In January, as the Globe and Mail put it in a colourful old-timey headline last week, Canada’s job market blew past the forecasts for the month. Unemployment also fell. In Alberta, not so much. Indeed, Alberta was the only province in Canada to see jobs disappearing — and in significant numbers, with 19,000 lost in […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
This just in! Stable Reliable Liberal Democracy of Alberta suddenly adopts social license strategy for fossil fuel development
We interrupt this blog with an important bulletin from the Stable Reliable Liberal Democracy of Alberta! In an unexpected move, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has announced he will seek social license for new energy projects in the Canadian province. How unexpected was this announcement? It was so unexpected it hadn’t even been reported by the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Former U.S. ambassador to Canada unaware of any conversation like the plot described by Jason Kenney
There’s a small but important update to the story about Jason Kenney’s conspiracy theorizing in Washington at the end of last week. According to the man who served as the United States’ ambassador to Canada from 2014 to 2017, nothing was ever said to him that would suggest there were ever any talks between the […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Jason Kenney names Gerry Butts and Barack Obama in latest UCP conspiracy theory!
Does anyone actually believe Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s startling claim that Gerald Butts, then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary, secretly conspired with the White House in 2015 to engineer “a co-ordinated surrender” by Canada on President Barack Obama’s veto of the Keystone XL Pipeline project? Judging from the conversations on social media, either some […]
Posted inBestsellers
The Break, by Katherena Vermette, is independent booksellers’ Alberta fiction bestseller for week ended Feb. 2
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Feb. 2, 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
Inside Jason Kenney’s troll factory: the UCP propaganda ecosystem goes after Alberta’s registered nurses
The president of the Alberta Federation of Labour called out the Canadian Taxpayers Federation yesterday for the partisan role it plays supporting of the Kenney Government’s contract demands in negotiations with the union that represents the province’s front-line registered nurses. Calling the CTF “a secretive anti-union lobby group,” Gil McGowan ripped the supposedly non-partisan “tax […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Trans Mountain Pipeline court ruling looks like a win for Alberta — as the world drives away in an electric car
You win some, you lose some. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney won one yesterday with the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal to strike down a challenge by a group of four British Columbia First Nations and allow the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project to take another lurching step toward completion. The 3-0 ruling was […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Ernst & Young review of Alberta Health Services gives UCP cover to do lots, flexibility to do little
We’re not closing any rural hospitals, have you got that? Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro strove to make that point perfectly clear at his news conference in Edmonton yesterday on how Ernst & Young, the multinational management consulting firm based in London, England, thinks Alberta Health Services could save nearly $2 billion a year. No, […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
What Brexit and Ottawa’s decision on the Teck oilsands mine have in common: Jason Kenney’s stubborn intransigence
Question: What do Brexit, which finally happened on Friday but the full implications of which are yet to unfold, and Ottawa’s impending decision on the Teck Resources Ltd. Frontier oilsands mine in northern Alberta have in common? Answer: Both are examples of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s stubborn tendency to cling to inconsistent and unhelpful positions […]
Posted inBestsellers
The Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is Alberta independent bookstores’ latest fiction bestseller
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. 26, 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
Arbitrator’s decision awarding 1% pay increase to some AUPE members undermines UCP austerity arguments
An independent labour arbitrator yesterday awarded unionized Alberta government employees and health care support workers a modest 1-per-cent pay increase for 2019. Having gone into wage-reopener negotiations in the final year of their current collective agreements seeking much higher pay increases ranging from 6.5 to 7.85 per cent, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees expressed […]
Posted inAlberta Politics
Freedom of information filing reveals supposedly independent ‘Blue Ribbon’ Panel had help from staff in Alberta premier’s office
It turns out Janice MacKinnon’s six-member “expert panel” was using a script cooked up in Premier Jason Kenney’s office at least part of the time it was supposedly taking its “deep dive” into Alberta’s books last year. Alert readers will recall that when freshly elected United Conservative Party Premier Jason Kenney announced the creation of […]