The discovery last week Postmedia was trying to cash in on Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s promised $30-million anti-environmental “war room” at the same time it has its hand out to Ottawa for a federal bailout has rather surprisingly turned out to be a story with legs. The irony of a down-on-its-luck but still influential media […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Postmedia bid for role in UCP ‘war room’ illustrates the folly of Trudeau’s lifeline for failing newspapers
Connect the dots, Mr. Prime Minister! That newspaper industry bailout package you’re foolishly planning in the name of preserving democracy is principally designed to keep a corporation afloat that will do anything, no matter how unethical, to destroy your government. If you want proof, look no further than Postmedia’s astonishing admission, revealed on Twitter yesterday […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Uh-oh! Look for unhappy campers: Premier Kenney has vowed to end ‘the War on Fun’
Hey, who can be against ending Canada’s War on Fun? Not me, and not Jason Kenney either by the sound of it. You have to admit, though, the Alberta premier’s announcement yesterday that he plans to end what he calls “the War on Fun” by allowing the booze to flow again in provincial campgrounds on […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
The Annals of Justice: Vice-Admiral Mark Norman gets an apology and Conrad Black gets a pardon
Remember this important fact: None of us knows whether Vice-Admiral Mark Norman is guilty of the crime with which he was charged. Well, Vice-Admiral Norman knows, presumably, and his legal team would have a pretty good idea, as would a few Crown prosecutors and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. As for the rest […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP posturing around public sector wages portends a return to perpetual crisis in health care
The United Conservative Party Government’s transparent early manoeuvres around public sector wage negotiations and the heavy hints found in a paper by the chair of Premier Jason Kenney’s “blue ribbon panel” on Alberta’s finances portend a stormy period ahead in public sector labour relations, especially in health care. Since health care makes up such a […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Cuts & Critics: Expect fireworks in the Legislature, but no real brakes on radical UCP agenda
Alberta’s 24 NDP Opposition MLAs were sworn in yesterday and Opposition Leader Rachel Notley, not so long ago the province’s premier, named the MLAs who will fill her shadow cabinet portfolios. Meanwhile, Premier Jason Kenney’s MLAs will have to wait a few days while their boss gets on with his tax-cutting agenda, which obviously doesn’t […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Stephen Mandel, as impudent as ever, pleads for public subsidy for his Alberta Party
Hello, Alberta! Stephen Mandel here! My Alberta Party didn’t manage to elect a single MLA last month, but we’re good guys and we got 9.1 per cent of the vote. How about you give us some money? That wasn’t really Stephen Mandel saying that, of course. It was me, your blogger, David Climenhaga. Writing stuff […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
Lest we forget? Does Veterans Affairs’ video blooper signal something more seriously amiss in Canada?
On Thursday 13,000 soldiers of what used to be known as the Red Army marched through the heart of Moscow to military bands playing “The Sacred War” as Russia marked the 74th anniversary of the surrender of Berlin and the end of the road for Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich.” According to polling just before what […]
Posted inBestsellers
Richard Van Camp’s Moccasin Square Gardens spends another week atop Audreys Books Edmonton Bestseller List
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton during the week ended May 5, 2019. The lists are compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. Moccasin Square Gardens – Richard Van Camp * 2. The Death of Annie the Water Witcher […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP Health Minister Tyler Shandro hesitates over risky ideological plan to pull plug on medical ‘Superlab’
When it opted to build a $590-million “Superlab” in Edmonton, Alberta’s former NDP government was relying on sound advice from the Health Quality Council of Alberta, which recommended medical lab services be consolidated under “a single public sector platform.” But never mind the HQCA was set up under legislation created by a previous Conservative government […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Your tax dollars at work: Looks like public funding for religious schools likely helped today’s large anti-abortion march
Taxpayers’ contributions to publicly funded parochial schools appeared to be hard at work today in Edmonton as a throng of students from religious high schools throughout the province marched through the capital city’s downtown in opposition to women’s reproductive rights. The annual anti-abortion March for Life sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church was led through […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Albertans, in their ‘bitumen bubble,’ may have missed the significance of West Coast Green goings on
We Albertans have been living in a bit if a bubble – a bitumen bubble. As a consequence, we may not all have noticed what’s been happening on Canada’s West Coast. So the potential significance of the victory in a federal by-election Monday by Paul Manly of the Green Party of Canada in British Columbia’s […]