Community transmission of COVID-19 is now taking place in Alberta as numbers of cases grew by 17 over the past 24 hours to 56, Premier Jason Kenney told the province’s daily briefing on the local spread of the global pandemic today. Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw said seven new infections happened at a […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Can Jason Kenney pass the UCP budget, prorogue the Legislature, and get out of town before COVID-19 really hits the fan?
Beware the Ides of March! It’ll be interesting to see if Premier Jason Kenney can find a way to pass his budget, prorogue the Legislature, and get the heck outta Dodge before the really bad stuff from the COVID-19 pandemic’s arrival in Alberta starts to hit the fan. On Friday, as we know thanks to […]
Posted inBestsellers
Son of a Trickster by Indigenous author Eden Robinson tops independent Alberta bookstores’ 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, March 8, 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. Son […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Coronavirus pandemic? What a peculiar time for the health minister to pursue a fight with Alberta’s physicians
Hey! It’s Friday the 13th in the age of the coronavirus. Are you feeling lucky? Apparently Tyler Shandro and Tara Jago are. Leastways, Alberta’s heath minister and his “issues manager” were yesterday when, global coronavirus pandemic and all that stuff notwithstanding, they were busy on social media yelling at Alberta’s physicians and their supporters for […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
It’s almost as if the new coronavirus has evolved to exploit the vulnerabilities of the modern neoliberal state
“The risk to Albertans is still low,” the Government of Alberta’s official website soothingly assured us yesterday afternoon, the day the World Health Organization officially declared the effects of the coronavirus swiftly coursing ’round the globe to be a pandemic. This may reassure some of us. Others, not so much. Yesterday afternoon, Alberta had 19 […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Report forecasts future of Alberta’s oilsands as more production, fewer jobs, and less spending
Thanks to technological advances and modular facilities, leading oilsands companies are increasing bitumen production while cutting the numbers of people they employ and spending less money, says a new Corporate Mapping Project report published this morning by the Parkland Institute. More than 34,000 oil and gas workers in Alberta have lost their jobs since the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Appointment of conservative economist Jack Mintz to head Jason Kenney’s latest economic panel is not a good augury for Alberta
Come into my office, Alberta, and sit down. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your prognosis is not good. I’m not talking about coronavirus. That will be painful, but you’re strong and young and I’m confident you could survive coronavirus … When Premier Jason Kenney says there’s a “global coronavirus recession,” what he […]
Posted inCanadian Politics
Remember when Canada was about to become ‘a global energy powerhouse’? So how’d that work out?
Anybody remember Stephen Harper’s plan to turn Canada into “an energy superpower”? That was in July 2006, a dream articulated in Mr. Harper’s first speech abroad as Canada’s prime minister. Canada was not only about to become “a new energy superpower,” Mr. Harper told the Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce in London, his government intended to […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Talks between Alberta’s docs and government, which went off the rails on Valentine’s Day, are back on again
A big fight with Alberta’s doctors might have seemed like a good idea when the United Conservative Party’s strategic braintrust came up with the plan a few weeks ago. But that was then. This is now. With the docs primed for action, their constitutional lawyers loaded for bear, full-page advertisements appearing in community newspapers throughout […]
Posted inBestsellers
The Marrow Thieves, young adult fiction by Canadian Metis author Cherie Dimaline, leads Alberta independent bookstore sales
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, March 1, 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 inAlberta Politics
Coronavirus discovered in Alberta just as politics trumps science in supervised drug clinic report
COVID-19 has arrived in Alberta. But first, we need to talk about how the United Conservative Party Government has found a nearly perfect formula for dealing with science when it reaches inconvenient conclusions running counter either to the ruling party’s ideology or its political calculations. It strikes a committee of sympathetic folk, calls it an […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Investment advice: If you have the choice, don’t trust right-wing politicians with your retirement money
After my father died in Victoria in 2008 at the age of 91, my sister opened his safety deposit box and discovered $5,000 in shares in the British Columbia Resources Investment Corp., better known as the BCRIC, universally pronounced at the end of the 1970s as the “brick.” When I say $5,000 in shares, of […]