Before the Aloha–gate travel scandal upset the United Conservative Party’s applecart, Commissioner Steve Allan’s big report on “anti-Alberta energy campaigns” was supposed to be Alberta’s first major political story of 2021. But if the report is released as scheduled later this month – no certainty given its sputtering progress to date – it’s more likely […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
In epic flip-flop, Jason Kenney reverses course, disciplines globe-trotting MLAs and sacks migratory chief of staff
After a weekend of unprecedented denunciation from all points of the political compass, including many of his own loyal supporters, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney yesterday folded and accepted resignations from two cabinet members and a top aide, while demoting four backbench MLAs for ignoring repeated pleas by health officials not to travel during the pandemic. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Hola Tany Yao! You’ve got voicemail! Meanwhile, Energy Minister Sonya Savage completes essential holiday home maintenance in B.C.
One of Our MLAs is Missing! I know, this sounds like the title of a bad movie, the kind that might earn three rotten tomatoes on an online review site, but it’s for real. It’s now Day 4 of the Hawaiigate Scandal, and Tany Yao, United Conservative Party MLA for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo is somewhere […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta’s Hawaiigate Scandal grows, uncovering new non-essential Conservative trips to Mexico, Arizona, California, Las Vegas
Alberta’s Hawaiigate travel scandal continued to grow yesterday with four more United Conservative Party MLAs and one Conservative Party of Canada MP from Calgary confirmed to have been out of the country in defiance of COVID-19 restrictions on non-essential travel. In addition, rumours about several more Conservative politicians are circulating. Albertans furious that Premier Jason […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Defiant Kenney on minister’s Hawaiian hijinks: No rules were broken, so no consequences
Aloha, Alberta! Jason Kenney doesn’t give a hoot* what you think. That’s the key takeaway from the premier’s defiant news conference early this afternoon about the cabinet minister who jetted off for a Hawaiian vacation while she was supposedly responsible for the province’s emergency management and boss of the civil servant running Alberta’s leisurely COVID-19 […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Political New Year’s fireworks go off as Alberta learns Tracy Allard, minister responsible for vaccine rollout, is just back from Hawaiian vacation
Happy New Year, Alberta! And welcome to the first United Conservative Party Government scandal of 2021: Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard has been caught vacationing in Hawaii, mid-pandemic. Even before the New Year’s fireworks started going off last night, the CBC had reported that Ms. Allard, MLA for Grande Prairie and the minister responsible for […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Social media abuzz with reports of UCP staffers, MLA vacationing abroad despite pandemic travel warnings
Social media is abuzz with reports of United Conservative Party staffers and at least one UCP MLA enjoying vacations abroad notwithstanding the federal government’s pleas for Canadians to cancel all travel during the coronavirus pandemic. Most mainstream media in Alberta, however, seem to be engaging in an anguished internal debate about whether what’s a major […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
More than 1,000 Albertans have died from COVID-19, half of them in the past month
Albertans learned yesterday the grim toll from COVID-19 in the province has now passed 1,000 deaths. This is a terrible tragedy but it need surprise no one, given humanity’s extensive knowledge of the science of infectious disease and the way the Kenney Government nevertheless dragged its feet each step of the way to avoid taking […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
AlbertaPolitics.ca marks its 13th anniversary today as 2020, annus horribilis, nears its end
Today marks the 13th anniversary of the first post published on this blog, known at the time as St. Albert Diary, and later, for a spell, as Alberta Diary. So, by the standards of the Internet, this makes AlbertaPolitics.ca an institution. There’s no question that here in Alberta, as pretty much everywhere else, the dominant […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
A Christmas contemplation of Cows, COVID, and shots — on goal and at cattle
Merry Christmas! Normally in the wee hours of Christmas morning, your blogger would have been trudging home from midnight mass, his mild annual winter rebellion against a Protestant upbringing. So let’s talk about agriculture and hockey! After all, both are important to our supposedly unique culture out here in Wild Rose Country, and it turns […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
A thought on what the UCP’s elected members should find in their Christmas stockings tomorrow morning
It’s Christmas Eve. What should Santa Claus leave tonight for a government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing? The aphorism is Oscar Wilde’s, but the great wit of the 19th Century certainly could have been describing the United Conservative Party Government of Alberta in the early 21st – not so […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
When it comes to COVID-19, our premier talks like Churchill but walks like Chamberlain
Alberta’s efforts to respond to the coronavirus pandemic with Jason Kenney in the driver’s seat are a lot like stand–up comedian Billy Connolly’s iconic routine about union negotiations, only without the profanity and without actually being funny. What’s going to happen tomorrow? The plans will all be changed then … so stay awake! Having implemented […]