Do recent mandate letters signal a new direction in the opioid crisis?
A memorial to people who have died of overdoses in Vancouver. Photo by Dan Toulgoet/North Shore News. As new Parliaments take shape, so too do new cabinets. In December, Prime…
Canadian Politics
Don’t Blame the Liberals
Risible rightwing piffle still circulates online about who is responsible for the rising costs of fuel and food. Conservatives and libertarians love to blame the Liberals, but that’s self-serving claptrap…
Ted Byfield, talented rhetorician and paleoconservative activist, dead at 93
Ted Byfield, publisher of the influential Alberta Reports Magazine and similar hard right spinoffs, died Thursday at 93. Edward Bartlett Byfield was born in Toronto on Bastille Day, 1928. Mr.…
OPINION: Comparing vaccine passports to the Holocaust is absurd and dangerous
SUPPORT US SUBSCRIBE Capital Ideas Hundreds gathered on the steps of the Legislature to protest on the anniversary of the Nuremberg doctors’ trials. Their equation of vaccine passports with…
We still don’t know who was in charge of Alberta while Premier Jason Kenney vacationed last summer – maybe no one
So who was in command of the good ship Alberta during those troubling weeks last summer when it became apparent the fourth wave of COVID-19 was raging and the premier…
Alberta premier’s lawyers to eight environmental groups: You’ll have our answer soon to your demand for an apology
If Jason Kenney’s lawyers give him sensible advice, they’ll tell him to seek a compromise with the coalition of eight environmental groups that threatened last month to sue him if…
Environmental groups tell Jason Kenney to apologize and retract by next Tuesday or meet them in court
A coalition of Canadian environmental groups has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging Premier Jason Kenney to a legal duel over his serial claims his government’s so-called “Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta…
Former Conservative PM Stephen Harper reported planning ‘activist fund’ with protégé of ‘Evil Captain Kirk’
Stephen Harper, the former Canadian Conservative Prime Minister, plans to team up with a protégé of Carl Icahn, the notorious vulture capitalist and destroyer of American jobs. Mr. Harper and…
Alberta signs on to federal child care deal its premier once mocked as ‘9-to-5, urban, government and union-run institutional daycare’
Premier Jason Kenney didn’t look all that cheerful at yesterday’s announcement Alberta had finally signed on to participate in the Trudeau Government’s national $10-a-day-child-care program. While the premier fidgeted in…
Rest in Peace, ‘Grassroots Guarantee’ – Jason Kenney’s famous promise is gone with the wind
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but, as Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have observed, you…
In Flanders Fields? It’s time to encourage another generation of school kids to read some better poems from the Great War
A civilization that forgets its poetry is barely worthy of the name. Like fiction and unlike non-fiction, poetry is how a culture’s most profound truths are told. Unlike fiction, poetry…
On Alberta’s anti-equalization referendum, BQ’s Blanchet tells UCP’s Kenney: Bring it on!
As the folk wisdom goes, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. Jason Kenney got his wish yesterday when Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet told him,…
Canada’s eviscerated democracy
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a campaign rally in Vancouver, November 18, 2019. Photo from Facebook. On September 20, Canadians voted to hold the line. While forty seats changed hands,…
Sorry, Justin Trudeau: There is no equivalence between the extreme right and the extreme left
A billboard featuring the portrait of People’s Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier and its message “Say NO to Mass Immigration” in Toronto, August 25, 2019. Photo from Twitter.…
Jason Kenney will try to spin his anti-equalization referendum vote as a huge victory – don’t believe him
Deeply unpopular with Alberta voters, distrusted by many in his own divided caucus, and with his United Conservative Party in financial disarray, Premier Jason Kenney will try to spin the…
It’s good the Two Michaels are on their way home – but let’s not forget they weren’t the only hostages
Surely most Canadians rejoiced last night when they learned the Two Michaels were on their way home from their long imprisonment in China. It’s equally certain that some very well-placed…
Uppercase Imperialism?
Dr. Linda Manyguns has stylized herself as Dr. linda manyguns because she stopped using uppercase (capital) letters to protest the “symbols of hierarchy.” Manyguns is the associate vice-president of indigenization…
The election everyone lost
In many ways, every single party—along with the Canadian electorate—lost this disappointing election, writes Canadian Dimension columnist Christo Aivalis. Photo from Twitter. The 2021 Canadian federal election is over, and…
Alberta Health Minister shuffled to Labour; Labour Minister shuffled to Health … premier says he won’t quit
VICTORIA – Say what you will about Jason Kenney, he never fails to disappoint. When the buzz hit social media yesterday morning that Alberta’s premier would attempt to shore up…
It’s déjà vu all over again
Justin Trudeau during an election campaign stop in Montréal, October 17, 2019. Photo from Twitter. Two years of minority parliament and several weeks of rather bland campaigning later the election…