Is Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government seriously proposing to make anyone who wants an influenza or COVID-19 vaccination next year order it during an unannounced 78-day window that is already 20 days gone and closes on Dec. 15? Alternatively, are they planning to base the amount of COVID-19 and influenza vaccine they’re expecting to order […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Jack Flaherty, elected as St. Albert’s MLA at 71 in 2004, remembered for hard work in Opposition and congenial nature
Jack Flaherty, the congenial retired St. Albert schoolteacher, school superintendent, and senior civil servant recruited to run by the Alberta Liberals in 2004, scoring an upset victory at 71 years of age over the Tory incumbent, died in Calgary on Sept. 24. He was 91. On election night 2004, Mr. Flaherty edged out two-term Progressive […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Danielle Smith declares herself vindicated by Wyant report on dodgy contracts scandal
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has declared herself, her political aides and her government vindicated by a former Manitoba judge’s limited investigation of contract jiggery-pokery at Alberta Health Services. In a statement released today on the Alberta Government’s website, Ms. Smith declared that the report by Raymond Wyant pins the blame entirely on Alberta Health Services, […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Who knew that the public would end up supporting striking teachers? Not Danielle Smith and the UCP!
Who knew the public would end up supporting 51,000 striking Alberta schoolteachers in spite of the United Conservative Party Government’s blithe gaslighting about the reasons for the labour dispute now entering its 11th day? The answer to that question may not be clear, but we can be confident about who didn’t expect it to happen. […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Monday is municipal election day in Alberta: My thoughts on the candidates in my town
ST. ALBERT, Alberta – Next Monday is Alberta’s quadrennial municipal election day. Leading up to that occasion, there’s been plenty of jiggery-pokery by our United Conservative Party provincial government, which went to the trouble of legalizing municipal political parties in the province’s two largest cities (and only in Calgary and Edmonton) in hopes of seeing […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
What’s with the Alberta post-secondary funding panel’s detour into anti-DEI crusading?
The report of the so-called Expert Panel on Post-Secondary Institution Funding and Alberta’s Competitiveness released last week calls for the government to stop telling universities, colleges and technical institutes how to do their jobs. Then it proceeds to explain how the province should require the same institutions to do their jobs. What’s with this apparent […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Alberta and B.C. premiers’ pipeline war of words likely comes as a relief to both
RED DEER, Alberta – Their anger may be genuine, but it seems likely Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and British Columbia Premier David Eby are both relieved and even delighted to have the excuse to yell at each other about the Alberta Government’s half-baked plan for a bitumen pipeline from the Athabasca tarpatch to the Pacific […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Well, at least one vitally important labour negotiation has been settled in Alberta, to everyone’s relief!
In important labour relations news, significant portions of the province of Alberta sighed with relief yesterday upon learning that an important contract has finally been signed, ending a period of uncertainty and fear. That’s right, Connor McDavid will remain with the Edmonton Oilers for at least another two years at the modest cost of $12.5 […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Huge protest in support of Alberta teachers at Alberta Legislature may have been largest in province’s history
A throng of at least 18,000 people turned out at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton this afternoon to mark World Teachers Day by supporting members of the Alberta Teachers Association who are expected to walk off the job tomorrow morning in a province-wide strike. If anything, that mainstream media estimate probably significantly low-balled the size […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Former PC deputy premier’s ‘Forever Canadian’ petition success a big potential problem for UCP
Prediction: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will call an early election before she allows a referendum to proceed to a vote with the wording promoted by former Progressive Conservative deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian petition. To do otherwise would derail the scheme by the premier and her closest advisors to blackmail Canada into conferring near-national […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
If the goal of Danielle Smith’s ‘historic’ pipeline announcement was to distract, it appears to be working
If the goal of Danielle Smith’s “historic” pipeline announcement yesterday was to distract voters and media from Alberta’s looming teachers’ strike, increasing health care chaos, unpopular separatist scheming, embarrassing oil company layoffs, and continuing procurement scandals, it appears to be working. All the serious websites of the land were publishing learned treatises last night on […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
UCP says it will pay parents $30 a day to do teachers’ jobs from home, sort of, during a strike
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her finance and education ministers yesterday announced a novel scheme to pay scabs $30 a day to teach school children in the event of a province-wide teachers’ strike! The rub? It turns out that it’s parents who are going to be expected to do the strike breaking. Well, at least […]