The embarrassment of Justin Trudeau.
You do know, do you not, that in a time of pandemic, prime minister Justin Trudeau is quietly building an abomination of a pipeline across our magnificent Rocky Mountains. There…
Alberta
Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Stephen Long writes that one of the key economic symptoms of the coronavirus pandemic has been to push people into underemployment. And CBC…
Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Martin Birt writes that we can never again ignore the importance and value of the people performing essential work. And Jennifer Keesmat argues…
Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Annie Lowrey discusses how essential workers have been consistently undervalued due to political choices. And Patty Coates, Jan Simpson and Pablo Godoy discuss…
Blame Alberta’s Jason Kenney.
You would think that one of these days, the people of Alberta are going to catch on to their premier Jason Kenney. Those of us who consider him something of…
Plague Update: Saskatchewan Prepares To Increase Infections
It’s no surprise to most reading this that I have a low opinion of Saskatchewan’s Premier. He’s an unlovable oaf. He’s never been elected by the general electorate to be…
Is Oil Profitable? Negative.
This has been obvious to me for most of the last decade, after it became clear that good information was never going to win over enough people, because disinformation had…
Albertans Want off the Oil Train … Eventually
A common opinion about Albertans is that when it comes to energy they are about oil and nothing but oil. Like most generalizations this contains some truth, but also like…
Jason Kenney puts on his black hat.
Just when you start to think Alberta premier Jason Kenney is not such a bad guy, he drops a political stink bomb. He says his province can ignore our federal…
Oil Industry Disses the Free Market
The free market, who needs it. Not the oil industry obviously. Not the industry nor the governments that depend on its largesse for royalties and taxes. We just had a…
Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Damian Carrington reports on the connection between air pollution and more severe death rates caused by the coronavirus. Clyde Russell writes that…
Kenney dives into pipeline financing.
In a time when the rest of the world is expending all energy and funds into the war against the novel coronavirus, Alberta premier Jason Kenney is following his own…
I’m Becoming an Oil Baron
For those who complain there’s nothing in the news but COVID these days, try the Alberta section. Lots going on. For example, our government just laid off 26,000 school support…
Imagine Alberta Without Kenney
Imagine an Alberta government not under investigation for election fraud? One that doesn’t fire tens of thousands during a pandemic so Ottawa can pay them instead? A provincial government which…
Back to the 30s?
“We are facing a period of profound adversity unlike any we have since the 1930s,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said last week. The premier was referring to the province’s economy…
Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Kenan Malik discusses how the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fragility of the UK’s social and economic structures: The economic burden imposed…
the 2020-21 Alberta budget
I’ve written a ‘top 10’ overview of the 2020-21 Alberta budget, tabled on February 27. The link to the overview is here.
The Cartel Still Rules … Sort of
It isn’t easy to convince nominally free-market Albertans that monopoly and government interference in the market made us rich, but of course they did. Nothing has contributed more to the…
Cost savings associated with Housing First
I’ve written a summary of a recent study I co-authored on savings to the health and justice sectors associated with Housing First (i.e., the immediate provision of subsidized housing, along…
Is Kenney Coming After Our Pensions?
Premier Jason Kenney, ardent free market conservative, has started sounding a little like Peter Lougheed, a former premier with more progressive conservative leanings. Indeed Lougheed was once labelled “Peter the…