When Finance Minister Travis Toews got up on his hind legs in the Alberta Legislature to read his 2021 Budget Speech Thursday afternoon, there wasn’t as much tough talk about the coming “fiscal reckoning” as Albertans are accustomed to. Instead of the kind of language the United Conservative Party used to love using to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Was Travis Toews’s decision not to buy new boots in 2019 the start of the UCP’s run of bad fortune? Just askin’
While nervously awaiting Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews’s budget tomorrow, let’s spare a thought for the uniquely Canadian tradition of finance ministers buying new shoes to wear on Budget Day. According to the Wikipedia, Walter Edward Harris, who served a spell as finance minister in Louis St. Laurent’s Liberal cabinet, was likely the first to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Unsustainable Alberta: Don’t expect the UCP to pay any attention to the Business Council of Alberta in tomorrow’s budget
It’s Alberta Budget Day tomorrow. Finance Minister Travis Toews will table a budget at an afternoon pop-up meeting of the Legislature. Then United Conservative Party MLAs will run like hell for their ridings and hunker down until the Legislature’s business resumes on March 8. Whatever Mr. Toews has to say, there’s not much danger he […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Advice for Jason Kenney: If you’re going to sup with the Devil, you need a longer spoon
Jason Kenney didn’t actually say there were very fine people at Saturday’s tiki-torch parade at the Alberta Legislature, but his half-hearted condemnation of the racist overtones of the tawdry “one-voice walk for freedom” surely came from the same place. It took Alberta’s United Conservative Party premier almost 48 hours to condemn the march, which was […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Brian Brennan, 77, elegant wordsmith, musician, courageous trade unionist
Brian Brennan, elegant wordsmith, storyteller, professional musician and brave leader of the strike at the Calgary Herald in 1999 and 2000, died yesterday. He was 77. For many years at the Herald, Brian specialized in writing obituaries, each a polished gem of a few hundred words. Often they celebrated the lives of remarkable people whose […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Despite giving UCP a hard time, Critical Infrastructure Defence Act no threat to defiant pastor and his COVID-sceptical flock
Small groups of supporters of James Coates, the temporarily jailed pastor of an Edmonton-area church who has been defiantly refusing to obey Alberta’s COVID-19 restrictions, protested in front of the Edmonton Remand Centre Thursday and yesterday. They rallied outside that monumental piece of critical Alberta infrastructure demanding the GraceLife Church’s pastor be freed. Pastor Coates […]
Posted inBestsellers
Romance novels by Julia Quinn top independent bookshops’ fiction bestseller list for week, of course, of Feb. 14
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Feb. 14, 2021. The last day of the week was was Valentine’s Day, so one supposes we shouldn’t be surprised that the top two spots on the week’s fiction bestseller list were […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Judge hopes to rule on Ecojustice effort to shut down energy campaigns inquiry before May 31 – why that shouldn’t be a problem
We’re all just going to have to wait to find out how the legal effort by Ecojustice Canada Society to shut down Alberta’s so-called “Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns” turns out. After hearing arguments for two days last week from lawyers for Ecojustice, the province, inquiry Commissioner Steve Allan, and a group of about […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Is the Kenney Government’s EMS dispatch consolidation plan a prelude to ambulance privatization?
Is the Kenney Government’s determination to force reluctant municipalities to turn over 9-1-1 calls to a provincial Emergency Medical Services dispatch centre a prelude to privatization of provincial ambulance services? It’s certainly unlikely to be the paltry $6 million the United Conservative Party Government claims this will save, especially given the high political cost of […]
Posted inGeopolitics
With the Taliban on the cusp of controlling Afghanistan once again, we owe it to our dead to ask, ‘Was it worth it?’
Yesterday morning, the New York Times reported the Taliban is on the cusp of total victory in Afghanistan. The Times being the Times, of course, it didn’t put it quite that way. “The Taliban Close In on Afghan Cities, Pushing the Country to the Brink,” said the American national newspaper of record in its eccentrically […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Our annual Family Day toast to Don Getty, whose best-known achievement was one for the ages
The winters around here are long. Even with social media Canadians need a February holiday. Come to think of it, given what the Internet has turned into in the few years since it arrived on the scene with such promise, we need a February long weekend even more than we did in the dark ages […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The Annals of Alberta poetry: The United Conservative Party sends us a Kenney Valentine
I choo-choo-chooose To get a fair deal for you — Actual United Conservative Party Valentine’s Day Twitter meme Keystone is dead The billions are lost I blame Joe Biden But I’ll probably get tossed — Response by @DaveCournoyer The ocean is blue The sky is the same Steve Allan’s still lookin’ for someone to blame […]