Dale McFee, chief of the Edmonton Police Service, will soon take over as Alberta’s chief bureaucop – pardon me, bureaucrat – Premier Danielle Smith announced yesterday, surprising absolutely no one. Chief McFee will retire as Edmonton’s chief constable on Feb. 21. He will take over as the Deputy Minister of Executive Council three days later. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Rachel Notley, Alberta’s first NDP premier, announces her intention to quit as Edmonton-Strathcona MLA
Rachel Notley, Alberta’s first NDP premier and the woman who in 2015 broke the Progressive Conservative party’s seemingly unshakable grip on power in this province, has announced her full departure from politics. In a social media post this morning, Ms. Notley stated her intention to write the Speaker of the Alberta Legislature and resign her […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
A week before crucial Lethbridge by-election, it’s still not clear what NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi stands for
Since Naheed Nenshi replaced Rachel Notley as leader of the Alberta NDP last June, the Opposition party appears to have gone from all tactics and no strategy to all strategy and no tactics. The crucial by-election to replace former NDP cabinet minister Shannon Phillips in Lethbridge-West is one week away yet very little has been […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP travel update: Dubai TFW construction crew recruiting trip is off … for now
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 […]