Have things really changed all that much for Alberta since then-energy minister Ron Liepert predicted in early 2012 that the province was on the verge of a “Bitumen Gusher” of unprecedented magnitude?

One just hates to endorse the financial predictions of any Alberta Tory cabinet minister, but it is said here they likely haven’t.

If Mr. Liepert got it basically right in February 2012, understanding that fact helpfully illuminates the re-election strategy of Premier Alison Redford and her Progressive Conservative government for 2016.

Who could have predicted that yesterday would be the pope's last day on the job?

I speak, of course, of Professor Tom Flanagan, spiritual leader of the neoconservative movement in Canada.

Well, Flanagan is the neocon pope no more, having uttered the astonishing opinion at a seminar the previous evening in the deep-south Alberta city of Lethbridge that child pornography is, if not exactly OK, more of a freedom of expression issue than an exploitation of children issue.

OK, Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson’s bizarre attempt to bluff the province’s 35,000 unionized schoolteachers into signing a contract has failed. Now what?

One week ago, Johnson mailed the president of the Alberta Teachers Association and the Chair of the Alberta School Boards Association a rambling letter setting out the government's latest bargaining demands in what's turned out to be a rocky round of negotiations with the province's teachers.

Do you remember that promise by the Alberta government to build 3,000 seniors' beds? It turns out they only planned to rent them!

The problem with renting beds from private companies, of course, is the same as with any form of privatized medicare: it ends up costing a heck of a lot more than we were promised, and delivering much less. 

It also turns out the Alberta government's bad bargain with private care operators means the fragile seniors who end up occupying the beds are subject to eviction!