One hour is the same as one and a half hours! Who knew? It’s always an education to listen to the way Jason Kenney and his UCP team explain things. Yesterday, the leader of Alberta’s United Conservative party was testily engaged in an epic effort to persuade Albertans that his party’s plan to let employers […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Former NDP leader Brian Mason said ready to bring Alberta-style politics to B.C.
Brian Mason, soon to be a resident of British Columbia, will seek a nomination as an NDP candidate in that province as soon as he can, AlbertaPolitics.ca is reporting. The former leader of the Alberta New Democrats and Edmonton city councillor who announced in July he was retiring from Alberta politics, has concluded B.C. needs […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
How to save a province by destroying it: Jason Kenney releases the Full Monty, political version
About that 117-page “full platform” released by United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney on the billionaire Southern Family’s back stoop south of Calgary yesterday, the first thing it’ll do is raise the deficit. That’s right! Raise it. Increase it. Make it bigger. Because that’s what happens when you eliminate at least $5.7 billion in revenue […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Jeff Callaway bids to derail Kamikaze Campaign finance probe – why won’t he wait, like Trump?
Despite obviously having been tempted to shut down the “Russian collusion” investigation when he saw friends and supporters charged with lying to the FBI, aides to U.S. President Donald Trump managed to persuade him to hold his fire. How? Although many of us wondered about this during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long investigation, now that […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
On Milton Acorn, on his birthday, Canada’s People’s Poet
Today was the birthday of Milton Acorn, the People’s Poet, who lived rough, and died before he was eligible for the Old Age Security, even under the old rules. For those of you who have missed him until now, Milton Acorn is not only Canada’s greatest poet, he may be our only great poet! The […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The UCP health platform: mostly spin, some two-tier medicine, and scraps of red meat for the base
Jason Kenney’s health care policy announcement yesterday was a typical conservative political speech – a mish-mash of anodyne sentiment, misleading spin, market-fundamentalist nostrums, scraps of red meat for the base, cheap shots at the federal government, terrible ideas he’ll implement if he gets the chance, and even a couple of good ones he’d probably ignore. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
A Tale of Two Columns: What drives the conservative urge to wreck public health care?
One of the unusual features of the past four years in Alberta has been the remarkable calm that has prevailed in our normally tumultuous, shambolic, sometimes chaotic health care system. Under the NDP Government, for the first time in the past 30 years at least, health care hasn’t been a continual gong show, spinning ever […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Yesterday marked a century of public sector trade unionism in Alberta
There will be no update on the Alberta election campaign today; your blogger was at church last night. Let me explain: 100 years ago last night, a small gathering of people met in the basement of Edmonton’s First Presbyterian Church to do something pretty brave. To wit, they founded a staff association to represent them […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
NDP promises 13,000 $25-a-day child care spaces; UCP would remove protections for LGBTQ youth
As she hinted at her Edmonton rally Sunday, Premier Rachel Notley announced yesterday in Calgary that if her NDP government is reelected it will move to help families with children by introducing 13,000 more $25-a-day child care spaces across Alberta. Making safe, quality, affordable child care what Premier Notley called “the medicare of the 21st Century” […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Rachel Notley drops hint about affordable child-care plan, mocks recent UCP bozo eruptions
It sure sounds as if Alberta Premier Rachel Notley will announce an affordable child-care plan for Alberta today. At any rate, at a rally in downtown Edmonton’s Polish Hall yesterday afternoon, she boldly told more than 1,000 enthusiastic supporters – who sounded like an Oilers crowd back in the days this place was known as […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Has former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith become a (not so) secret admirer of NDP Premier Rachel Notley?
Danielle Smith nearly became the first woman to be elected premier of Alberta. As leader of the Wildrose Party, which despite her efforts was never quite successful at portraying itself as a party of the centre right, she came close, tantalizingly close. Alas for Ms. Smith, the Wildrose Party’s opportunity to form government foundered in […]
Posted inBestsellers
Disintegrate/Dissociate, poetry by Arielle Twist, tops Audreys Books Edmonton Fiction Bestseller list
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton during the week ended March 17, 2019. The lists are compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. Disintegrate/Dissociate – Arielle Twist 2. The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides 3. The Tattooist of Auschwitz […]