You almost have to admire Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government for the thoroughness of its sudden purge of NDP appointees to government agencies, boards and commissions yesterday. The Friday Morning Massacre began with news the UCP was clearing out NDP appointments on the boards of 10 post-secondary institutions and the Banff Centre. Through the day […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Kenney Conservatives find the perfect policy panel to push the working poor back to penury
If pushing the working poor back into penury is your policy objective, the United Conservative Party led by Premier Jason Kenney has found the right collection of ringers to stack its “expert panel” on rolling Alberta’s minimum wage back to pre-NDP levels. Labour Minister Jason Copping introduced the panel yesterday in Calgary, with lots of […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Oh, dear, what can the matter be? They promised to bring us a pretty ‘Blue-Ribbon,’ but all they deliver is cant!
Once upon a time, your blogger worked for a famous newspaper publisher who announced one day that since we journos hadn’t had a raise for a couple of years we could expect a small one in six months. There was a caveat, though. We would only get the raise if we met certain performance benchmarks. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta discourse may still be mired in climate change denial, but the rest of the world is moving on
Public discourse in Alberta may still be mired in climate change denial, but the rest of the world is changing and changing fast. Even the New York Times, which along with much of the mainstream media in the United States could be accused until recently of seriously underplaying the climate change story, seems to be […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Conservative mismanagement of health care, which we’re about to see return to Alberta, is a feature, not a bug
Last Thursday, Tyler Shandro advised Albertans that the promised United Conservative Party review of Alberta Health Services is rolling ahead. Well, he did once tell us that things tend to happen in due course. This is pretty much the first we’ve heard from Alberta’s baby-faced health minister since he famously demonstrated he doesn’t yet understand how […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Doug O’Halloran, UFCW 401 president, signs off with dignity and courage
When the United Food and Commercial Workers union held a solidarity barbecue last Friday for a group of Edmonton poultry plant workers it hopes will soon join its ranks, Doug O’Halloran wasn’t there. It’s almost unheard of for Mr. O’Halloran, leader of UFCW 401 for three decades, not to be at an event of this […]
Posted inBestsellers
The 2019 Where the Wild Things Fringe Festival Guide tops Audreys Books’ Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestseller List
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton during the week ended Aug. 4, 2019. The lists are compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. FICTION FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead 2. The Empress of Idaho – Todd Babiak * 3. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Postmedia seeks new editor for Edmonton Journal – what became of the old one?
Postmedia is now advertising for a new editor-in-chief for the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Sun. It may come as something of a surprise to Edmonton readers that English Canada’s largest newspaper corporation is seeking “a dynamic, innovative journalistic leader to oversee the editorial vision and content of Postmedia’s Edmonton newsroom, which includes both the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Fallout from dual probes into 2017 United Conservative Party leadership campaign still drifting down
It may not be fair, and you may not like it, but politics is like French justice: Guilty until proven innocent. OK, the French say it ain’t so, and we have to take them at their word. They’ve signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, bien sûr! But in politics, not so much. Why do […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Symbolic MLA pay cut set stage for attack on public services – so why did the NDP support it?
Like neoliberals everywhere, Alberta’s Conservatives overrate the virtues of big business and undervalue those of democracy. This is not exactly news. This was a clear message yesterday from the vote of the Legislature’s Member Services Committee to cut MLA salaries by 5 per cent, and twice that for the premier’s pay. The vote illustrated nicely […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Jason Kenney pledges ‘I will never give up on Canada’ while stoking Alberta separatist sentiment
Maybe Canada needs a Clarity Act for pollsters’ questions intended to gauge the level of support for provincial secession from Canada. The Clarity Act, of course, is the federal law passed in 2000 in response to the scary 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum that came within 1 per cent of destroying Confederation based on a murky […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Journalists who are UCP members are not the problem; media companies that publish nothing but conservative views are
There was a fine old to-do on social media Friday night when a Toronto journalist revealed that a high-profile Postmedia columnist known for her enthusiastic support of Jason Kenney had been a member of the United Conservative Party at a key time during the Alberta premier’s rise to power. A tweet from Sean Craig said […]