Spare a brief weekend thought for Maxime Bernier: If only he had kept his ambitions in check and his trap shut, he’d be sitting pretty now! With Andrew Scheer’s resignation officially stamped “Received,” who would have been in a better position to step lightly into the Opposition Leader’s office after the disastrous election campaign led […]
Posted inBestsellers
The Boy, the Horse, the Fox and the Mole by Charlie Mackesy tops independent booksellers’ Alberta Bestsellers list
The Book Publishers Association of Alberta recently began a collaboration with BookNet Canada to release a weekly Alberta-wide list of bestselling books based on sales made in independent bookstores across the province. The broadened scope of this provincial provides a comprehensive view of what Albertans are reading. Here are the lists of the top 10 […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
Andrew Scheer is done like dinner — What Will Jason Do?
After an unsuccessful election campaign his supporters expected him to win, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer has been accused by someone of dipping his paws into Conservative Party of Canada funds to pay for his children’s private-school education. Accordingly, Mr. Scheer is done like dinner. Innocent or not, he has resigned. So as of right now […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The ‘War Room’ finally launches: $30-million and all we got was this lousy website?
The mighty voice of Alberta’s beleaguered oil industry, the long promised and much-touted $30-million “Energy War Room,” stumbled out of the starting gate yesterday after a news conference in Calgary graced by the presence of Premier Jason Kenney and Energy Minister Sonya Savage. At least, as the self-described purveyor of a “fact-based narrative about Canadian […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Regardless of Tyler Shandro’s promises, private clinics won’t shorten surgical wait times — they’ll make them longer
Using private medical clinics to remedy long wait times for surgeries in Alberta’s public health care system, as the United Conservative Party Government says it expects to do, is about as likely to work as treating iron-poor blood by attaching blood-sucking leeches to patients’ arms and legs. That is to say, the results are certain […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Former Speaker Bob Wanner’s portrait, unveiled yesterday, adds a 21st Century touch to a gloomy 19th Century collection
It’s not just Alberta’s premiers who get their portraits hung in the dingy halls of the provincial Legislature Building in Edmonton, but the Assembly’s Speakers too. Let it be said here first that the portrait of Bob Wanner, the most recent Speaker to depart that role, unveiled at the Legislature yesterday, outshines any of the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Is a ‘fair deal’ or a fare deal behind Jason Kenney’s Christmas flight to Ottawa with his entourage?
Nobody flies to Ottawa at this time of year expecting to get anything done with the government of Canada. This is axiomatic. Remember that if you’re wondering about that planeload of Alberta Conservative cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and assorted spear-carriers led by Jason Kenney jetting off to the nation’s capital, supposedly to bring the premier’s […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Things just keeping getting weirder in Alberta as Jason Kenney sings the Moody Blues!
If a tree falls in the forest and Jason Kenney isn’t there to hear it, is it still the sound of European environmentalists and the Rockefellers plotting against Alberta’s ethical oil industry? Is it still Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s fault? Your blogger only spent three days on B.C.’s misty and preternaturally warm coast last week […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
30 years after the tragedy at l’École Polytechnique, politicians and media are making things worse
Today is the 30th anniversary of the terrible massacre of 14 young women students at l’École Polytechnique de Montréal, apparently shot down for the imagined crime of daring study to be engineers. One would have thought three decades ago as the raw horror of that story unfolded through the evening that by now things would […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
What’s with the United Conservative Party’s emerging fury at nurses, of all people?
What’s with the sudden hate on for nurses by United Conservative Party supporters? It comes from somewhere. Your average UCP internet troll doesn’t just come up with this stuff on his – or occasionally her – own. The traditional Conservative approach to attacking nurses and other predominantly public and female employee groups for their opposition […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Groundhog Day on Black Friday! With 5,000 job cuts planned, perpetual chaos returns to health care in Alberta
With yesterday’s announcement the Alberta Government intends to wipe out close to 5,000 jobs in public health care by 2023, and another 2,500 or so in other parts of the public service, perpetual chaos has returned to health care in Alberta. Get used to it. It won’t be getting better any time soon. Does anyone […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Hey Canada! Alberta here: Get off our lawn! And would you mow it, please?
Watch out, Rest of Canada! Jason Kenney, our leader here in Alberta, has mastered the art of sucking and blowing at the same time! You’re in for it now! This is the New Alberta, and you’re going to need to get the hell out of our way! We’ll be taking over our share of the […]