Posted inAlberta Politics

RTIA faculty member is operations director of controversial B.C. addiction recovery society

One of the faculty members named on the Recovery Training Institute of Alberta’s website has ties to a controversial B.C. addiction recovery society that owns a tracking app that must now be used by everyone being treated in all Alberta detox and residential recovery facilities. RTIA faculty member Jessica Cooksey’s short biography on the website […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

Larry Hubich, former SFL leader, connects the dots about who is actually putting the country at risk of a national rail shutdown

Reading the universally terrible mainstream news coverage of the continuing negotiations between the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and Canada’s two largest rail corporations, not to mention angry commentary by anti-union business groups and increasingly hysterical statements by Alberta’s United Conservative Party government, you’d think the looming national rail shutdown had been caused entirely by a […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

Thank goodness, there’s no known Alberta connection to Pierre Poilievre’s embarrassing ‘Canada, Our Home’ video!

Pierre Poilievre’s now infamous white-hat-and-white-T-shirt video was no sooner posted on Saturday than social media was lit up by mockers pointing out that almost none of the scenes used to illustrate the federal Conservative leader’s Calgary Stampede speechifying about Canada were recorded in Canada. The Conservative Party yanked it down faster than you could say […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

Smith government’s announcement of the ‘Recovery Training Institute of Alberta’ raises more questions than it answers

Thursday’s Alberta Government news release announcing the official opening of so-called Lakeview Recovery Community in a rural area west of Edmonton included the intriguing tidbit that the facility will also be home to the “Recovery Training Institute of Alberta.”  “The RTIA is a provincial training hub for those employed within a recovery community or other […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

‘Lakeview Recovery Community’ clearly intended to be showpiece for UCP’s controversial ‘Alberta Recovery Model’

“Alberta opens its third world-class recovery community,” said the headline on a news release sent by the Alberta Government to media yesterday about a reopened rural addiction treatment facility off the beaten path west of Edmonton. After being subjected to some gentle mockery on social media, the headline on the government website soon read: “Alberta […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

Raj Sherman is back again, this time as Danielle Smith’s man at the head of the Health Quality Council of Alberta

As if to reinforce his role as the proverbial bad penny of Alberta politics, Raj Sherman has turned up again – this time as Premier Danielle Smith’s man at the head of the Health Quality Council of Alberta.  Actually, Dr. Sherman has been back for a while – since June, anyway, when according to his […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

Alberta Health Services letters tell COVID-19 long-haulers specialized long-COVID clinics are being shut down

It’s not hard to connect the dots between the anti-vaccine extremists including Premier Danielle Smith who now dominate Alberta’s United Conservative Party and the admission by a beleaguered Alberta Health Services that it is shutting down its long-COVID clinics in Calgary, Edmonton and Sherwood Park. AHS, once a model of how to run a modern […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

Did an anti-vaxx MLA just suggest the UCP is about to ban COVID-19 vaccines? Or what?

A video clip of Calgary-Lougheed MLA Eric Bouchard musing about the future of COVID-19 vaccinations on an anti-vaxx video podcast stirred up a storm on social media yesterday among commenters who fear the United Conservative Party may be about to try to ban the what the podcast’s host called “the murder shots.”  Mr. Bouchard, as […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

Honey! I shrunk the party! UCP membership shrivels as Danielle Smith moves farther into loony MAGA territory

Honey! I shrunk the party! Sharp-eyed denizens of the Twittersphere yesterday noticed a United Conservative party update that, presumably inadvertently, gave away a dramatic drop in party membership since the 2022 UCP leadership contest that put Danielle Smith in Alberta’s top political job.  “UCP membership is currently around 54,000,” said some guy calling himself Turkish […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

No shock: UCP freeze on renewable electricity generation projects and resulting uncertainty lead to deep chill on investments

It should come as no shock on the first anniversary of the United Conservative Party Government’s seven-month freeze on the development of renewable electricity projects that the policy has resulted in a deep chill on renewables.  That was, of course, the idea.  A new analysis by the Pembina Institute released yesterday shows that in the […]

Posted inAlberta Politics

Danielle Smith tells Calgary UCP ‘town hall’ that 94% of Alberta parents are not having their kids vaccinated against COVID

According to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, only a small minority of Alberta parents are now agreeing to have their children vaccinated against COVID-19, while the vast majority are not. This seemingly unlikely claim was only one of a number of troubling statements made by Ms. Smith at town hall meeting Tuesday organized by the Calgary-Lougheed […]