistook her in photos
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Chief medical officer of health, left to fend for herself, refuses to criticize premier’s rule-breaking pandemic patio party
It’s time for Premier Jason Kenney to acknowledge his mistake at that Sky Palace patio party and move on, you say? Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw certainly seemed to think so yesterday, although she wouldn’t quite admit she thought Mr. Kenney had done anything wrong in her evasive
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Anonymous shutterbug snaps Jason Kenney and cabinet insiders breaking pandemic rules at boozy Sky Palace patio table
When Jason Kenney was busted yesterday for breaking his own pandemic rules the night before with a group of United Conservative Party cabinet heavyweights and a couple of guests during a boozy rooftop dinner at the notorious Sky Palace in Edmonton, one wag commented that these are tough times for
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Gaslighters: Premier Kenney gins up an unlikely ‘strange alliance’ of anti-vaxxers and advocates of cautious reopening
It would be hard to find a purer example of gaslighting than Premier Jason Kenney’s straight-faced claim during yesterday’s COVID-19 news conference that the New Democratic Party Opposition and other advocates of a more cautious approach to reopening Alberta have formed a “strange alliance” with anti-vaxxers to undermine public confidence
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Kenney rolls the dice on COVID-19: We’re going to have the best summer you can imagine even if it kills us
Only pure political calculation can be driving Premier Jason Kenney’s COVID-19 reopening strategy now. Science? Prudence? Caution? Second vaccine doses? Forget about ’em. Health Minister Tyler Shandro (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). We’re going to have the best little ole summer you can imagine even if it kills us. And it just
Continue readingAlberta Politics: A Twitterer’s tale: Kenney scores an own goal with tweet that ‘reads like a Beaverton headline’
At 4:02 o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday, May 23, 2021, somebody pressed the “tweet” button on Jason Kenney’s Twitter account, sending an enigmatic message about the government’s response to COVID-19 whizzing into cyberspace. Perhaps it was Mr. Kenney himself who clicked the click. Perhaps, since he is the premier
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Teachers give Education Minister Adriana LaGrange a 99% non-confidence vote – but it’s Jason Kenney who’s driving the school bus
Ninety-nine per cent of the delegates to the Alberta Teachers Association’s virtual annual representative assembly voted Sunday to affirm a motion of non-confidence in Education Minister Adriana LaGrange. There’s no question that as education minister Ms. LaGrange has possessed a sort of reverse Midas touch – virtually every policy the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What does the UCP do now that its favourite researcher says she never thought Canadian environmental groups were being used by U.S. interests?
What is the United Conservative Party’s position, pray, about Vancouver blogger Vivian Krause’s bombshell assertion she always understood the environmental conspiracy to landlock Alberta’s oilsands she promoted so energetically had nothing to do with the U.S. oil industry advancing its interests at Canada’s expense? Wherever it came from, the notion
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Foundering public inquiry gets another two months to find evidence; UCP gets even more time to figure out what to do with it
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has announced his government’s foundering “public inquiry” into the supposed conspiracy by American interests to bankroll environmental charities to help landlock Alberta’s fossil fuel resources will get another two months to come up with some evidence. After that, the government will give itself an additional three
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney, speaking directly to rural COVID skeptics, tries an end-run around his rebellious caucus
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney used the daily COVID-19 briefing yesterday to send a message directly to the supporters of his opposition in the Legislature. Not the official NDP Opposition. Those guys aren’t the premier’s biggest problem just now, especially with the Legislature still shuttered, supposedly to reduce the threat to
Continue reading