Hmmmmmmm … Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives appear to have picked defending a racist heckler who tried to sandbag Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a string of tendentious questions about immigration and refugees as the hill they want to die on! I wonder how this will work out for them? Not well, I imagine. The Conservatives apparently […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Guy Kerr can’t be blamed for the Alberta WCB’s troubles, but his resignation is an opportunity to get it back on track
Guy Kerr cannot be blamed for the tragic wrong turn the Alberta Workers Compensation Board took nearly 30 years ago under the Conservative governments of premiers Don Getty and Ralph Klein. Under those premiers, Alberta’s effective workers’ compensation system was subverted and undermined. The victims have been injured workers. By the time Mr. Kerr was […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
U.S. and Canadian right-wing politicians march in lockstep as they dismiss facts as conspiracy, disagreement as criminality
Apparently infected by the decline of political discourse in the United States, the Canadian right is increasingly moving toward defining the use of facts that run counter to its narrative as conspiracy and policy disagreement criminality. If you doubt this, consider recent Tweets by the likes of Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, who accused the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta Government and AUPE sign tentative agreement for three-year public service contract
The Alberta Government and the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees both announced yesterday they’ve signed a tentative agreement on a new collective agreement covering the union’s approximately 23,000 members who work directly for the provincial government. This is the group of public employees the union accurately calls “front-line government service employees,” right-wing ideological enemies of […]
Posted inBestsellers
My Sundays with Normand by Adele Fontaine tops Audreys Books Edmonton Bestseller List
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended Aug. 12, 2018, compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. My Sundays with Normand – Adele Fontaine * 2. This Wound is a World – Billy-Ray […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Doomsayers, Chicken Littles and Conservatives get it wrong on the impact of minimum wage increases
Now there’s a surprise! Ontario’s minimum wage increase behaved exactly as predicted by most mainstream economists. That is, the 21-per-cent wage increase implemented by the former Liberal government that took effect on Jan. 1 this year did none of the terrible things Conservative politicians, right-wing think tankers, Astro-Turf “tax watchdog” organizations, business groups, and the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Shape of the Planet; Both Sides Have a Point* … Alberta’s UCP helps make flat-eartherism respectable again!
Surprisingly, as far as we know, neither Opposition Leader Jason Kenney nor any members of his United Conservative Party Legislative Caucus made it to the Flat Earth International Conference at the appropriately named Fantasyland Hotel in Alberta’s capital city Thursday and yesterday. “Flat-earthers from around North America came to listen to speakers such as Indiana […]
Posted inBestsellers
Billy-Ray Bellcourt’s This Wound is a World returns to top of Audreys Books Edmonton Bestseller List
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended Aug. 8, 2018, compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. This Wound is a World – Billy-Ray Belcourt * + 2. Relying on that Body – […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Report on Calgary civic election polling failures sharply criticizes Postmedia coverage of ‘radically mistaken’ polls by partner firm
A report by three high-profile academics with expertise in public opinion research who were commissioned to look into polling failures that marred the 2017 Calgary municipal election campaign sharply criticizes the role of the city’s media in covering and sponsoring the polls. Christopher Adams of the University of Manitoba, Paul Adams of Carleton University, and […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
What’s the appropriate response to Riyadh’s diplomatic hysterics? How about reopening our embassy in Tehran?
Is there an appropriate response by Canada to the bizarre events of the last few hours on the diplomatic circuit? It’s not just that Canada’s ambassador has been kicked out of Saudi Arabia for Tweets by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and an official in her department that by no reasonable standard amount to […]
Posted inGeopolitics
Will Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic tantrum provoke a moment of cognitive dissonance for Canada’s ‘ethical oil’ crowd?
Saudi Arabia has given the Canadian ambassador 24 hours to pack his bags and go home because, the Saudi Foreign Ministry complains, Canada is meddling in the internal affairs of the oil-soaked feudal theocracy by expressing concern in Tweets about its arrests of human rights activists, clerics and journalists. Last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Rich Larson’s sci-fi thriller Annex tops Audreys Books’ list of Edmonton bestsellers
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended July 29, 2018, compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. Sorry I was a little slow processing this one this week. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. Annex – Rich Larson 2. […]