We may be living in the 21st Century, but Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Government is apparently still suffering from the 19th Century distrust of voters and democracy that convinced the Fathers of Confederation to give us that unelected Senate. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). So, yesterday, Alberta
Continue readingAuthor: David Climenhaga
Alberta Politics: Plan to have patients at Calgary clinic pony up ‘membership fees’ might have had a chance if the UCP’s War on Ottawa had heated up sooner
Timing is everything, so Dr. Sally Talbot-Jones must have been kicking herself yesterday for launching her effort to charge patients as much as $4,800 a year up front to see a doctor in a timely fashion when she did. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). It must have been
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Busted! Globe outs Danielle Smith’s unpublicized pandemic data ‘task force’ headed by physician who attacked COVID restrictions
When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith mused in the midst debate over her government’s new funding turf war with Ottawa that “we could also establish our own research programs” to ensure ideological balance in academic research, many Albertans suspected they understood precisely what she had in mind. Dr. Gary Davidson, the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Once upon a time Danielle Smith told Marco Van Huigenbos, ‘Coutts must win!’ Now she can’t even find the poor guy’s phone number
Now that the chickens are coming home to roost for some of the would-be Canadian colour revolutionaries of 2022, a certain amount if schadenfreude in social media was inevitable given the rhetoric of the Coutts blockaders and Ottawa occupiers. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, in whom Mr. Van Huigenbos once put
Continue readingAlberta Politics: How did Danielle Smith know about an anonymous letter alleging dirty deeds at the city of Edmonton before it arrived?
Albertans are being asked to believe the provincial government doesn’t keep copies of every piece of correspondence it receives, including some it formally acts upon. Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). To say this strains credulity understates the matter considerably. Yet this is precisely what Alberta Premier
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Planned provincial police to be called Alberta Rangers? Brace yourselves for more Conservative cowboy cosplay!
Did a little birdie just chirp in my ear that the United Conservative Government has already picked out a name for the new provincial police force it claims it hasn’t yet decided whether or not to set up? Officers of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police in 1900 – slated along
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Inflation? Never heard of it! Finance Minister Nate Horner weighs in on public service bargaining
To hear Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner tell it Monday, you’d almost think there’s been no inflation in Alberta since the pandemic. Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Guy Smith in a typical pose (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Well, Mr. Horner is a scion of Alberta’s enduring and (mostly) Conservative
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Danielle Smith sets out to ensure the ideological purity of federally funded university research in Alberta
It must seem unfair to the United Conservative Party base that flat-earth researchers consistently get the short end of the stick when it comes to federal research funds while the spherical-earth crowd so obviously favoured by Ottawa gets all the dough! CBC Power & Politics host David Cochrane (Photo: BroadcastDialogue.com).
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Danielle Smith picks Alberta’s hill to die on: No to heat pumps, solar panels, and pharmacare
Alberta’s hill to die on? Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault (Photo: Government of Canada). According to Premier Danielle Smith it’s our God-given right to gas-generated electricity, diesel-powered buses, and gas-heated homes. You want our forced-air gas furnaces, our diesel buses, Guilbeault? Come and take ’em! This is Wild Rose Country
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Recovery War Room: Best practices if ideologically acceptable, but not necessarily best practices
Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government tabled legislation yesterday to establish its previously announced Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence, which appears to be the drug-treatment equivalent of the UCP’s notorious Alberta Energy War Room. Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence CEO designate Kym Kaufmann (Photo: Kym Kaufmann/Eden Health Services). According to the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Danielle Smith squirms at thought of Jason Kenney’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act used against her allies
You might be tempted to think Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was on the right track with her obvious discomfort at the thought of her predecessor’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act being used to prosecute the so-called anti-carbon-tax protesters impeding traffic alomg the Trans-Canada Highway west of Calgary. A few of the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Some amusing thoughts on Wexit, Wexitry, and Wexiteers in a potentially confusingly united Western Canada
Let’s imagine a scenario that even a year ago would have seemed all but impossible but is now within the realm of possibility. Participants in a pre-pandemic pro-Wexit demonstration at the Alberta Legislature in December 2020 (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). First, let’s assume that the NDP Government of British Columbia
Continue readingAlberta Politics: No surprise, Alberta’s privatized surgery clinics don’t seem to be doing anything to reduce wait times
Does anyone remember Premier Danielle Smith’s handpicked administrator of Alberta Health Services confidently predicting that wait times for surgeries in this province were about to fall and fall dramatically? NDP Opposition Health Critic Luanne Metz (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Reduced surgical wait times would be the biggest single mark of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rush to ‘Recovery Alberta’ mental health agency sure looks like an ideological drug-treatment hobbyhorse
Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government is about to carve thousands of employees and $1.13 billion out of Alberta Health Services to create what looks like a drug-treatment hobbyhorse for a small group of ideologues in the office of Premier Danielle Smith. Soon-to-be Canadian Centre for Recovery Excellence CEO Kym Kaufmann
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP wants restructured AHS to be known as Alberta Health & Hospitality Services
The United Conservative Party Government wants the restructured Alberta Heath Services (AHS) to be known as Alberta Health & Hospitality Services (AHHS), AlbertaPolitics.ca has learned. An architect’s rendering of the planned Ralph Klein Centre of Excellence in Alternative Medicine to be located in Red Deer on the site of the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Actual news flash! Anti-woke Right launches War on Easter so it can pick a fight and blame someone else for starting it!
Happy Easter, everyone! Canadian Navy cooks prepare deviled eggs – make of that what you will – for Easter (Photo: Twitter/Veterans Affairs Canada). Given the nature of the occasion – the most solemn in the liturgical calendar – it’s not really a season associated with rip-roaring fun and overindulgence like
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Emphasizing hope and inclusion, Naheed Nenshi gets a warm welcome from Edmonton New Democrats
Former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi may have started his campaign to lead Alberta’s NDP with harsh words about Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party, but he adopted a softer tone last night for his first campaign meeting with Edmonton New Democrats. Mr. Nenshi showed up for the supper-hour event
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rakhi Pancholi quits NDP leadership race, endorses Naheed Nenshi
Rakhi Pancholi, one of the most credible candidates to lead the Alberta NDP, has jumped aboard the Nenshi juggernaut. NDP leadership candidate Naheed Nenshi, who is now definitely the front-runner in the contest to replace Rachel Notley (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). “Recently, all Alberta NDP leadership candidates received an update
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Four investigations are better than one – especially if none of them asks the right questions
What’s a government like the one run by the United Conservative Party to do with the public still riled up about that motel medicine meltdown, the health care controversy that just won’t quit? Health Minister Adriana LaGrange (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). How about launching an investigation in to the misnamed Contentment
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Tegan and Sara call out Smith Government for UCP’s anti-trans policies at Junos
Thank you to the musical Quin twins, universally known as the indie pop duo Tegan and Sara, for speaking up at the Juno Awards in Halifax last night about the Danielle Smith Government’s grotesque War on Trans Kids. Alberta Premier Marlaina Danielle Smith – sorry, but who could resist? –
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