Former Alberta NDP environment minister Shannon Phillips announced on social media today she is joining a policy advisory firm with Conservative political advisor Ken Boessenkool and his Liberal equivalent Tyler Meredith.
The firm is to be called Meredith, Boessenkool & Phillips.
All three are smart policy-oriented political operators with lots of experience, so they’ll probably do quite nicely, thank you very much.
That said, at first glance, there’s a certain discomfort seeing a principled New Democrat joining a couple of representatives of what Dippers way back in the day used to call the “old line parties.” (This line has now been co-opted by the far-right Peoples Party of Canada, not without some justice.)
But why the hell not? As things stand, at the actual policy level there’s essentially no light between the New Democrats at either the provincial or federal level and the Liberals, and very little, notwithstanding the MAGA delusions and red-baiting rhetoric by the UCP base in Alberta, between the NDP and the Conservatives.
All have fully adopted the neoliberal program of the past 40 years, which obviously does not work for working Canadians, and that is why working Canadians like the working class in other modern Western democracies has in despair moved to the right and will likely continue to do so.
If, as is widely assumed, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party of Canada forms the next federal government and, as expected here at AlbertaPolitics.ca, proceeds not to address the problems the leader has promised to fix because of the party’s obvious deep commitment to neoliberal economics, lacking any alternative on the left working people will probably seek alternatives even farther to the right.
One of the obvious symptoms of this shift toward the right in Canada has been the increasingly harsh, even hateful, tone of political discourse, particularly by parties like Alberta’s United Conservatives.
As environment minister in Rachel Notley’s NDP government from 2015 to 2019, Ms. Phillips was viciously and relentlessly attacked by UCP propagandists as if she were some kind of radical environmental extremist bent on destroying the oil and gas industry.
This was the kind of nonsense we came to expect from the UCP under Jason Kenney and which has continued under his successor, Premier Danielle Smith.
But while Ms. Phillips had been an advocate before entering politics of views on the environment stronger than any policy position likely ever to be taken by the NDP, she was hardly an outlier in Ms. Notley’s government, which could fairly be described as either centre-right or progressive conservative for the policies it delivered.
Ms. Phillips was in cabinet when the NDP moved to eliminate coal-fired electricity generation, a policy that sounds radical only in the most MAGAfied corners of the UCP base. Of course, Ms. Phillips also speaks plainly and forcefully, a quality not much admired among social conservatives if the speaker is a woman.
She announced in The Globe and Mail on June 9 that she was quitting politics and resigning as the MLA for Lethbridge-West directly because of the kind of harassment and disinformation women are habitually subjected to in Canadian politics today.
The harassment to which Ms. Phillips was subjected included being illegally spied upon and photographed by members of the Lethbridge Police Service, an activity that was clearly influenced by the overheated rhetoric of the UCP. Her inability to do anything about it despite her position as an MLA undoubtedly influenced her decision.
Now, none of this is intended as a criticism of Ms. Phillips and Messrs. Meredith and Boessenkool. The situation is what it is, as the annoying folk saying goes, and folks have to make a living.
Ms. Phillips is said to get along with NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, so perhaps when he is premier he can send a little business in the unlikely trio’s direction.
Late last month Ms. Phillips also announced she was taking a part-time adjunct teaching position with the University of Lethbridge’s political science department.
Readers will recall that Mr. Boessenkool entered into a partnership similar to this a decade ago, with New Democrat Brian Topp and Liberal strategist Don Guy.
That firm – which had the excellent and memorable name of Kool Topp & Guy – boasted that it was the political equivalent of “Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby playing together, all the time.”
In that imagining, Mr. Topp played left wing; Mr. Boesenkool, right wing; and Mr. Guy, centre. In reality, notwithstanding Mr. Topp’s unsuccessful candidacy in 2011 and 2012 to lead the federal NDP, one could argue that they all played right wing.
Thomas Mulcair was the victor in that NDP race, by the way, and we all know how that ended: Not well for Mr. Mulcair, and not well for the NDP either.
It would appear the order of names in the new firm was selected so that its initials would align with its slogan, “Make Better Policy.”
Readers are invited to come up with alternatives by placing the initials in any order. Be nice, though!
Ken Boessenkool. Former hired tool for the likes of Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, Ralph Klein, Christy Clark … this guy has that ‘Rogues Gallery’ all over him. I’m not sure what Shannon Phillips is doing in this guy, unless she needs a gig that badly.
Oh, and …
MPB: Male Pattern Baldness. Have you seen those two guys lately?
This is an interesting development, that’s for sure.
I wonder if the right wing sees Boesenkool as a closet Liberal for associating with the other two.
“Mr. Boessenkool was dismissed for purportedly making an unwanted advance at a Victoria bar toward a young female political staffer in the BC government.”
Not really the kind of place you would think a progressive woman would want to work.
Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/probe-into-boessenkool-affair-oddly-lacking-a-paper-trail/article4900224/ DJC
Shannon Phillips. Every time I speak that name, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Out of personal interest, in 2021 I spent a lot of time trying to understand the impact of selenium in our rivers and streams from the proposed coal mining expansion in Southern Alberta.
I stumbled onto the fact that the PAL (Protection of Aquatic Life) limits were increased from 1 part per billion to 2 in Alberta in 2018. This appeared to be the GoA paving the way for coal mine expansion.
After numerous phone calls, virtual meetings and Emails with various employees of AER, AE and AEP, I was left with the sense that there had been some serious lobbying by the coal industry to get these limits successfully changed.
Shannon Phillips was the Environment Minister when this occurred.
I then tried to find out just how much Ms. Phillips knew about this.
After spending my own money on FOIP requests, many Emails, social media requests for information, and rejected phone calls, I ran into a stone wall and am still in the dark as to what she knew.
She refused to answer any of my questions, did not respond to Emails or phone calls and blocked me from her Social Media sites. I have a poor opinion of Shannon Phillips.
Cornell–
In regards to AER, AE etc.
The Narwhal-Sept 6th ..
“We will not lie ”
Senior officials pushed back against Alberta government requests.
Alberta plans to quietly subsidize coal turned natural gas plants to keep them afloat.
The province is looking for grid stability. Critics say a plan to subsidize coal turned natural gas plants is the beginning of the end for Alberta’s electricity market.
DS on X- today
Making life more affordable is a top priority for my team and I.
That’s why our government has kept it’s promise by cutting power rates by more than half across Alberta since last year.
————————
Ken Boessenkol in all the different lines of the giant spider web isn’t surprising, Papa Bears prints are always just below the surface.
Never mind the weather changing from day to day, the UCP/TBA/CON policies, strategies, contracts and especially government regulations in Alberta are at the whims of wannabe autocrats with the help of those poor ‘Victims ‘ of the Russian influence investigations.
I’m wondering if someone is going to ask Preston & Artur about their ” conferences, now that she’s no longer on the page.
Probably just another case of ” I meet with all kinds of people, freedom of speech ( still a US thing) , listening to- different ideas, no matter how insidious; but mostly– ‘I have the mandate ‘– I will make the rules or change them to fit my narrative.
Pay attention Alberta and Canada, when they tell you who they are………
Apparently it does not matter who we vote for, the government still gets in. Are we all to join the “crackpot realist” party and continue looting the place? The atmosphere does not vote and neither do the kids. How about “Mendacity, BS & Prevarication”?
Congratulations to Shannon Phillips.
It’s too bad we couldn’t have kept her as an elected representative, but Alberta being Alberta, plain-talking smart women are not welcome in public office. Surely by the end of this century, if not the decade, or maybe this year, they can all be driven out and back into their rightful place in the kitchen/pumping out babies. UCP policy will see to that, starting this fall. Women are for domestic chores and servitude. Beer-swilling, Styrofoam-cooler-totin’ men’s men are for public office. If you can’t chug with the worst of ’em, yer out! This is nothing new here, but it definitely got worse when the tiny toddler-tyrant tantrums started circa 2017. Thanks, TBA. Thanks, UCP. Perhaps you can boot your leader back to her rightful place at your leadership convention. Please.
What Machiavelli described was/is the immense incentive of those who have been well-served by the status quo to fight tooth and nail to defend its current configuration to maintain their share of the gravy train. Those who fear losing will fight far more vociferously than those who hope to gain from an uncertain and risky change of regime. This generates what is termed ‘doing more of what’s already failed’, for if the status quo was actually functioning as wonderfully as its defenders’ claim, then there would be little need to defend it against calls for a new arrangement.
While I whole-heartedly agree that “change” is needed, those who are comfortable, or aspire to such a position by the ways and means of those already there [often not by dint of ‘hard work’!], have a most difficult time contemplating, never mind trying to make, changes that are more equitable. And that includes our desires that override the ecological damage our waste streams produce to the detriment of the whole planet [of which we are part, not a-part from] by providing “more”. Trickle-down theory and redistribution theory are all that is in the offing of any who ascribe to the current neo-liberalist capitalisms among political stances across Canada.
Maybe we could start by listening to a common theme in Indigenous cultures that goes something like: Our older brothers and sisters on this planet (plants and animals) have much to teach us about how to live in this world. This isn’t to be dismissed as primitive animism. It reflects hard-earned wisdom—that works, in practice.
If you look around the card table for the mark? It’s you!
Good advice, POGO, but for whom? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hx4gdlfamo DJC
That’s a great video of The Gambler. In the 70s when I was a young union rep, all the old-timers claimed that song was about them. Oh, and Rhinestone Cowboy too.
Soulless apparatchiks? Say it isn’t so! https://youtu.be/mFfN1ZHtge8
DJC, you have touched on one of the most persistent debates in New Democrat circles: do we run from the genuine left, lose, and try to influence policy from the sidelines – or do we follow what I call the “Willy Sutton rule” of electoral politics and run pragmatically to where most of the voters are, win from time to time, and actually get to govern.
It’s all well and good to push for the NDP, whether it be provincially or federally, to be a more genuinely democratic socialist or social democratic party (the distinctions between those two concepts somewhat elude me, but purists argue they are real), but that’s simply not where the voters are. So to run from that perspective just dooms the party to perpetual 3rd- or 4th-place status.
That doesn’t mean I don’t share some of this ideological values. I think there a strong role for the state in supporting Canadians towards a better life, instead of leaving them to the vagaries of dog-eat-dog capitalism.
But instead of trying to cram these ideas down Canadians’ throats, failing, and seeing voters return to their traditional blue-red-blue-red oscillation every E-Day, why don’t we try shifting the Overton window back to the centre and then the more progressive side, and perhaps they’ll come to us? And, since that is a multi-generational project – after all, the neoliberal consensus has been with us since the 1980s, and it will take decades to change that – why can’t we offer good, pragmatic, honest governance in the meantime?
Remember, by and large, NDP [provincial] governments in this country have been remarkably free of scandal, and that’s a track record no other party can claim. So, let New Democrats run campaigns that seem to some to be indistinguishable from those of Liberals. Maybe they can win, and maybe then they can provide good, clean government that still does positive things for the people – can you say public dental care or pharmacare? – I think that’s still a win.
‘All have fully adopted the neoliberal program of the past 40 years, which obviously does not work for working Canadians,’
e.g. All political parties now following the lead of neoliberal economists urging light or minimal regulation and private corporate domination of our electricity utilities and water utilities. Result: among the top 2 or 3 highest electricity prices in Canada here in AB, massive excess profits for electricity generators paid by Albertans.
NDP supporter, and UCP made the worst changes, but the Notley NDP followed the advice of ABs prominent neoliberal economists in advising on how to redesign the electricity generation systeme in AB and let the market drive our electricity markets. Pretty sad.
“a principled New Democrat”. Wut is dat? I believe it was Kiefer Sutherland who said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.”
But seriously folks, we went from the Wobblies, Makhno and the Autonomous Region of Catalonia to the progressives in Calgary supporting the creation of a landlord’s gentrified paradise as the solution to the housing crisis. Progs fall all over themselves to make “land acknowledgements” without a peep about how a private business enterprise like the Hudson’s Bay Company came to “own” nearly 4 million square km of territory and then sell it to a newly created state which was magically imbued with the power to make treaties with people whose ancestors had been on the territory for thousands of years. And people wonder why we have kooks like the Freemen on the Land.
Interesting. politics does make for some strange “bed fellows”. Now we can sit back and see what happens. Ken B. yes do remember him when he was in B.C. Not all were keen on him. Oh, well better in Alberta than B.C.
Now we have the three of them, usually my comment would be “lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas”. In this case its hard to figure out who is bringing the fleas.