ST. ALBERT, Alberta – Next Monday is Alberta’s quadrennial municipal election day. Leading up to that occasion, there’s been plenty of jiggery-pokery by our United Conservative Party provincial government, which went to the trouble of legalizing municipal political parties in the province’s two largest cities (and only in Calgary and Edmonton) in hopes of seeing […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
What’s with the Alberta post-secondary funding panel’s detour into anti-DEI crusading?
The report of the so-called Expert Panel on Post-Secondary Institution Funding and Alberta’s Competitiveness released last week calls for the government to stop telling universities, colleges and technical institutes how to do their jobs. Then it proceeds to explain how the province should require the same institutions to do their jobs. What’s with this apparent […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta and B.C. premiers’ pipeline war of words likely comes as a relief to both
RED DEER, Alberta – Their anger may be genuine, but it seems likely Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and British Columbia Premier David Eby are both relieved and even delighted to have the excuse to yell at each other about the Alberta Government’s half-baked plan for a bitumen pipeline from the Athabasca tarpatch to the Pacific […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Well, at least one vitally important labour negotiation has been settled in Alberta, to everyone’s relief!
In important labour relations news, significant portions of the province of Alberta sighed with relief yesterday upon learning that an important contract has finally been signed, ending a period of uncertainty and fear. That’s right, Connor McDavid will remain with the Edmonton Oilers for at least another two years at the modest cost of $12.5 […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Huge protest in support of Alberta teachers at Alberta Legislature may have been largest in province’s history
A throng of at least 18,000 people turned out at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton this afternoon to mark World Teachers Day by supporting members of the Alberta Teachers Association who are expected to walk off the job tomorrow morning in a province-wide strike. If anything, that mainstream media estimate probably significantly low-balled the size […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Former PC deputy premier’s ‘Forever Canadian’ petition success a big potential problem for UCP
Prediction: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will call an early election before she allows a referendum to proceed to a vote with the wording promoted by former Progressive Conservative deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian petition. To do otherwise would derail the scheme by the premier and her closest advisors to blackmail Canada into conferring near-national […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
If the goal of Danielle Smith’s ‘historic’ pipeline announcement was to distract, it appears to be working
If the goal of Danielle Smith’s “historic” pipeline announcement yesterday was to distract voters and media from Alberta’s looming teachers’ strike, increasing health care chaos, unpopular separatist scheming, embarrassing oil company layoffs, and continuing procurement scandals, it appears to be working. All the serious websites of the land were publishing learned treatises last night on […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP says it will pay parents $30 a day to do teachers’ jobs from home, sort of, during a strike
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her finance and education ministers yesterday announced a novel scheme to pay scabs $30 a day to teach school children in the event of a province-wide teachers’ strike! The rub? It turns out that it’s parents who are going to be expected to do the strike breaking. Well, at least […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
43,000 Alberta teachers vote to reject province’s latest contract offer by nearly 90%
If anyone still subscribes to the quaint notion “conservative” governments are somehow better at managing the complex financial machinery of government than more progressive ones, they might want to reconsider in light of today’s vote by more than 43,000 public, Catholic and francophone schoolteachers to reject the province’s latest contract offer. The overwhelming result: 89.5 […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson launches campaign to lead federal New Democrats
Edmonton Strathcona Member of Parliament Heather McPherson launched her campaign this afternoon to lead Canada’s New Democrats out of the wilderness they found themselves wandering in after last April’s federal election. Vowing to “make the NDP a viable choice again, a choice that unites that delivers on the promise of good jobs, of wages that […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The ebb and flow of the endless stream of MAGA nonsense in Alberta becomes more apparent at a distance
MELBOURNE, Australia – When one’s at home struggling to keep up with the stream of performative MAGA garbage emitted daily by Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party, it’s easy to forget how much Alberta these days is influenced by what’s happening in Washington. A few thousand kilometres of distance provides a little perspective […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
According to Danielle Smith, any additional pay for teachers means Alberta can’t afford for more teachers
SYDNEY, Australia – Let me take a few moments out of my Antipodean sojourn to make a couple of observations about Danielle Smith’s fairy tale about how the Government of Alberta lacks the funds to give the province’s teachers a meaningful raise and also hire enough additional teachers to serve the growing population of Wild […]