A big fight with Alberta’s doctors might have seemed like a good idea when the United Conservative Party’s strategic braintrust came up with the plan a few weeks ago. But that was then. This is now. With the docs primed for action, their constitutional lawyers loaded for bear, full-page advertisements appearing in community newspapers throughout […]
Posted inBestsellers
The Marrow Thieves, young adult fiction by Canadian Metis author Cherie Dimaline, leads Alberta independent bookstore sales
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, March 1, 2020. The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books in Edmonton and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton. ALBERTA FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. The […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Coronavirus discovered in Alberta just as politics trumps science in supervised drug clinic report
COVID-19 has arrived in Alberta. But first, we need to talk about how the United Conservative Party Government has found a nearly perfect formula for dealing with science when it reaches inconvenient conclusions running counter either to the ruling party’s ideology or its political calculations. It strikes a committee of sympathetic folk, calls it an […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Investment advice: If you have the choice, don’t trust right-wing politicians with your retirement money
After my father died in Victoria in 2008 at the age of 91, my sister opened his safety deposit box and discovered $5,000 in shares in the British Columbia Resources Investment Corp., better known as the BCRIC, universally pronounced at the end of the 1970s as the “brick.” When I say $5,000 in shares, of […]
Posted inGeopolitics
With coronavirus chaos south of the line, brace yourself for some of it to come to our way in Canada
U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s incompetent and ideologically driven response to the international coronavirus crisis poses a serious national security threat to Canada. Can we do anything about it? Say, closing the border to non-Canadian travellers from the United States, as Russia sealed its border with China in the first days after it became apparent […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Kenney to Edmonton: Drop dead!
When the New York Daily News published its famous FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD headline on Oct. 30, 1975, all president Gerald Ford had done was deny a federal bailout to Gotham, which was nearly bankrupt. It shows the power of a great headline that Oct. 29, the day President Ford gave the offending speech, […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
Can Canada’s Conservatives resist temptation to try to sabotage the accord with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs?
It will be interesting to see how the Conservative Opposition in Ottawa and Alberta’s Conservative government react to yesterday’s announcement the federal and British Columbia governments have reached an accord with the Wet’suwet’en First Nation that would recognize its system of hereditary governance. Participants said the agreement reached yesterday in Smithers, B.C., after three days […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta’s self-selecting separation survey — unscientific, biased, tendentious, and a poor use of tax dollars
Is the Kenney Government trying to persuade Albertans, one step at a time, that separation from Canada would be a good idea? How else do we explain the gratuitous inclusion of a question giving respondents the opportunity to express support for Alberta’s separation from Canada in an online questionnaire published by Premier Jason Kenney’s so-called […]
Posted inBestsellers
Edmonton author Wayne Arthurson’s Red Chesterfield tops independent bookstores Alberta bestseller list
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020. The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books in Edmonton and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton. ALBERTA FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. The […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Budget Day: Creatures of the night return to the hallways of Alberta’s Legislature as boisterous protesters chant outside
The thing about Budget Day at the Legislature that news media seldom gets across is that the real news usually isn’t the budget. The budget’s broad strokes are all known long before the details roll off the press at the Queen’s Printer or its privatized equivalent. There was certainly news at Alberta’s Budget Speech yesterday, […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Unconstitutional anyone? If Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell is doing her job, she’ll refuse to sign Bill 1 into law
Bill 1 is a breathtakingly terrible piece of legislation. The bill, given first reading in the Alberta Legislature on Tuesday, is called the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act. Just for starters, in case you missed it, Bill 1 appears to be intended to make protest illegal and criminalize dissent, although its conveniently timed justification allows the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Progress Alberta wins injunction against Kenney Government, which tried to ban progressive news site from budget lockup
Progress Alberta has been granted an emergency injunction by a judge of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench ordering the Alberta Government to permit the news site’s representative to attend the provincial pre-budget lockup in Edmonton tomorrow. The Edmonton-based progressive news and advocacy organization sought the emergency injunction after it was informed on Monday by […]