OTTAWA – It’s a funny old world and it looks as if Donald Trump just saved supply management. If there’s a single thing hated with abiding passion by Canadian market fundamentalists –admirers of the U.S. president almost to a man and woman, at least until the moment he started threatening Canada with massive tariffs for […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
Cultural policy has no place in trade deals – when we caved to Trump’s bullying on copyright in 2022, we lost
OTTAWA – Canada needs to put everything we gave away to the United States over the past four decades of trade negotiations back on the table! It seems like just the other day — although in fact it was 70 months ago — that Donald Trump signed the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, supposedly guaranteeing that Canadian […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Finance Minister Nate Horner delivers a Budget Speech with a split personality
Finance Minister Nate Horner rose in the Alberta Legislature yesterday afternoon and delivered a Budget Speech with a split personality that reflects the rock and the hard place the United Conservative Party Government has found itself between. Speaking in a monotonous drone inside the Legislative chamber as more than 2,000 striking public education workers and […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Good Morning, Alberta! It’s Budget Day in Wild Rose Country! Brace yourself!
Good Morning, Alberta! It’s Budget Day in Wild Rose Country! South of the 49th Parallel, U.S. President Donald Trump is still talking tariffs, keeping everyone on the edge of their seats. Premier Danielle Smith’s efforts to persuade him to let her be the hero who ended the tariff threat went nowhere. So Canadians aren’t laughing […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Deny! Distract! Deflect! The Alberta Legislature resumes sitting
The Alberta Legislature got back to business yesterday, with a desperate United Conservative Party Government mired in a dodgy contracts scandal of its own creation flailing about for ways to deny, distract and deflect criticism, commentary, and questions. Luckily for the government, in addition to having no elected leader in the Legislature, the Opposition NDP […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Make no mistake, the UCP’s planned ‘compassionate intervention centres’ will be jails
Make no mistake, the two “compassionate intervention centres” planned by Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government will be jails. At a fancy televised news conference in Calgary yesterday with a large cast of supporters, Premier Danielle Smith and Mental Health and Addiction Minister Dan Williams – both of whom are under a dark political cloud as […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Impact of those dodgy contracts allegations continues to spread – so, did anyone ever call the cops?
Did anyone ever call the cops? What are the Mounties doing, if anything? In Paragraph 60 of her statement of claim for her $1.7-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit, former Alberta Health Services Chief Executive Officer Athana Mentzelopoulos said the agency’s board advised her in mid-December that her internal investigation and external forensic audit of possible conflicts […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Still struggling to control damage from Dodgy Contracts Scandal, Danielle Smith claims AHS conspired to block UCP private surgery scheme
Finally responding in person to Athana Mentzelopoulos’s $1.7-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit, Premier Danielle Smith stood up at a government news conference in Calgary yesterday and spent part of the tightly controlled half-hour event publicly attacking her former Alberta Health Services CEO for the way she did her job before the government fired her on Jan. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Two cheers for Don Getty, who gave Alberta the Family Day long weekend in February
Happy Family Day! The winters around here are long. T.S. Eliot may have reckoned April was the cruellest month, but anyone from Alberta knows it’s February, season of the original fake news: “Spring is coming!” Given what the Internet had turned into even before Elon Musk bought Twitter and made fake news great again, we […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Crack appears in UCP’s solid front as cabinet member calls for Adriana LaGrange to be sacked as health minister
For the first time since Danielle Smith became premier of Alberta in the fall of 2022, a rift in United Conservative Party cabinet ranks appeared in public view yesterday over whether or not Adriana LaGrange should be removed as health minister to control the damage from the festering Dodgy Contracts Scandal. In a memorandum to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
If the UCP hopes to turn the page on the Dodgy Contracts Scandal, someone’s going to have to fall on their sword
If Danielle Smith hopes to turn the page on the Dodgy Contracts Scandal that’s been dogging her since the former CEO of Alberta Health Services challenged the United Conservative Party Government’s narrative about the circumstances that led to her dismissal on Jan. 8, Alberta’s premier is going to have to act fast. Athana Mentzelopoulos says […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Athana Mentzelopoulos files her $1.7-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit and the stuff starts really hitting the fan
Fired Alberta Health Services Chief Executive Officer Athana Mentzelopoulos’s lawyers have filed her $1.7-million lawsuit alleging she was fired “capriciously, arbitrarily, and in bad faith because she was actually carrying out her duties for AHS” and now the stuff is really starting to hit the fan. Some of Ms. Mentzelopoulos’s accusations are incendiary. She names […]