Apparently commissioner Steve Allan still isn’t having any luck finding those sinister foreign funders of “anti-energy” campaigns. But don’t worry, the government of Alberta has given the head of its “inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns” yet another extension to keep looking for the elusive foreigners featured in Premier Jason Kenney’s successful pre-election conspiracy theory. As […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
How propaganda became memory: Pierre Trudeau, Alberta and the National Energy Program
On this day 40 years ago, prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s finance minister and deputy PM, Allan MacEachen, rose in Parliament to introduce a new national budget. Warning that Canada could become increasingly dependent on foreign supplies of oil and subject to the vagaries of the world oil market, Mr. MacEachen said in his budget speech […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP plan to lay off 11,000 public sector health workers sparks wildcat walkouts at 45 Alberta health facilities
Infuriated at the Kenney Government’s determination to lay off 11,000 public sector health care workers and privatize their jobs, members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees walked off the job in a province-wide wildcat strike yesterday morning. Last night, the Alberta Labour Relations Board ruled the work stoppage to be an illegal strike and […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Activate the COVID Alert App in Alberta. Activate it right now!
With coronavirus pandemic surging in most parts of Canada, most definitely including Alberta, the federal government needs to make its COVID Alert exposure notification app available in this province immediately. Needless to say, with case numbers rising rapidly in Alberta, it is extremely frustrating for Albertans concerned about their health and doing their best to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
COVID-19? Forget about it! Alberta restaurants to stay open, Premier Jason Kenney vows
“Alberta restaurants to stay open, barring ‘catastrophe,’ premier says,” the CBC’s online headline writer summarized yesterday. Here, as they say on social media, let me fix your headline: “Alberta restaurants to stay open, sparking ‘catastrophe,’ premier says.” Well, maybe that’s a misrepresentation — I’m accused of that from time to time, especially when my commentary […]
Posted inBestsellers
The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donoghue, seems like a permanent fixture on independent booksellers’ fiction bestseller list
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Oct. 18, 2020. The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books in Edmonton and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton. ALBERTA FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. The […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Premier Jason Kenney, in isolation, blows off criticism of the lackadaisical UCP approach to COVID-19 restrictions as ‘political pressure’
It’s not very reassuring to learn Alberta Premier Jason Kenney treats calls for stricter measures to control resurgent COVID-19 infections as “political pressure.” But yesterday, after Alberta on Wednesday surpassed 400 new cases in a single day for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, Mr. Kenney did just that. The soaring COVID-19 caseload […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Handpicked UCP advisors call for mention of residential schools to be erased from primary grades’ social studies curriculum
A recommendation by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s handpicked curriculum advisors to strip all mention of residential schools from the province’s Kindergarten-to-Grade 4 curriculum “will perpetuate systemic racism through whitewashing,” says Melissa Purcell, the Alberta Teachers Association’s staff officer for Indigenous education. “The Indian Residential School system was created to erase the cultures, histories, languages, and […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP launches ambitious legislative session, with 20 bills packed into six weeks and no time for COVID-19
An ambitious six-week fall sitting of the Alberta Legislature commenced in Edmonton yesterday with Premier Jason Kenney telling the House during Question Period that his government isn’t about to publish any updated COVID-19 modelling. As Opposition Leader Rachel Notley argued, it would be useful to know what the experts say now if we wish to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Second COVID-19 wave rolls into Alberta as Premier Jason Kenney continues to emphasize ‘personal responsibility’
Alberta has now passed a significant milestone — more COVID-19 cases than at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, 3,138 compared to 3,022 on April 30. There were 898 new cases over the weekend if you count Friday, as Alberta Health Services does, and four more people have died, […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta must learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, premier muses on the topic of energy and the environment
Jason Kenney may have missed it, but Lyndon Johnson’s famous comment about how certain people weren’t up to walking and chewing gum at the same time was an observation about their lack of intelligence, not their ability to get away with saying contradictory things at the same time. Alberta’s premier is said to be a […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Sundre hospital renamed to honour MP Myron Thompson, long-time foe of equality for same-sex couples
“They’re trying to take away our culture, they’re trying to take away our history,” Donald Trump complained back in 2017 about activists who call for the removal statues of Confederate and colonialist heroes. Mr. Trump’s supporters have been loudly making their agreement known ever since, including here in Alberta where the U.S. president has plenty […]