It’s very hard to resist the temptation to juxtapose the Kenney Government’s response to the plight of underpaid front-line health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the troubles faced by well-heeled owners of private continuing care facilities. When it comes to the former, Premier Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party Government seem determined […]
Posted inBestsellers
How to Pronounce Knife, Braiding Sweetgrass are Alberta independent bookshops’ fiction and non-fiction bestsellers
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021. 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. How to Pronounce Knife – Souvankham […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Time for your depressing weekly Alberta pandemic update: Got whiplash yet?
Watching the Kenney Government respond to COVID-19 could give you whiplash. Back on Jan. 26, Health Minister Tyler Shandro was warning us that the arrival of more infectious COVID-19 variants risked pushing our health-care system to the brink. By Jan. 29, Premier Jason Kenney was saying that might be true, but we’d be easing restrictions […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Conspiracy theories are for losers: What does this tell us about Jason Kenney’s UCP?
Are Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party nuts? I mean, are they actually nuts, going down the rabbit hole of bizarre and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories like some of their Republican brethren in the United States? In other words, in their effort to unite the right (as used to be said when that was still […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
We’ve had almost 70 years to fix the problems with Line 5 and very little has happened – what now?
Doesn’t Michigan understand that letting jurisdictions along the route of a Canadian pipeline carry the risk of what’s inside the pipe while only the province at the start of the line gets to pocket the benefits is a fundamental principle of Confederation? Surely we established that much during the debate over expanding the Trans Mountain […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
Canada’s lack of vaccine capacity really is a scandal, but there’s no way Conservatives are actually serious about fixing it
The fact Canada lacks capacity to manufacture its own coronavirus vaccine should be a scandal. But there’s a certain irony in Conservative leaders like Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta’s Jason Kenney jumping on this bandwagon now that its potential to be used against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government in Ottawa has […]
Posted inBestsellers
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer tops independent bookshops’ Alberta non-fiction bestseller list for week ended Jan. 24
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021. Notable this week is the fact the always enjoyable Thomas King has a book on both the fiction and non-fiction lists, Indians on Vacation in fiction and The Inconvenient […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
With infectious new COVID-19 strains on the march, Alberta Premier caves to business and eases health restrictions
With more infectious new variants of the novel coronavirus now spreading in Western Canada, Premier Jason Kenney chose yesterday to advise Albertans that next Friday the province will ease the restrictions that appear to have been slowing the spread of COVID-19. Alberta’s new-infection numbers have been a little better lately and are trending in the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Assailed for their own scandals and bungles, Alberta’s UCP doubles down on bashing Justin Trudeau as distraction
Facing mounting public anger over a truckload of scandals and bungles, Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party Government has doubled-down on its favourite fight-back strategy: rancorous attacks on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Yesterday’s daily COVID-19 briefing was only the latest example of the how the UCP strategic brain trust thinks they can change the channel […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Energy in Depth’s report to the ‘anti-Alberta’ campaigns inquiry is slick, expensive, tendentious, and unpersuasive
There’s nothing outright bonkers about the report by Energy in Depth, the U.S. fossil fuel advocacy organization paid $64,000 by the “Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns” to come up with justification for the conspiracy theories pushed by the United Conservative Party Government during and after the 2019 election campaign. Sure, Foreign Funding Targeting Canada’s […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Digging into the ‘Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns’ Inquiry’s probe of the plot to replace capitalism with a dystopic ecotopia
Now that people are sitting down and actually reading the papers commissioned by Alberta’s so-called Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns, they’re finding paranoia and poppycock aplenty. It begs a question, though. What was Inquiry Commissioner Steve Allan up to when he reached out and paid significant sums from the public purse for these papers? […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
How much of the pipe that was supposedly ready to build Keystone XL is fit only for scrap?
Alberta is unlikely to recoup much of its $1.5-billion loss on the Keystone XL Pipeline by selling off unused pipe now that the Biden Administration has pulled the plug on the megaproject. At any rate, it’s hard to believe much of the pipe will be good for anything but scrap after sitting outdoors exposed to […]