Alberta Politics: Rakhi Pancholi’s notion Alberta’s NDP should split from the federal party is a risky idea that should be left undisturbed

Leadership candidate Rakhi Pancholi has proposed disaffiliating the Alberta NDP from the federal party to deprive the province’s Conservatives of a talking point they’ll use anyway.  NDP leadership candidate Kathleen Ganley is open to talking about the idea (Photo: Facebook/Kathleen Ganley). “Membership in one political party should not require membership

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Alberta Politics: Hysterical Conservatives outdo themselves with ‘coalition’ histrionics, but Parliament is operating exactly as it should

Let it be conceded that the Conservative histrionics over yesterday’s confidence and supply agreement between the Liberals and the New Democrats in Parliament has far outdone the “spectacular national Conservative tantrum” predicted in this space.  Naturally one would have expected a right-wing Opposition party to argue that any deal between

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Alberta Politics: Alberta’s ‘Energy War Room’ appears to be operating in defiance of the Canada Elections Act

Alberta’s “Energy War Room” appears to be continuing to operate in defiance of Canada’s election laws, campaigning against positions clearly identified with a Canadian political party without registering as an election third party. Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist Keith Stewart argued recently in a tweet thread that the War Room,

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Alberta Politics: On the 10th anniversary of his death, from the vantage of Election 2021, happy memories of Jack Layton and the campaign of 2011

Don’t mourn! Organize! — Joe Hill, Swedish-American union organizer Canadians still mourn the loss of Jack Layton, Joe Hill’s wise strategic counsel to social activists notwithstanding. Mr. Layton on one of his last visits to Edmonton during that campaign (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). I first made that observation on this

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Alberta Politics: Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu waves a red flag in front of her irascible Alberta counterpart, Tyler Shandro

Obviously, federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu didn’t expect to get a serious answer from Tyler Shandro, her Alberta counterpart, when she wrote the irascible minister to warn him the Kenney Government’s “unnecessary and risky gamble” to drop COVID-19 testing, contact tracing and mandatory isolation will put children at risk. In

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Alberta 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

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Alberta Politics: There are better ways for Alberta’s only New Democrat to spend her time than calling for more Canadian troops on Russia’s doorstep

Last week, Heather McPherson, New Democrat Member of Parliament for Edmonton Strathcona, was sounding as belligerent as any Alberta Conservative on the topic of what she termed “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.” In a lead-up to a question in the House of Commons, a clip of which Ms. McPherson distributed on

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Alberta 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

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Alberta Politics: Latest leak shows AHS modelling forecasts Intensive Care Units packed with COVID-19 patients by mid-December

In the first unauthorized information leak of December, Alberta’s NDP Opposition revealed yesterday Alberta Health Services case modelling projects about 775 Albertans will be in hospital with COVID-19 in just two weeks. More than 160 of them will be in intensive care units, further straining the overstressed provincial health system’s

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