Busted by the Alberta local of the electrical workers’ union and a couple of federal NDP Members of Parliament, the United Conservative Party Government has put its plan to recruit new temporary workers by poaching temporary workers from Dubai on ice. On Friday, under a picture of Premier Danielle Smith walking with a guy in […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP MLAs and ministers seem to be jetting all over the place these days – and taxpayers are picking up the tab
It doesn’t seem like that long ago United Conservative Party cabinet ministers, MLAs and political aides were getting in to all kinds of hot water for their holiday travel. Who can forget Tracy Allard, booted from her job as municipal affairs minister for her mid-pandemic Hawaiian holiday? Or the controversies in 2021 stirred up by […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Guest Post: Alberta’s UCP wants to pave paradise and put up an all-season resort
Now that the fall session of the Alberta Legislature is over and the United Conservative Party is celebrating its success pushing through major parts of its radical agenda, a number of new laws continue to arouse controversy. As a result, Bill 35, the All Season Resorts Act, hasn’t really received the careful attention it deserves. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
During eventful fall session of the Alberta Legislature, UCP attacks the rights of citizens on several fronts
During this fall’s eventful session of the Alberta Legislature, the United Conservative Party Government attacked the rights of some vulnerable Albertans to medical treatment, undermined the right of all citizens to public information, made it easier to keep citizens from exercising their right to use public land, and even tried to make it illegal for […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Danielle Smith’s latest blatantly unconstitutional border patrol brainstorm is about owning the Libs
On its face, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s screwball scheme to create a provincial border patrol force intended to prevent Canadian citizens from crossing the U.S. border into Montana is blatantly unconstitutional. As evidence, I give you section 6.1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
At the risk of sounding like Jason Kenney, where’s John A. Macdonald when we need him?
At the risk of sounding like Jason Kenney, where’s John A. Macdonald when we need him? I speak, of course, not of the policies that gave rise to the tragic legacy of Canada’s first prime minister so admired by Alberta’s first United Conservative Party premier – opposed as Mr. Kenney was to seeing the heads […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Danielle Smith has a sovereignty moment, claiming she can make it illegal for fossil fuel companies to comply with federal laws
Was Premier Danielle Smith’s Sovereignty Act moment yesterday formal notice she intends to unilaterally declare Alberta independence soon, evidence she thinks she’s found a magic constitutional formula to overturn federal laws she doesn’t like, or just another day of using provincial resources to campaign against the Trudeau Government in Ottawa? Perhaps it’s a bit of […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta pulls plug (again) on regional planning – a big win for the ‘Sprawl Cabal,’ not so much for city taxpayers
The United Conservative Party is pulling the plug on regional planning in Alberta in a move that will be a big win for the “Sprawl Cabal” of wealthy developers and for municipal politicians in smaller communities clustered around the province’s two biggest cities. But it’ll be a disaster for Edmonton and Calgary taxpayers and the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Guest post: Science versus the Alberta Minister of Hunting and Fishing
As Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government continues to flood the zone with daily news releases announcing dubious and dangerous policy changes, it’s very hard to keep up and provide measured analysis. That’s the idea. The UCP spins it their way on Day 1, and by Day 2 the understaffed and layoff-beset media moves on the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Stephen Harper’s appointment today as chair of AIMCo board ends pension management company’s ‘arm’s length’ status
Make no mistake, with the appointment this morning of Stephen Harper as chair of the governing board of the Alberta Investment Management Corp. we can forget about the notion the provincial pension management Crown corporation has an arm’s length relationship with the United Conservative Party Government. Many Albertans may be reassured by Mr. Harper’s appointment. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The judgment of history confirmed: Jason Kenney’s equalization motion in the Legislature is deader than the proverbial mackerel
Busted in June 2021 by a mystery photographer as he boozed it up with a group of cronies in defiance of COVID-19 restrictions on a government building’s controversial rooftop patio in Edmonton, premier Jason Kenney announced his fatuous anti-equalization “referendum” at a news conference a week later in hopes of saving his foundering political career. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP switches health care zones for ‘corridors’ – making ‘hallway medicine’ the new normal everywhere in Alberta!
It turns out not everything about yesterday’s announcement that the United Conservative Government is “making progress refocusing the health care system” was illogical and misleading. One tidbit about the chaotic restructuring, the point of which has never been coherently explained by any official spokesperson, is that the government is replacing Alberta Health Services’ five zones […]