The Alberta Health Services computing division, figuring out how much they spend on consultants this quarter, hard at work. Actual Alberta health bureaucrats may not appear exactly as illustrated. LETHBRIDGE It was interesting, surely, to read the Wildrose Party’s revelation yesterday that Alberta Health Services had spent close to a quarter of a billion dollars […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Municipal Affairs Minister Ken Hughes quits Alberta cabinet – presumably to run for PC leadership
Half-confirmed Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Ken Hughes, on the night in 2011 Alison Redford won the party’s leadership. Well, that was then and this is now, as the appalled looking unidentified passerby seemed to have sensed. Below: Doug Horner. Anyone else? Alberta’s Municipal Affairs Minister quit his cabinet post yesterday, by the sound of it […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Say what? After 36 years, secret Alberta Tory slush fund comes to light
Senior Alberta Progressive Conservative Party officials and guards remove election campaign funds from the vaults of the “Tapcal Trust.” Actual PC party officials may not appear exactly as illustrated: Below: PC Party Executive Director Kelley Charlebois; Public Interest Alberta Executive Director Bill Moore-Kilgannon. So, there’s this law in Alberta that allows the ruling Progressive Conservative […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Tales from the Tory crypt: Apres Alison le deluge
Tory leadership non-candidate Jim Dinning with your blogger, back in the day. Below: Former premier Ed Stelmach and non-candidates Ted Morton and Gary Mar. If we were to speak for former Alberta premier Alison Redford today, here is what we would say: “Apres moi le deluge!” There is plenty of fight left in the Alberta […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
A mystery that won’t go away: Why do Alberta patients still face such long waits for lung surgery?
A horse with a silver blaze, curried mutton and a dog that did nothing in the night-time helped Sherlock Holmes get to the bottom of a mysterious death. Will it take a legendary detective to uncover the problem with lung surgeries in Alberta? Below: Dr. Verna Yiu; Dr. Raj Sherman; Dr. Ciaran McNamee. Scotland Yard […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
PC finances: looks like Armageddon for Tories and Wildrose Apocalypse for the rest of us
Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith, on horseback, gazes at all that remains of Alberta’s once-mighty Alberta Progressive Conservative dynasty. Actual Alberta politicians may not appear quite so metaphorically. Below: PC Party Executive Director Kelley Charlebois. We can probably thank former Alberta premier Alison Redford for breaking the spine of the 43-year Progressive Conservative dynasty in […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alison Redford set to sue Alberta Government for wrongful dismissal
The $45,000 Question: How could they put Alison Redford on probation … and then not give her a chance to shape up? Former premier Alison Redford intends to sue the government of Alberta for wrongful dismissal. The former premier believes that because she was given a “work plan” by the leadership of the province’s Progressive […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Good advice for Alberta New Democrats from Quebec: this time, make it easy for voters to support you
Ray Guardia, one of the key architects of the federal NDP’s 2011 breakthrough in Quebec, at yesterday’s closing session of the Broadbent Institute’s 2014 Progress Summit in Ottawa. Below: Environmental activist Tzeporah Berman. OTTAWA Here’s a tip for Alberta New Democrats from one of the principal architects of Jack Layton’s historic 2011 Quebec campaign: don’t […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Tory MLAs, reporters, right-wing ideologues take aim at Alison Redford for PC Party’s woes
The Alberta premier’s personal airship ties up alongside the Sky Palace Official First Minister’s Residence, high atop the former Federal Building in Edmonton. Actual official accommodations may not appear exactly as illustrated, even in the blueprints. Below: Former premiers Ralph Klein and Ed Stelmach. OTTAWA Everyone is piling onto Alison Redford now, a phenomenon we […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta Premier Dave Hancock needs to apply his leadership candidates’ rules to secretive cabinet committee
A rare shot of a meeting of the Alberta government’s secretive Public Sector Resource Committee in session. Actual Alberta policymakers may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Premier Dave Hancock with former premier Alison Redford, back in the day, photo grabbed from Daveberta.ca. OTTAWA Is the Redford-Hancock Government’s Public Sector Resource Committee a cabinet committee, […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alison Redford and the misogyny defence: does it really hold any water?
Former Alberta Premier Alison Redford in happier times, as we remember her on the eve of her selection as PC Party leader in the fall of 2011. The suggestion former Alberta Premier Alison Redford was treated differently, and was presumably fired by her party more peremptorily, because she is a woman is generating considerable heat […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Advice to Dave Hancock: sweet words won’t be enough for Alberta’s unhappy civil servants
Your blogger with Alberta’s newest premier, Dave Hancock, not so long ago. Below: U.S. presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. What a difference a few days can make! One leaves the province with one premier in power, figuratively bellowing threats at the civil service, and returns less than a week later to find […]