JEN GERSON: What really happened inside the Alberta UCP’s ‘kamikaze’ campaign
Fairly comprehensive who's who and what's what of the controversy. The money part is a little hard to follow, except to say that, at the current time, there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence of improper payments.
One of the star candidates for Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party argued white supremacist terrorists face a double-standard compared to Islamic terrorists and echoed white nationalist rhetoric in a Facebook conversation following a 2017 terror attack perpetrated by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Caylan Ford, who is seeking to represent the riding of Calgary-Mountain View in the 2019 provincial election, also expressed anxiety over “the replacement of white peoples in their homelands” and suggested “Western culture” would collapse if “another race” takes over in Europe and North America.
Looks like Happy Mann needs to brush up on his Aesop...
Mann was disqualified from running for the UCP after it was alleged his team was involved in the assault of a local reporter, and Gill quit the party after allegations of ballot stuffing.
He said it's hypocrisy for conservatives to laud Jody Wilson-Raybould, a Liberal MP who spoke out against her own party recently after stepping down from the federal cabinet, but not him.
"If Jody Wilson[-Raybould] is a hero for conservatives, then why is Happy Mann and Prab Gill sour grapes for Albertans? If you want Canadians or Albertans to know the truth, then let us also speak as you want Jody Wilson[-Raybould] to speak."
I think he meant to say something like "persona non grata", rather than "sour grapes".
One of the star candidates for Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party argued white supremacist terrorists face a double-standard compared to Islamic terrorists and echoed white nationalist rhetoric in a Facebook conversation following a 2017 terror attack perpetrated by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Caylan Ford, who is seeking to represent the riding of Calgary-Mountain View in the 2019 provincial election, also expressed anxiety over “the replacement of white peoples in their homelands” and suggested “Western culture” would collapse if “another race” takes over in Europe and North America.
she stepped down last night.
Alberta election April 16th.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-rachel-notley-announcement-election-1.5062451
Alberta election April 16th.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-rachel-notley-announcement-election-1.5062451
Election called for April 16.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-rachel-notley-announcement-election-1.5062451
And we are off. Election happening April 16.
How does a white supremacist supporter get a nomination in a major Canadian city, for a significant political party in Alberta, a political party that is presently favoured to win the election!!!
Star UCP candidate resigns in wake of leaked messages about white supremacists
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/caylan-ford-resigns-ucp-candidate-1.5062198
Well Trump won.
The Trump-like hallmark of Jason Kenney's campaign: Its singular lack of ideas
March 7, 2017
Jason Kenny, the social conservative social media enthusiast who will almost certainly become leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta and begin the process of dismantling it in less than two weeks, naturally hopes he can duplicate the success of Donald Trump's successful U.S. presidential campaign last year.
This is understandable even if Kenney's dog-whistles and Trump-like social media bluster seem to speak to an Alberta that is fading away in spring of 2017.
A Trumpist campaign could in fact work here in the face of the wrong strategic response by the government of Premier Rachel Notley, just as Trump's campaign to make a version of America that is rapidly slipping into history "great again" worked against the odds south of the 49th Parallel.
In Alberta as in the United States that won't change the arc of history -- but it could do a lot of harm in the short term.
But Kenney's campaign resembles the Trump campaign in another significant way: its singular lack of ideas.
Indeed, Kenney -- like Trump -- really has only one idea, a profoundly negative one. To wit: dismantle everything the government now in power has done.
This is likely to work out about as well as Trump's effort to dismantle former president Barack Obama's legacy is unfolding. Not very well at all.
On Feb. 25, Kenney expressed this thought explicitly in a sophomoric social media post, an activity characteristic both of Kenney's campaign and its model-in-chief south of the border. "There is no obstacle in the NDP's legacy that we will not be able to undo," Kenney crowed on Facebook, apparently an excerpt from a speech he gave to the increasingly far-right Manning Centre.
"I would have the longest ever sitting of the summer session of the Alberta Legislature in 2019," he went on. "I call it the 'Summer of Repeal,' we’ll turn off the air conditioners in the Legislature to focus the mind. We'll start with Bill 1, the Carbon Tax Repeal Act, followed by a succession of repeals of the NDP regulatory and legislative agenda."
Does this sound like Donald Trump level maturity to you? It does to me.
As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said of Trump's Republican Party just yesterday in his New York Times column, "they have no idea how to turn their slogans into actual legislation, because they’ve never bothered to understand how anything important works."
He was talking about the Republicans' "plan," or lack of one, to undo president Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, and to "reform" (meaning slash) corporate taxes with no thought about the consequences beyond the sloganeering symptomatic of believers in voodoo economics.
What we're witnessing south of the Medicine Line, Krugman explained, "is what happens when a party that gave up hard thinking in favour of empty sloganeering ends up in charge of actual policy. And it’s not a pretty sight."
Now, in truth, at this moment such rot goes much deeper in the U.S. Republican Party than among Alberta's Progressive Conservatives, who still include some pretty sensible people. But all that will change when Kenney becomes leader on March 18. Notwithstanding his experience in Ottawa, which means he should know a thing or two about how our Parliamentary system works, his promise to dismantle everything willy-nilly is hardly evocative of thoughtful leadership!
Republican-style intellectual rot is likely to be made permanent among the PCs when they choose Kenney because he has pledged to destroy the party and roll it into the more extreme Wildrose Party. Even if the Wildrosers resist, that means at a minimum there will be no room for the PCs’ progressive wing. "Red Tories" will be purged, just as they were by Kenney's mentor Stephen Harper in the federal Conservative Party. Kenney's supporters have already managed to harass several more progressive candidates out of the leadership race and, in one case, into the NDP.
It is likely in the event of his choice as leader that genuinely progressive conservatives will exit en masse, as many of them are already doing, and all that will be left in the party’s hulk is the new leader's sloganeering and dog whistles.
How else can we describe Kenney's plan when all it boils down to is the reimposition of the failed policies of the late Ralph Klein -- which Alberta is still struggling to overcome?
As the Parkland Institute’s Ricardo Acuna wrote last year in the Calgary Herald, it was Klein's policies that got Alberta into its current mess.
Never mind that Alberta's spending was far from "out of control" when Klein got into power in 1992, Acuna wrote. "With revenues from oil and gas dropping by more than 50 per cent practically overnight, the lowest taxation rates in the country, a 15-per-cent reduction in program spending over six years, and over $11.2 billion in subsidies to agriculture and oil and gas over the same period, we are expected to believe that, somehow, the best way to move forward in 1992 was to gut public spending and decimate public sector salaries."
Then there was Klein's selloff of public assets to friends of the government for less than they were worth -- to "pay down the debt." Plus the multi-billion-dollar infrastructure deficit he piled on, which we are still paying off. And the huge tax giveaway that made the province even more dependent on the proverbial resource rollercoaster.
What did the "Kleintastrophe" really achieve? Acuna wrote: "Just as the international price of oil was starting to climb and the economy was recovering in the mid-1990s, Klein actually slowed down the economic recovery by putting thousands of people out of work and greatly reducing the purchasing power of those public servants who got to keep their jobs."
Fast forward to the present, and Alberta's right-wing leaders -- especially Kenney -- are advocating exactly the same thing all over again.
This, Kenney claims, will "renew the Alberta Advantage (and) get Alberta back on track as the beating heart of enterprise in Canada."
Fat chance! More likely, it would do just what Klein did: Stall the recovery, put another 30,000 public employees out of work with no corresponding increase in employment in the private sector, build another huge infrastructure deficit and strengthen opposition to Canadian pipelines from Alberta -- perhaps fatally so.
We sat through this movie once before. Now we're watching the horrifying big-budget sequel next door.
Well, that's what happens when you elect people who don't really have a plan except to dismantle what the last guy did.
What made that person a “star” candidate? I can’t find any media reports saying why she is or was a “star” though clearly Jason Kennedy really liked her.
What made that person a “star” candidate? I can’t find any media reports saying why she is or was a “star” though clearly Jason Kennedy really liked her.
In a party run by a cabal of nasty boys doing dirty tricks in the backrooms it means any intelligent sounding woman.
There is no question the NDP are rebounding. Will it be enough to stop Kenney and his ilk?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Alberta_general_election#Opinion_polling
Sweet!
NDP gaining on UCP: new Mainstreet poll
https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/ndp-gaining-on-ucp-new-mainstreet-poll-1.434...
That's still a pretty huge lead for the UCP. And I'm guessing most of the bounce for the NDP is concentrated in certain electoral districts, mostly in Edmonton. But I haven't studied the poll in depth.
Braid: Attacks on Kenney's social record coming from left and right
While those may very well be sincere opinions on Fildebrandt's part, presumably he also thinks they're gonna win him some votes. I'm wondering where he thinks those votes could be coming from, though. The Alberta Party would seem to be the logical choice for someone who wants social liberalism and conservative economics, and right now, they're way more on the radar than Fildebrandt's group.
That's still a pretty huge lead for the UCP. And I'm guessing most of the bounce for the NDP is concentrated in certain electoral districts, mostly in Edmonton. But I haven't studied the poll in depth.
No not really. It's less than 15%. The huge number to look at are the NDP support growing. The trend is there to allow a victory of some sort Or at the very least, a better than expected showing come election day compared to say 8 months ago for the NDP. 12 months ago?
And this is all due to an implosion that can Kenney can not stop. Come debate time, Notley can pull in another 5-8%. This could take the NDP to possibly 45%? If the UCP can not stop the bleeding, and fast (like yesterday!) come election time, they could be as much as 5% behind the NDP.
All speculation at this time. But the polls so far are firming up this trend.
Should also point out that the federal budget goodies for home buyers will alleviate some stress for home buyers in Alberta. This will/should favour the NDP.
It only adds to to Notley's sarendipity election call, perhaps she had some insight?
That's still a pretty huge lead for the UCP. And I'm guessing most of the bounce for the NDP is concentrated in certain electoral districts, mostly in Edmonton. But I haven't studied the poll in depth.
No not really. It's less than 15%. The huge number to look at are the NDP support growing. The trend is there to allow a victory of some sort Or at the very least, a better than expected showing come election day compared to say 8 months ago for the NDP. 12 months ago?
And this is all due to an implosion that can Kenney can not stop. Come debate time, Notley can pull in another 5-8%. This could take the NDP to possibly 45%? If the UCP can not stop the bleeding, and fast (like yesterday!) come election time, they could be as much as 5% behind the NDP.
All speculation at this time. But the polls so far are firming up this trend.
I've said repeatedly that the NDP has a good chance of receiving its second-best ever level of popular support in this election, both in seat count and the percentage of the vote. I will also point out that even at the high points of PC popularity during the Klein and Stelmach eras, there were seats in Calgary and Lethbridge that stayed Liberal. The conventional wisdom is that the NDP will be beaten back to their Edmonton stronghold, however I can't see seats that consistently stayed Liberal for decades (all but one of which is now held by the NDP) suddenly going UCP this time around.
yup. matches what's happening on the ground. even the independent farmers are aiding with Rachel. they say they like having their workers covered and dislike Kenney's plan.
Kenney's staff changing the road sign isn't playing well either. and when he just did a photo OP and left well icing on the cake.
https://mobile.twitter.com/cbccalgary/status/1109241738999283712
yup. matches what's happening on the ground. even the independent farmers are aiding with Rachel. they say they like having their workers covered and dislike Kenney's plan.
Kenney's staff changing the road sign isn't playing well either. and when he just did a photo OP and left well icing on the cake.
https://mobile.twitter.com/cbccalgary/status/1109241738999283712
That’s just sad.
I've been wondering for a long time if it's better in the long run for the NDP if Notley wins or loses this election. I've come down on the side of thinking that it's better if she loses. Here's why.
The main economic issue in Alberta right now is the fate of the oil and gas industry. That is beyond the control of any provincial government. Since it happens to coincide with the election of an NDP government, the narrative is that it's the NDP's fault that this happened. If they lose now, they will still, even at current polling numbers, elect the largest NDP caucus Alberta has ever seen. Should they be re-elected, the problems with the oil economy will continue, the frustration with the NDP will continue to build up, and may one day trigger a defeat that beats them back to pre-2015 levels of support. Additionally, there is no difference between the 2 big parties on the issue of forcing pipelines through regions where the locals don't want them. To have one NDP Premier openly undercutting not only another NDP Premier but the federal party will be very problematic. A stint in opposition will allow the NDP to reflect and refocus, and hopefully remember that they were first elected because Albertans were tired of being dominated by big oil.
Kenney is going to yell and scream about the pipelines. That's all he can do. He has no power to make anybody do anything. So why not let him get caught holding the bag? When he is a few years into his mandate and people see that the oil and gas economy hasn't improved, Kenney will be without excuses. That anger can then be channelled onto Kenney, and will present a stronger case to whoever wants to replace him that yes, we can govern Alberta in the best interest of its residents without having to capitulate to big oil.
Aristotled can tell you don't live in AB nor care about the destruction of gains made by Rachel.
oh no better for everyone elsewhere if Kenney gets in. ffs.
do you know i actually had a landlord in Grande Prairie tell me he doesn't usually rent to women and they think it's just fine to do and say this shit.
can't imagine what AB will be like in 4 years under woman hating Kenney.
Do you know how to score in curling? Sometimes it is actually beneficial for a team to let the other team take the end so that they get an advantage down the road. Politics can be like that. Sometimes losing now can open up the opportunity to take an advantage long term down the road.
The oil and gas aspect of the Alberta economy is still going to struggle regardless of who wins next month. A struggling economy is generally not good for the incumbent party in power. Why not let that happen under Kenney's watch? He will be without excuse, and then it will be clear for all to see.
Don’t be too concerned w Aristotle, Quizzical.
on anotherthread he is calling for the defeat of the NDP in the upcoming Nanaimo by-election.
as far as I can tell the only politician pure enough for him is the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn.
Aristotled can tell you don't live in AB nor care about the destruction of gains made by Rachel.
What goes on in Alberta is up to Albertans to sort out for themselves. The pipeline issue affects people outside of Alberta. Instead of personal attacks, can you say if there is any discernable difference between the NDP and the UCP over the issue of extending pipelines and oil exploration in Alberta?
you what for some this isn't politics as usual it's our lives.
it's not fking curling or any sport.
as for your accusations of personal attack against you bs.
Don’t be too concerned w Aristotle, Quizzical.
on anotherthread he is calling for the defeat of the NDP in the upcoming Nanaimo by-election.
as far as I can tell the only politician pure enough for him is the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn is as electable as anybody in the UK...the fact that he's had Labour in the lead in three out of the last four polls shows this...there's nobody in the UK to Corbyn's right who stands for anything different than the Tories there. There'se no meaningful differences between Theresa May and Yvette Cooper. Cooper isn't even an all-out defender of NHS care free at the point of service.
@A24
Thats crazy! I’ve heard this before from a NDP member that was also a neighbor. Turned out she went back to the greens and she was just a plant.
Ken, there you go again.
Labour has led, not in 3 of the last 4 polls, but in ONE of the last NINETEEN..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Alberta issues 97% of reclamation certificates without ever visiting oil and gas sites
Documents obtained by The Narwhal reveal that, for the last four years data is available, 2014 – 2018, less than three per cent of oil and gas sites certified as reclaimed have been visited by an inspector from the provincial regulator — a far cry from the 15 per cent the public has been long told.
quote:
This wasn’t always the plan.
In a 2014 report, the Government of Alberta noted there are “randomly selected field audits on approximately 15 per cent of all sites that have received a reclamation certificate.”
And at a 2015 landowner oil and gas information workshop, government and regulator officials — including Kevin Ball, senior advisor with the Alberta Energy Regulator — told participants that 15 per cent of sites are visited for a field audit.
But this is certainly not the case under the Alberta Energy Regulator, which oversees the certificate program today.
2015 – 2017: not a single subsurface audit conducted
The Alberta Energy Regulator took over handling reclamation certificates from Alberta Environment in 2013. It launched an automated approval system online, called OneStop, in 2016.
Though the audit system is often understood as a way for the regulator to go out into the field to assess the work of the contractor who applied for the reclamation certificates, it has largely come to mean a human eye looking at an application’s details, and has rarely entailed a visit to site.....
UCP leadership investigation should be 'paused,' lawyer argues in seeking emergency court injunction
Notley will stay on to represent Edmonton-Strathcona, lead official opposition (Global News)
After losing Alberta’s premiership Tuesday night, NDP Leader Rachel Notley announced she will stay on to represent her riding, Edmonton-Strathcona, and lead the Official Opposition in the legislature.
Notley said it was an honour to serve as premier and will be an honour to be the Opposition, professing her gratitude as the crowd chanted, “Rachel! Rachel!”
She said the province is a better place because of her government’s work, mentioning achievements such as lower child poverty rates, action on climate change, a higher minimum wage and advocacy for pipelines.
“To every girl and every young woman watching tonight, I believe in you and never stop believing in yourself. I hope that we have shown you that in your life anything is possible.”
I guess this must be Notley's fault as well:
Add the Calgary Flames to shocking Stanley Cup playoff exits this season.The Colorado Avalanche defeated the Flames 5-1 on Friday to win their first-round series four games to one.
I guess this must be Notley's fault as well:
Add the Calgary Flames to shocking Stanley Cup playoff exits this season.The Colorado Avalanche defeated the Flames 5-1 on Friday to win their first-round series four games to one.
I thought it was Instant Karma for the voters in Calgary.
Singh hasn't done his 'research' on value of Trans Mountain to Canada, says Notley
'He needs to stop hurting jobs and accelerating anxiety around the kitchen tables in the province of Alberta'
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rachel-notley-calls-out-singh-1.5334646
THE UGLY REALITY OF UNIONS UNDER SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
Nick Driedger looks back at how unions behaved, and workers fared, when social democrats unexpectedly won an election in Alberta.
quote:
Still, certain unions did have a lot of influence over caucus, but it was not through democratic control on the conference floor. As some of the largest fundraisers in the NDP, many high-profile candidates, like Derron Bilous, who became Minister of Economic Development and Trade, were largely bankrolled by unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local 401. It would be naïve to assume that this kind of funding did not translate into the union’s perspective being well-represented.
It has been said that the NDP needs to be “pushed” by labor – labor needs to mobilize in order to pressure the system from the left and counteract the pressure from the right that comes from business interests. This isn’t the role that labor played inside the party, though. Many of the labor affiliates pushed from the right of the party.
In one case, the UFCW expressed concerns that an increase in the minimum wage to 15$/hour would make employers less likely to negotiate other things like benefits. While the NDP held the line on this policy, it’s worth noting the pressure from the unions was not always towards the most ambitious demands even when it came to labor issues.
Some unions that had nothing to do with pipelines actively pressured the NDP and the Alberta Federation of Labour to toe the industry line that pipelines create jobs even though all of the independent research they conducted prior to forming the government indicated this was simply not the case.
In fact, much of the NDP’s change in position on pipelines (more on this below) comes back to the unions, who pressured the NDP to support any and all pipelines in the interest of jobs. Some of these unions were not even building trades unions who stood to gain short-term work from the construction projects, but unions with members far away from those projects. The reason for this position wasn’t “pro-jobs” trade unionism or a bread-and-butter perspective, it was that they were concerned with the NDP’s electoral prospects in 2019, and felt that silence on pipelines, let alone opposition to them, would be extremely unpopular.
This came to a head after January 31st, 2016 when Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, publicly criticized the NDP — for the last time. McGowan challenged the outcome of the NDP’s “Royalty Review,” which was meant to reevaluate how much the industry pays for the oil it extracts… but then agreed to maintain the revenue structure established under the Conservatives. After this point, a few affiliates effectively muzzled the AFL.
In summary, labor did not push the NDP to the left; in fact they acted as the NDP’s enforcers on matters of policy. This not only happened in the official channels where the party made formal decisions, but through the influence certain unions had over members of caucus because of the money and labor power they provided to their election campaigns....
..more from above
quote:
The NDP and the unions at the bargaining table
Creating the pressure to push anyone to the left requires that members be mobilized. One of the best times to mobilize members is during bargaining: bargaining puts demands on the table and asks members to do things to back up those demands.
In 2017, the collective agreements of 180,000 public sector workers in Alberta were set to expire. Instead of the NDP government being an opportunity to negotiate better deals for public sector workers, public sector unions worked with the government to preside over a wage freeze.
The first union to settle, the Alberta Teachers Association, agreed to a “me too” clause that said any wage increases agreed to by other public sector bargaining units would be applied to them, effectively putting the pressure and stakes of a strike off onto other workers. The United Nurses of Alberta and the Health Sciences Association of Alberta then agreed to wage freezes.
These unions did this not because of bread-and-butter unionism or trade union demands but because they were thinking about maintaining the NDP’s electoral power, and in turn their own influence over the government. By taking responsibility for the government’s ability to balance the budget, these public sector unions put themselves in a position where they had to accept the wage freeze. This decision made it almost impossible to mobilize their own members right at the point when members are most tuned in to what their unions have to say and most willing to move when their unions ask them to. Side deals cut with management rob unions of their leverage, and while union leaders like to pretend they have power and influence by virtue of their constituency, they really only have power insofar as they can exercise it independently of those they are bargaining with.
An exception to this arrangement was in the post-secondary education sector (universities and colleges), where very few of the unions have any relationship with the NDP or the Alberta Federation of Labour — some because they see themselves as “apolitical” or politically independent, and others because they are more conservative than the NDP. Also these unions, due to a unique set of labor laws, are all very small organizations with a few hundred to a few thousand members.
Prior to the NDP being in power, these unions were also not allowed to strike. Instead, disputes were settled by binding arbitration, according to the law. This arrangement was struck down by a Supreme Court decision shortly before the NDP took power, constitutionalizing the right to strike, so the NDP set about rewriting the rules for settling a bargaining impasse. In a series of meetings, such as a meeting on September 26th, 2016 with Minister of Advanced Education Marlin Schmidt, faculty associations were assured there would be a transition period between the previous arbitration system and the system of strikes and lockouts. The unions had made this request to the government so that they could build up strike funds and educate their members as to what a strike would entail.
However, the following spring, on April 17th 2017, Bill 7 was tabled, putting the unions under a strike or lockout system without any time to prepare. This was especially damaging as some bargaining units were already negotiating and the legislation was written to be retroactive. Employers were basically free to mount a lockout without the unions having made any arrangements to weather such a thing. When asked about why they moved so quickly, David Shepherd, an MLA from Edmonton, said: “We know compulsory arbitration in the past has at times tended to result in higher wage increases. That’s something that is not sustainable.”
In essence, the NDP capitalized on an opportunity to enforce lower wages on unions that they could not broker a side deal with.....
..my last post on this topic.
quote:
In this video, a prominent labor-aligned economist, Jim Stanford, spells out that the result of more pipelines may just be to put more of a lower-priced product onto international markets and tank the price of oil even further. This speech was for the Alberta Federation of Labour and was held shortly after the NDP lost the 2019 election. Stanford is unique in that he is a high-profile economist who is on the payroll of a workers’ organization. What’s interesting is that Stanford’s position on the economics of oil is the opposite of what the NDP was saying when in power but does not contradict the NDP before they took power.
At the beginning of their term in government, the NDP had four pipelines on the table, and they promised to give some support to two: the Transmountain Expansion and the Energy East. Notley said with regards to the Northern Mountain and Keystone XL pipelines that industry would have to make the case themselves and that government was not there to lobby for business interests. She was also on the record as opposing a fifth pipeline, the Northern Gateway, at the start of her term.
By the end of just a few years, Notley was all but calling environmentalists traitors to Alberta at the federal NDP convention, praising Trump policies re-opening Keystone XL, and mounting a government-sponsored boycott of BC wines over their refusal to give oil pipelines an easier ride. A lot of this was cloaked in the same pro-worker rhetoric the oil industry used while laying off staff and blaming the government. Everyone was “thinking of the hard working staff in the oil patch” while they were lobbying to build better infrastructure to process Albertan oil overseas for cheaper. Like public sector unions with the rhetoric about public spending, the private sector unions were quickly brought on board with these plans, when the arguments that this would benefit their members were in fact pretty weak.
Many attributed these decisions on the part of the unions to bad strategy, bad hiring decisions in the senior staff, or a lack of radical perspectives (all of which the left has said of the Alberta NDP). But really it’s a matter of the raw power the oil industry has and the unique opportunity to turn run-of-the-mill and site layoffs into political events. Every pipeline that did not get built became a symbol of the NDP’s failure to support the industry and every move the NDP made to disprove this made them look like hypocrites given their initial positions on pipelines. By refusing to take on industry directly, the NDP put themselves in a corner: their compromises made them look weak and hypocritical, without actually shoring up their power base. You can’t be loved by business and also say the wealthy are out of touch and have it too good.
Doublethink is a natural outcome when those in power need to justify what they are doing in terms of something other than the interests they’re actually serving. By the time the NDP left government they had basically one option left — a very complicated argument that amounted to trickle-down economics: the pipelines need to be built so that the oil industry prospers so that some of their money can go to the people of Alberta....
Nick Driedger is a former member, shop steward, Local Organizing Officer and National Organizing Coordinator for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. He is currently the Executive Director of the Athabasca University Faculty Association and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Good stuff and good to see you back!
Oil sands found to be a leading source of air pollution in North America
A cloud of noxious particles brewing in the air above the Alberta oil sands is one of the most prolific sources of air pollution in North America, often exceeding the total emissions from Canada's largest city, federal scientists have discovered.
The finding marks the first time researchers have quantified the role of oil sands operations in generating secondary organic aerosols, a poorly understood class of pollutants that have been linked to a range of adverse health effects.
The result adds to the known impact of the oil sands, including as a source of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. It also comes on the same day that the Bank of Canada delivered a sobering message about the country's economy, saying the devastating Alberta wildfires that hit Fort McMurray – leading to production cuts in the oil industry and the destruction of thousands of buildings – will cause a drop in Canada's gross domestic product in the second quarter.
Given the economic circumstances and the political sensitivities currently surrounding the oil sands, the air pollutant study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, offered the strongest test yet of the Trudeau government's promise to allow scientists in federal labs to speak freely with journalists about their results.....
Thank goodness Kenney made good on his plan to scrap the carbon tax:
Alberta's new UCP government will continue to apply a $30-per-tonne carbon price that covers the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the province, but will loosen the rules so that some of the largest emitters could be on the hook for $330 million less in charges next year.
New legislation introduced Tuesday will replace the previous NDP government's regulations on most large emitters in the province, including oilsands operations, natural gas producers, chemical manufacturers and fertilizer plants. The rules for electricity generators, however, will be left largely unchanged.
All told, the province estimates these types of heavy-emitting facilities account for 55 to 60 per cent of Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions.
Environment Minister Jason Nixon believes the new policy will satisfy the federal government's requirements for carbon pricing on large emitters, meaning Ottawa won't impose its own pricing system on Alberta's industry. This system runs in parallel to the federal fuel charge — commonly known as the carbon tax — that applies to individuals and lesser-emitting companies.
