Happy Halloween! Alberta Premier Danielle Smith gave her annual tritely titled “State of the Province” speech yesterday to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, complaining about Ottawa but painting a rosy picture of things here in Wild Rose Country under her guiding hand. Whether she had anything to say to the good burghers of Edmonton about […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The Alberta Bill of Rights Amendment Act, 2024, otherwise known as Bill 24, is a fundamentally unserious document
Now that we have before us an actual copy of the United Conservative Party’s first bill of the fall 2024 sitting of the Legislature, the new and improved Alberta Bill of Rights with secret sovereignty sauce, serious commentators are bound to start commentating seriously about it. Indeed, to set the tone, the government’s press release […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Guest post: Alberta’s UCP government is poised to let foundering elk farms be turned into ‘hunt preserves’
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any goofier, it looks like Alberta’s United Conservative Government is about to succumb to a long-standing lobby by financially hard-pressed game farmers to allow trophy hunters to shoot elk on “harvest preserves,” which amounts to shooting them in a barrel, writes Professional Biologist and author Lorne Fitch, an […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Danielle Smith’s government doubles down on its War on Trans Kids, performative new ‘rights,’ to woo far-right UCP base
According to some wag on the Internet, Blaine Higgs has changed his pronouns. They’re now Has/Been. I don’t know enough about New Brunswick politics to be certain if the cruel and needless anti-trans policies Mr. Higgs imported from the Benighted States of America are the reason he’s finished as premier of that beautiful Maritime province […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
‘Temporarily’ banned from striking, CUPE education workers skip work anyway and join thousands at Edmonton labour protest
Supposedly only temporarily banned from starting their legal strike by Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government, Edmonton Public School workers didn’t show up at work anyway yesterday and instead joined a huge rally by public sector union members on the steps of the Alberta Legislature. This sets the stage for a significant fight between the UCP, […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Acting like an Opposition politician, Danielle Smith fruitlessly needles NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi
“Premier Smith says she’s waiting on Nenshi to call Lethbridge-West by-election,” said the headline yesterday on the MyLethbridgeNow.com website. I’m going to give the good folks at the Southern Alberta news site the benefit of the doubt and assume someone there is having a little fun with Danielle Smith, the occupant of the top political […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
No party snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like the NDP, and none does it with the flair they do in B.C.
No political party can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like the NDP! And, as we watched in horror Saturday night, no Canadian New Democratic Party does it with the flair of the British Columbia NDP. It’ll be a week before we’ll know who really won a majority in the Legislature in Victoria – […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Grant Notley left a greater mark on Alberta than his position as leader and sole MLA of a small party would suggest
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death in an airplane crash of Grant Notley, a man who left a greater mark on Alberta than his position as the leader of a small political party with only one seat in the Legislature would suggest he should have. Nowadays when Mr. Notley is mentioned, it’s usually […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Calgary Cancer Centre to open on Oct. 28; Alberta premier promises miraculous ‘future without cancer’
There were seven uninformative canned quotes in the Alberta Government’s news release yesterday announcing the imminent opening of the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Calgary on Oct. 28, an unusual number by any reckoning. Of course, not one of them said anything about the role of Sarah Hoffman, the NDP minister of health […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Everybody understands the point of the UCP’s ‘Scrap the Cap’ ads is to use taxpayer money to campaign against the Liberals
Surely everybody understands that the point of the United Conservative Party Government’s $7-million “Scrap the Cap” scare campaign announced yesterday is to use Alberta taxpayers’ money to campaign against the Trudeau Liberals in the lead-up to the yet-to-be-called next federal election? Why do you think the gloomy grey videos of an unhappy family wheeling backwards […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
No pharmacare, please, we’re Alberta Conservatives! … and if there’s no grift, there’ll be no gift!
Alberta still won’t join the federal pharmacare program. Never mind Health Minister Adriana LaGrange’s explanation in her press release Friday – “the federal government has yet to share its vision for the future of national pharmacare,” yadda, yadda. That’s just a way to stall things until Pierre Poilievre can get himself elected prime minister and […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Green Line Revisionist History: It’s Hard to Fix When Hick from Sticks Nixes Klicks of Clacks on Cowtown Tracks!
I did something old-timey with my hotel breakfast today: I read a newspaper, an actual newspaper, the Friday edition of the Calgary Sun. For a guy who got his start in the newspaper business in 1972, and loved the things from the get-go, I’ve barely touched one for 20 years. So it was interesting to […]