The way Michael Kalmanovitch sees it, he had no choice but to raise a ruckus inside the Chamber of the Alberta Legislature moments after Monday’s Throne Speech. The moment on Monday when Mr. Kalmanovitch started shouting in the Legislature (Photo: Screenshot of Legislative Assembly of Alberta video). The world is
Continue readingTag: Alberta Legislature
Alberta Politics: The mystery of Bill 5: Is it part of the UCP’s covert ‘Free Alberta’ agenda or just a bit of administrative housekeeping?
Members of Alberta’s labour relations community were scratching their heads Monday and yesterday about Bill 5, the Public Sector Employer Amendment Act, 2023, last on the list of the first five bills to be introduced by the United Conservative Party in the new session of the provincial Legislature that began
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta’s Throne Speech was long, boring, unpersuasive, evasive, unoriginal, and defiantly aspirational
There were two speeches at the Alberta Legislature yesterday! Lieutenant Governor Lakhani (Photo: Legislative Assembly of Alberta/Flickr). The Speech from the Throne was long, boring, unpersuasive, evasive, unoriginal, and weirdly aspirational in a way that defies the growing international consensus about the role of fossil fuels in global climate change.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: MLA Dan Williams’ beer guzzling in the Legislature is just another episode in the UCP’s sophomoric obsession with alcohol
Peace River MLA Dan Williams’ distasteful display of beer guzzling on the floor of Alberta’s Legislature last week is just another embarrassing episode in the United Conservative Party’s sophomoric obsession with consumption of alcohol that seems to date back to the selection of Jason Kenney as the party’s first leader.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Everything you always wanted to know about Jason Kenney’s departure from Alberta politics but were afraid to ask
OTTAWA Question: Now that Jason Kenney has taken to social media to announce he’s retiring from Alberta politics, how likely is it that Premier Danielle Smith will call a by-election in his Calgary-Lougheed riding? Surely a nice condo like this is waiting somewhere in Ottawa for Jason Kenney (Photo: Found
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Sorting fact from fiction in Allan Inquiry commentary and coverage: That $1.3-billion fib explained
The United Conservative Party and its allies are not being truthful when they say, “The public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns has confirmed that foreign donors gave $1.3 billion to Canadian environmentalists to harm Alberta’s energy sector.” It confirms no such thing. I pulled that particular quote from a tweet
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s almost magical how something can be true one day in Alberta while the complete opposite is true the next!
It’s almost magical the way something can be true one day in Alberta and the complete opposite is true the next. Readers need not be particularly well informed to recall Premier Jason Kenney’s confident pronouncement that a constitutional principle prevents MLAs from being held to the same standard as Alberta
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Speaker Nathan Cooper, who signed complaint about COVID-19 rules, cites pandemic ‘health concerns’ to extend Legislature shutdown
Alberta Speaker Nathan Cooper, one of the United Conservative Party MLAs known as the COVID 18 who last month signed a controversial letter opposing their own government’s COVID-19 restrictions, has issued a memorandum saying the Alberta Legislature will stay closed “due to the ongoing public health concerns arising from the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney shut down the Legislature, but debate on Alberta’s dismal COVID-19 record migrates to House of Commons
Not only is the Kenney Government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic a spectacular failure, its strategy for suppressing public awareness of just how bad things have become in Alberta dramatically unravelled yesterday. Having used the wildfire spread of COVID-19 in Alberta as an excuse to unilaterally shut down debate in
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Between Our Sovereign Lady the Queen and the Accused at Bar: Lieutenant Governor Dave reads the Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, honourable members of the Legislative Assembly, fellow Albertans … [Turns page.] I speak to you as Alberta’s vice-regal — which has nothing to do with vice, by the way, not that kind, anyway — representative of Our Sovereign Lady the Queen, whom many of you last heard from
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brace yourselves, Alberta, Premier Kenney’s promising us another spring of renewal!
Good Lord, can Alberta survive another spring of renewal like the last one? Another springtime of renewal — that’s what Government House Leader Jason Nixon and the United Conservative Party’s meme machine were promising yesterday with the announcement the Alberta Legislature well get back to business on Feb. 25. Alberta
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Symbolic MLA pay cut set stage for attack on public services – so why did the NDP support it?
Like neoliberals everywhere, Alberta’s Conservatives overrate the virtues of big business and undervalue those of democracy. This is not exactly news. This was a clear message yesterday from the vote of the Legislature’s Member Services Committee to cut MLA salaries by 5 per cent, and twice that for the premier’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Nathan Cooper chosen as Legislative Speaker – so how about those early mornings?
Now that Nathan Cooper has been chosen as Speaker of the Alberta Legislature, I wonder if the business of the Assembly will be getting under way at a more civilized hour, say 10 a.m., suitable for bankers, gentlemen of leisure, and elected Conservatives? Mr. Cooper, United Conservative Party MLA for
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Unveiling of portrait of Jim Prentice, premier of Alberta, accompanied by warm words and a non-partisan moment
A dignified official portrait of Jim Prentice, last Progressive Conservative premier of Alberta, was unveiled in the Alberta Legislature yesterday. It’s a very nice piece of official portraiture that does justice to the beautiful third-floor hallway of the Alberta Legislature’s Rotunda where portraits of the province’s former premiers hang. Its
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney then and Now: UCP critics face abuse now, unlike a certain critic of PC housing allowances back in 1992
Public anger at politicians who bill taxpayers for their living expenses when in reality they live close to their work is nothing new in Alberta. Abusive attacks on their critics, up to and including death threats, are new. Back in April 1992, Progressive Conservative municipal affairs minster Dick Fowler, who
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Former UCP MLA alleges ‘suspicious donations’ from PAC associated with Jason Kenney used in 2017 to undermine Brian Jean
Calgary-Greenway MLA Prab Gill used the final Question Period of the fall 2018 session of the Alberta Legislature Thursday to allege that “more than $40,000 in very suspicious donations” was given to a United Conservative Party leadership candidate to undermine candidate Brian Jean. Mr. Jean was the former leader of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Backstory from 2014 explains why Alberta car dealers might want to unseat the NDP
Many Albertans were shocked to learn last week that Opposition Leader Jason Kenney had promised an auto dealers association pouring money into a political action committee supporting his United Conservative Party that if elected he would hand enforcement of vehicle sale consumer protection back to the dealers. Twenty-six Alberta car
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Nothing new under the Prairie sun as Alberta Conservatives ratchet up their faux outrage about equalization and Quebec
Jason Kenney, leader of Alberta’s Opposition United Conservative Party, calls the Trudeau Government’s renewal of Canada’s current equalization formula for an additional five years “a slap in the face to Alberta.” “It means we will continue to be forced, even when times are bad in Alberta, forced to subsidize public
Continue readingAlberta Politics: O Fildebrandt! No more taking orders from some Ottawa snowflake! A personal anthem for Derek
PHOTO: Derek Fildebrandt, as he sees himself (Photo: Derek Fildebrandt Facebook page). Gone are the days when Derek Fildebrandt had a party whip to tell him not to say dumb things on social media. Nope, the former Wildrose and United Conservative Party MLA for Strathmore-Brooks nowadays sits in splendid isolation
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Climate change, climate denial and climate ironies in the wake of Alberta Legislature’s pipeline demand vote
PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Below: Soon-to-retire Alberta Liberal MLA and former party leader David Swann, Shannon Daub of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and United Conservative Party MLAs Grant Hunter, Drew Barnes and Rick Strankman. Happy Ides of March. On Tuesday, the Alberta Legislature passed a motion declaring
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