A recommendation by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s handpicked curriculum advisors to strip all mention of residential schools from the province’s Kindergarten-to-Grade 4 curriculum “will perpetuate systemic racism through whitewashing,” says Melissa Purcell, the Alberta Teachers Association’s staff officer for Indigenous education. “The Indian Residential School system was created to erase the cultures, histories, languages, and […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP launches ambitious legislative session, with 20 bills packed into six weeks and no time for COVID-19
An ambitious six-week fall sitting of the Alberta Legislature commenced in Edmonton yesterday with Premier Jason Kenney telling the House during Question Period that his government isn’t about to publish any updated COVID-19 modelling. As Opposition Leader Rachel Notley argued, it would be useful to know what the experts say now if we wish to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Second COVID-19 wave rolls into Alberta as Premier Jason Kenney continues to emphasize ‘personal responsibility’
Alberta has now passed a significant milestone — more COVID-19 cases than at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, 3,138 compared to 3,022 on April 30. There were 898 new cases over the weekend if you count Friday, as Alberta Health Services does, and four more people have died, […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta must learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, premier muses on the topic of energy and the environment
Jason Kenney may have missed it, but Lyndon Johnson’s famous comment about how certain people weren’t up to walking and chewing gum at the same time was an observation about their lack of intelligence, not their ability to get away with saying contradictory things at the same time. Alberta’s premier is said to be a […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Sundre hospital renamed to honour MP Myron Thompson, long-time foe of equality for same-sex couples
“They’re trying to take away our culture, they’re trying to take away our history,” Donald Trump complained back in 2017 about activists who call for the removal statues of Confederate and colonialist heroes. Mr. Trump’s supporters have been loudly making their agreement known ever since, including here in Alberta where the U.S. president has plenty […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Throwing health care into chaos isn’t easy, but the UCP’s political staffers are willing to sacrifice to do it
Throwing Alberta’s health care system into chaos isn’t easy. It takes hard work and sacrifice. But thanks to the United Conservative Party’s front-line fighters in the war against fair and efficient public health care, what even Ralph Klein couldn’t achieve is finally happening: Clinical chaos! Hospital havoc! Medical mayhem! Just yesterday, we learned that the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Math is hard, but not so hard you can’t spot the holes in Tyler Shandro’s cost-saving shell game
Math, apparently, remains hard. Except, perhaps, calculus of a political sort. On its face, Health Minister Tyler Shandro’s claim that firing 11,000 low-paid public sector health care employees will save about $600 million makes little sense. Others have done the same calculation and come up with similar results, but it a matter of simple arithmetic […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP government announces massive health care layoffs at hastily called news conference
If you think this morning was a crazy moment for Health Minister Tyler Shandro to announce a major restructuring of public health care in Alberta, including the layoffs of 11,000 public health care workers, right in the middle of the most serious health care crisis in 100 years, you’re right. Everybody, including the government, understands […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The UCP, in the middle of its war on doctors, picks a fight with nurses too
It seemed crazy for the United Conservative Party Government of Premier Jason Kenney to pick a fight with the province’s doctors in the middle of a pandemic. Still, if you believe the Roman proverb that fortune favours the brave and look at the world from Mr. Kenney’s ideological perspective, you can understand why he might […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Young Ben Harper gets a well-heeled start in politics, thanks to dear old dad’s former lieutenant
Give Ben Harper’s old man his due: he got his son a better first job in Alberta than the elder Mr. Harper’s pop got him. Readers with functioning short-term memories will recall that not so long ago much was made of the fact Stephen Harper’s father got the former Conservative prime minister his first job […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue remains atop Alberta independent booksellers’ bestseller list
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020. The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books in Edmonton and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton. ALBERTA FICTION BESTSELLERS 1. The […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
What was Saskatchewan’s media doing when it wasn’t reporting on Scott Moe’s driving record?
Seriously, what was the media in Saskatchewan doing when it wasn’t investigating Scott Moe’s history of drunk and, on one occasion, deadly driving? Wednesday morning, the province’s Saskatchewan Party premier got up on his hind legs at a campaign event and “spoke to an impaired driving charge he faced following an incident in 1994,” as […]