This is a frenzied moment for Danielle Smith and her United Conservative cabinet and caucus as they attempt to pacify the party’s influential and unhappy separatist faction and distract from both the failure of the separation referendum that for months the premier did everything she could to enable and the metastasizing health care corruption scandal […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Surely Danielle Smith has seen enough to understand why early elections are a really bad idea!
Sunday morning, Mount Royal University Professor Duane Bratt took to the social media site previously known as Twitter to observe, “There has been some snap election speculation in Alberta (as there always is).” Dr. Bratt, who is probably Alberta’s best known and most frequently quoted political scientist, went on to add, rhetorically, I presume, “Hopefully […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Has Danielle Smith just relegated the UCP to the Boneyard of Broken Alberta Political Brands?
Has Danielle Smith just relegated the United Conservative Party to the Boneyard of Broken Alberta Political Brands? This is not yet clear, but it’s sure starting to look as if it could happen. Thanks to Ms. Smith’s stupid and divisive separation referendum election last Monday, which from the government’s perspective more or less flopped, the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Conflicting claims about separatist leaders’ status with Alberta Prosperity Project swirl on social media
According to social media posts last night by two prominent figures in the Alberta separation movement, the board of the Alberta Prosperity Project terminated Mitch Sylvestre as CEO and Jeffrey Rath as the group’s legal counsel last month. However, Mr. Sylvestre, speaking last night at an online video meeting of APP supporters to discuss the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Danielle Smith didn’t draw a line in the sand for UCP separatists, she instituted a gentle policy of ‘Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell’
Listen carefully to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s post-referendum message to the members of her United Conservative Party and you will understand that she is not sternly drawing a line in the sand for the party’s many separatists so much as instituting a gentle policy of “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.” Secessionists are still welcome in the bosom […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Danielle Smith to disgruntled separatists, federalists: Thanks everyone, let’s move on!
Standing behind a blue coroplast sign reading “Stronger Alberta within a united Canada” – surely a big step down from the heady days of a “Sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” – Premier Danielle Smith delivered a 12-minute, two-second postprandial peroration on her late, not-so-great separation referendum yesterday evening. In case you missed it because […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Results from first 1.3 million votes show separatist dream going down to definitive defeat
It was clear the instant results from the first million votes counted in Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s divisive separation referendum flooded in minutes after 11 o’clock last night that the separatist campaign to leave Canada was going down to a definitive defeat. The vote split as counting continued just after midnight: 76.6 per cent of […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The crowd wanted to hear for themselves what Canada’s prime minister had to say – and they liked what they heard
Prime Minister Mark Carney came to Alberta’s capital city Friday evening to say what he had to say about why Albertans need to vote to remain in Canada at a standing-room-only Forever Canadian rally in the old EXPO Centre hockey rink, which was pretty much the same thing he’d said the night before to a […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
‘On Treason’ – an essential quick guide to the plots and politics of Alberta’s separation referendum
Cometh the hour, cometh the book! Actually, On Treason: Alberta Separatism, Foreign Interference, and Canada’s Survival in a Revolutionary Age is more than a little late. It rolled off the presses only a few days before Danielle Smith’s divisive and treason-adjacent separation referendum is due to take place on Monday. This short book by international […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Mark Carney expected in Calgary and Edmonton for pro-Canada rallies as advance referendum polling begins
Hats off to Thomas Lukaszuk and the Forever Canadian campaign for getting Prime Minister Mark Carney to agree to show up at the group’s remain-in-Canada rallies in Calgary and Edmonton tomorrow and Friday. Mr. Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, is enormously popular right now throughout Canada, including supposedly rebellious Alberta, so that should help […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Advance in-person referendum voting begins today; lineups are likely, so bring a coat and warm shoes
Advance voting in Premier Danielle Smith’s needless and divisive separation referendum begins at 9 o’clock this morning. If Elections Alberta’s prediction that 80 to 85 per cent of the provincial electorate is likely to turn out to vote this year, there will be lineups at in-person advance polls and on Election Day on Oct. 19. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Chief Electoral Officer tells third-party advertisers only official political parties can have referendum scrutineers
Leaders of pro-separation groups were complaining on social media yesterday about a decision communicated to them by Elections Alberta just after 5:30 p.m. advising them that third-party advertisers will not be allowed to have scrutineers in polling places or ballot-counting locations on during the Oct. 19 referendum. Former People’s Party of Canada candidate and pro-separation […]