Travelling by air is safer than going to the grocery store, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney explained to yesterday’s COVID-19 news conference. But that doesn’t mean you should travel by air. Or shouldn’t go to the grocery store. Or something. Chief Medical Officer Deena Hinshaw at the same event (Photo: Chris
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Alberta Politics: Alberta premier piously pleads for restoration of order in Washington, smooth ascension of Joe Biden to U.S. presidency
“Alberta has always had close ties to the United States, so it’s painful to watch the bizarre scenes unfolding at the U.S. Capitol,” Jason Kenney lamented yesterday, presumably tweeting from a secure command post atop the office building that overlooks the Alberta Legislature. “Political violence is always wrong, especially when
Continue readingAlberta Politics: In the aftermath of Aloha-gate, that report on ‘anti-Alberta energy campaigns’ is likely to be a dud
Before the Aloha–gate travel scandal upset the United Conservative Party’s applecart, Commissioner Steve Allan’s big report on “anti-Alberta energy campaigns” was supposed to be Alberta’s first major political story of 2021. But if the report is released as scheduled later this month – no certainty given its sputtering progress to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: In epic flip-flop, Jason Kenney reverses course, disciplines globe-trotting MLAs and sacks migratory chief of staff
After a weekend of unprecedented denunciation from all points of the political compass, including many of his own loyal supporters, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney yesterday folded and accepted resignations from two cabinet members and a top aide, while demoting four backbench MLAs for ignoring repeated pleas by health officials not
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Hola Tany Yao! You’ve got voicemail! Meanwhile, Energy Minister Sonya Savage completes essential holiday home maintenance in B.C.
One of Our MLAs is Missing! I know, this sounds like the title of a bad movie, the kind that might earn three rotten tomatoes on an online review site, but it’s for real. Energy Minister Sonya Savage – her Okanagan holiday home needed “essential maintenance” (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta’s Hawaiigate Scandal grows, uncovering new non-essential Conservative trips to Mexico, Arizona, California, Las Vegas
Alberta’s Hawaiigate travel scandal continued to grow yesterday with four more United Conservative Party MLAs and one Conservative Party of Canada MP from Calgary confirmed to have been out of the country in defiance of COVID-19 restrictions on non-essential travel. In addition, rumours about several more Conservative politicians are circulating.
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: Political New Year’s fireworks go off as Alberta learns Tracy Allard, minister responsible for vaccine rollout, is just back from Hawaiian vacation
Happy New Year, Alberta! And welcome to the first United Conservative Party Government scandal of 2021: Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard has been caught vacationing in Hawaii, mid-pandemic. Lethbridge-East MLA Nathan Neudorf shows a copy of today’s edition of his local newspaper in a video posted to Facebook this morning
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Social media abuzz with reports of UCP staffers, MLA vacationing abroad despite pandemic travel warnings
Social media is abuzz with reports of United Conservative Party staffers and at least one UCP MLA enjoying vacations abroad notwithstanding the federal government’s pleas for Canadians to cancel all travel during the coronavirus pandemic. Most mainstream media in Alberta, however, seem to be engaging in an anguished internal debate
Continue readingAlberta Politics: More than 1,000 Albertans have died from COVID-19, half of them in the past month
Albertans learned yesterday the grim toll from COVID-19 in the province has now passed 1,000 deaths. This is a terrible tragedy but it need surprise no one, given humanity’s extensive knowledge of the science of infectious disease and the way the Kenney Government nevertheless dragged its feet each step of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: AlbertaPolitics.ca marks its 13th anniversary today as 2020, annus horribilis, nears its end
Today marks the 13th anniversary of the first post published on this blog, known at the time as St. Albert Diary, and later, for a spell, as Alberta Diary. So, by the standards of the Internet, this makes AlbertaPolitics.ca an institution. Premier Jason Kenney, striking an avuncular pose himself (Photo:
Continue readingAlberta Politics: A thought on what the UCP’s elected members should find in their Christmas stockings tomorrow morning
It’s Christmas Eve. What should Santa Claus leave tonight for a government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing? The aphorism is Oscar Wilde’s, but the great wit of the 19th Century certainly could have been describing the United Conservative Party Government of Alberta in the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: When it comes to COVID-19, our premier talks like Churchill but walks like Chamberlain
Alberta’s efforts to respond to the coronavirus pandemic with Jason Kenney in the driver’s seat are a lot like stand–up comedian Billy Connolly’s iconic routine about union negotiations, only without the profanity and without actually being funny. What’s going to happen tomorrow? Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw at
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Calgary judge makes short work of bid for injunction to block COVID-19 restrictions
A Calgary superior court judge yesterday made short work of the bid by the so-called Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms to get an emergency injunction blocking public health restrictions on activities likely to exacerbate the spread of COVID-19 during the holiday season. In a hearing that could be watched online,
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Parsing Alberta’s oil industry
One could divide Alberta up in various ways. First, as in most provinces and elsewhere, there is town and country, the old story of liberal cities and socially conservative hinterlands. And in the 2019 election the pattern held: the UCP dominated the countryside. And then there’s north-south. The southern part
Continue readingAlberta Politics: When is a rule not a rule? When a maskless minister from Alberta’s United Conservative Party is breaking it
COVID-19 has now killed at least 790 Albertans. It fell to Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw to break the dark news yesterday that 30 COVID-19 deaths had been reported in the previous 24 hours. While not all had taken place in that time frame, it was the largest
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Tire-screeching reversal on COVID-19 vaccine timing shows Canada’s Conservatives can turn on a dime!
You can hardly blame The United Conservative Party’s leaders from trying to get out there as quickly as possible to take credit for the arrival of the first planeloads of COVID-19 vaccine in Alberta. Premier Jason Kenney, who evidently enjoys cosplay, even got dressed up as a UPS deliveryman and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: 10 months in the life of Jason Kenney: from bitter foe of illegal protests to fierce defender of protesters’ rights, or something
What a difference a year makes! Not even a year: Ten months in the life of Jason Kenney. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Ten months ago, blockades in support of opposition by members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation to pipeline construction on ancestral lands in north-central British
Continue readingAlberta Politics: New Zealand eyes reopening borders a crack while Calgary crowd protests ‘draconian’ COVID-19 restrictions
After being declared COVID-19 free last June, New Zealand is ever-so-cautiously moving toward reopening its watery borders to some international travel. With Australia, that is. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (Photo: NewZild, Creative Commons). Australia hasn’t done quite as well countering the coronavirus as New Zealand has, but it’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Pretty much a dud, but still alive, Alberta’s ‘Energy War Room’ stumbles along after a year
Alberta’s “Energy War Room” was a year old yesterday and while the cash lavished on the self-described purveyor of a “fact-based narrative about Canadian energy” isn’t the worst investment ever made, or even the worst investment made by the Kenney Government, its return on investment is nothing to write home
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