The Royal Canadian Mounted Police may be no paragon of liberalism and progressive enforcement, but they’re apparently too liberal and progressive for the members of the so-called Fair Deal Panel that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney appointed to trot out his quasi-separatist hobbyhorses. Mr. Kenney’s supposedly cash-poor government announced yesterday it has another $2 million to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Shopping Alberta’s Future: Boycott-loving UCP is shocked, just shocked, when the tactic is aimed at its supporters
Alberta’s United Conservatives: They can dish it out, but they can’t take it. Well, Premier Jason Kenney’s UCP wasn’t the first political party to discover turnabout is fair play, and it’s unlikely to be the last. Still, it was amusing to watch UCP activists and staffers clutching their pearls on social media Monday night and […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
What did Finance Minister Travis Toews actually say about AISH in Grande Prairie last week?
So, what did Travis Toews actually say about Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped when he said whatever he said to a Grande Prairie local news website one week ago today? According to the first report on MyGrandePrairieNow.com, the finance minister, who is also MLA for Grande Prairie-Wapiti, said that the possible end to AISH […]
Posted inBestsellers
The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue returns to top of 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, Sept. 27, 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 As regular readers of this […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Thinking about Alberta Day: Don’t count on having two holiday weekends in September, fellow Albertians!
Should we be getting ready for “Alberta Day,” my fellow Albertians? To put than another way, does Jason Kenney have a plan to erase Labour Day and replace it with something called Alberta Day on or about September 1? It certainly wouldn’t be out of character. Labour Day celebrates labour, which in practical terms often […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
One cheer for the UCP politician who made Alberta Cheezies a household word!
Take it from an old newshound old enough to remember when newshounds were an actual thing: When someone accuses a reporter of taking their words out of context, what they usually mean is, “I wish I hadn’t said that.” Or, at least, I wish I hadn’t got caught saying it. So when Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
Forever chaste? Or just chased? Former Reform MP and Kenney comrade Rob Anders faces new challenges
Rob Anders’ recent trouble with the law reminds us of the former Reform Party and Conservative MP’s past thoughts about the laws of nature. Twenty-one years ago, Mr. Anders made up half of the party’s much-remarked-upon Parliamentary chastity caucus, of which Jason Kenney was the other half, or the only admitted additional member anyway. In […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Fossil fuels may be fading, but Alberta stands ready to supply bad economic ideas to Canada and the world
VICTORIA — We Albertans can be enormously proud, I guess, of our continuing influence on the Dominion. We surely must be the leading exporter of ridiculous, potentially destructive ideas in Canada. Consider Andrew Wilkinson, hapless leader of British Columbia’s Liberals (who are really Conservatives) and his promise to B.C. voters yesterday to eliminate the province’s […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Riding high in the polls, B.C.’s New Democrat premier calls a snap election — the right, predictably, whinges
VICTORIA — Strangely, all those conservatives who are anxious to get us back to school and business as soon as possible didn’t seem to be very happy yesterday when B.C. Premier John Horgan called a snap election for Oct. 24. Supporters of B.C. political parties other than Mr. Horgan’s New Democrats seemed to be lining […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
We have met the enemy and he is us — Alberta in the midst of a climate damn emergency
VICTORIA — The world is waking up to the fact the climate emergency is, well, an emergency. This certainly isn’t good news for Alberta, although, perversely, it may be good news in the short term of the United Conservative Party of Premier Jason Kenney and governments like his in other petroleum dependent jurisdictions. As climate […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta takes over as Canada’s political Crazytown; privatized health care suffers a setback
VICTORIA — When I was growing up here in Lotusland, British Columbia had the reputation of being the Crazytown of Canadian politics. The late Allan Fotheringham, the Vancouver Sun columnist we all read religiously, famously summed up Canadian politics like this: “In the Maritimes, politics is a disease; in Quebec a religion; in Ontario a […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Order saying Alberta schools won’t have to enforce social distancing lands like a sucker punch
Whoever it was in the Alberta Government that decided it would be a good idea to risk springing the news on the public that COVID-19 social distancing rules won’t apply to classrooms just hours before schools reopen was seriously mistaken. The United Conservative Party government’s “near-normal” back-to-school scheme was already highly controversial, assailed as inadequate […]