CALGARY – Three years ago today, Albertans did the unexpected in the province’s 29th general election and elected a majority New Democratic Party government. In truth, despite Albertans having been instructed for generations by those who are supposed to know better that they lived in the most conservative province in Canada, what voters did was […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Just get over it, WestJet! It’s time to negotiate like grownups with your pilots’ union
Message to WestJet: It’s time to negotiate with your pilots like grownups. After all, this is Canada and they’ve got a constitutional right to bargain collectively, so you need to just get over it. At this point, you’ll do more harm to your business by fighting them than you will by making an effort to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP policy list controversies will disappear in a puff of smoke as Jason Kenney performs his best-known magic trick
Alberta’s Opposition United Conservative Party has distributed to its members a list of 782 policy proposals to be considered at its founding convention in Red Deer this weekend. Inevitably, the list was immediately handed over to media and the blogosphere by Conservatives unknown. Much was immediately made by the UCP’s enemies, and a few of […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Review of Canada’s energy systems unlikely to cut through noise generated by pipeline hysteria
The furious debate about the merits of current and future pipeline projects underscores the need for an evidence-based long-term energy strategy for our country, the conclusions of a new review of Canada’s energy systems suggest. Alas, the report released yesterday by the Corporate Mapping Project and its partners at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Was the UCP practicing ‘cultural Marxism’ when it fled the Legislature to avoid the ‘Bubble Zone’ debate?
We’re all “cultural Marxists” now, I guess. Consider Jason Kenney and the Legislative caucus of the ephemerally named political entity known as the United Conservative Party. (By which I mean, like a bad homebuilder, whenever Alberta Conservatives are caught doing stuff voters don’t approve of, they adopt a new name and continue doing the same […]
Posted inGeopolitics
Geopolitical Sunday: Don’t hold your breath waiting for the state of war to officially end on the Korean Peninsula
If the Korean War formally ends any time soon, North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Why not? Just because he presides over a very large military and leads a country that’s not very nice to its own citizens when they step a centimetre out of line is obviously […]
Posted inAlberta Politics, Canadian Politics
Today’s Day of Mourning pieties aside, Alberta workplace injuries are vastly underreported
Today is the International Day of Mourning. Who we mourn are the untold, uncounted numbers of women, men and children who have been killed, injured, disabled or sickened while doing their work. The occasion is mostly marked with modestly unobtrusive ceremonies where organized working people gather – union halls, lunchrooms, and the like. In Canada, […]
Posted inBestsellers
Ten Cents a Pound by Nhung Tran-Davies leads Edmonton fiction bestseller list this week
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended April 22, 2018, compiled by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. Ten Cents a Pound – Nhung Tran-Davies * 2. My Heart Full of Words – Stef […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Embarrassing honorary degree stories: ‘Did no one warn them?’
You have to ask why universities bother handing out honorary degrees like bonbons when you think about all the trouble it can cause them. Consider the embarrassing 2012 case of the Israeli university that came up with a scheme to give an honorary degree to an unsavoury right-wing foreign politician “in appreciation of his revered […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Jason Kenney joins attack on David Suzuki; complains too many U of A honorary degrees go to progressives
Where is the Globe and Mail, the National Post, federal Opposition leader Andrew Scheer? After all, they were all such convincing defenders of intellectual freedom on campus when the barbs were being directed at Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto professor who is “the Darth Maul of tenured campus bad boys,” as one wag deconstructed […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
If there was ever a time for the U of A to stick to its guns and welcome David Suzuki to Edmonton, this is it!
The University of Alberta’s dean of engineering believes his faculty faces “the worst crisis, a crisis of trust, that we’ve faced in more than three decades.” The immediate cause of this perceived looming disaster for the U of A’s most favoured faculty? “The conferral of a single honorary degree,” wrote Fraser Forbes yesterday in an […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta is not Texas North, Canada is not Kazakhstan, and Kinder Morgan’s big brains in Houston must’ve known it
There are a few Albertans who happily imagine this place is Texas North. Alas for those who do, and notwithstanding the media stereotypists who encourage this nonsense, we are as Canadian around here as folks in any other Western province. Maybe more so, since so many people from other parts of Canada keep moving here. […]