Alberta Politics - started May 7, 2015

Ezra Levant just called the new NDP Health Minister "Morbidly Obese"

I think he is just looking to make headlines, so get more hits on his website

So we should just ignore him.

Actually Brachina, I disagree with you. Large people do not need to be addressed as so called medical conditions, and some of these medical terms used against people have never been properly challenged within the medical community. It is archaic terminology with no scientific basis and is based on social values and not scientific fact. Morbid means on the verge of death. Morbidly obese implies that someone is so large that death is imminent, which is a false depiction of large people, and especially in regards to the Minister of Health. Gay people resent the term homosexual for legitimate reasons, and large people resent being medicalized with false terminology for no justifiable reason as well. It's rude, it's insulting, and it's degrading. Instead of attacking the issue with facts, he attacked a woman's size just like some in the MSM did to Pat Carney and Monique Begin (sp?), a former federal Minister of Health in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet. Too many people feel too comfortable in making nasty attacks about female politician's size and appearance and this needs to stop.

Looks like Ezra not the only one

Alberta PC leader to investigate after party exec mocks weight of NDP health minister

The exec later apolgizing on twitter ""I recognize I made a dumb comment. I apologize to Sarah Hoffman and all who read it for my insensitive remark. Once again, I'm sorry,"

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/alberta-pc-leader-to-investigate-after-pa...

NorthReport wrote:

Maybe he has been brought in to fire the top right-wingers in the civil service. 

Alberta NDP appoints B.C. ‘apparatchik’ to highly paid civil service job: critic

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/Alberta+appoints+apparatchi...

The Baathist wing of the NDP finds good posts in the Alberta government  

Found a good YouTube video that gives a decent explanation of the NDP win in Alberta:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIsXidRnaZI

mark_alfred wrote:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/execs+Notley+more+collaborative+th...

 

Well, surprises abound in Alberta.  Seems big oil is now fine with the royalty review and the prospect of possibly paying a bit more.

Quote:

Executives from some of Canada’s largest oil companies say Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is doing a better job engaging with the energy industry ahead of her NDP government’s royalty review than the previous review conducted under the Progressive Conservatives.

[..]

Similarly, Suncor’s chief financial officer Alister Cowan gave the NDP credit for being “very focused on jobs and driving the economy forward” while looking to close “a fairly substantial deficit.”

“I’m confident that we’ll get the right solution, that we require, after this review,” Cowan said.

I think they realize the public is not on their side.

nr's link above had this.

“If we don’t have the right level of returns, we cannot do it,” Mr. Pouyanné said.

the right level of returns means record profits every 1/4 no matter what. if people buy into this, the rich deserve to get even richer bs, they deserve what they get.

also, if people keep caving to this kinda pressure, then we don't live in a democracy and voting exactly how corporations wanting everything want us to.

felixr wrote:

<a href="http://www.canada.com/news/national/Andrew+Coyne+Guarantee+minimum+income+minimum+wage/11126029/story.html">Andrew Coyne</a> wrote:

The guaranteed minimum income has been the desideratum of generations of economists and welfare theorists, from the left and the right. The idea is to combine a number of existing income support and benefit programs into one, for which every citizen would quality as of right: no forms to fill out, no eligibility criteria, just a basic entitlement.

While Andrew Coyne supports a minimum income, as I do, he is against a living minimum wage. 

Quote:

A government that wanted to help those whose lack of skills or experience left them unable to earn what the rest of us would regard as a decent level of income would therefore prefer the minimum income to the minimum wage — that is, a government that valued results, rather than just good intentions, would do so.

Indeed, it wouldn’t bring in a minimum income in addition to the minimum wage, but as its replacement, acknowledging that, just as the estimation of what is the decent minimum anyone should be expected to live on is a collective judgment, so the fulfilment of that objective is a collective obligation. It’s simply not good enough just to fix wages, cross our fingers, and hope for the best.

http://www.canada.com/news/national/Andrew+Coyne+Guarantee+minimum+incom...

Remember Coyne is a hard-core conservative. Only minimum incomes appeal to them.

Why? It provides employers, especially big corporations an opportunity to use the state to subsidize their profits.

Walmart in the US often sends provides new employees with information on how to collect welfare and food stamps, so the workers can feed themselves while increasing Walmart profits through their low wages. 

In the 1990s, a top law firm in Victoria told a law clerk who had just completed his degree to go to the welfare office to get enough money to survive. Only when this became public knowledge was the wealthy law firm shamed into paying the clerk.

As more and more young young people become interns in the hopes of one day acheiving the anointed status of employee, many firms abuse them by paying little or nothing during internship. 

A minimum income helps give everyone, including those who cannot work, an income. However, without a living minimum wage, some employers will simply use the taxpayer as a subsidy while they abuse their employees. 

Alberta Communists on the CHALLENGES FACE NEW NDP MAJORITY IN ALBERTA

Naomi Rankin wrote:

Can the NDP carry out this platform? That depends on another unknown. Will the working class and its potential allies have the class consciousness to recognize and repudiate the self-interested corporate propaganda, and the militancy to demand that the reforms be carried out in spite of economic sabotage?

Sympathetic, somewhat critical.

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/we-went-to-an-emergency-town-hall-meeting...

Shortly after this, Ezra shocked the crowd when he pointed out that at one point Shannon Phillips, the new Minister of Environment and Parks and Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, had written for and worked with Al Jazeera. The name alone drew shudders and gasps from some audience members.

At this, the old lady behind me clicked her tongue in disapproval.

"Fucking Arabs," she muttered.

James Rajotte would make a credible Alberta PC leader. I hope the Alberta NDP has their eye on this. At the very least it's time to open an opposition research file on him.

Rock and a hard place for Alberta conservatives right now. PCs are radically unpopular in rural Alberta, as Jean states. But Wildrose is utterly unelectable in the cities, as shown by the last two elections, and Jean is kidding himself if he thinks that their banner is the ticket to victory.

Best scenario would be for the two paries to somehow merge under a new name, and hope that no one associates that party with either the bible-thumpery of Wildrose or the sleaze of the Tories.

Other than that, just pray that the NDP winds up being so hated by Albertans, with the Liberals remaining incapacitated, that the electorate has no choice but to vote for either of the two right-wing parties to get rid of them. Probably leads to a minority government, in that scenario.

David Young wrote:

Has the date for the by-election in Calgary-Foothills been set yet, or is Premier Notley (how GREAT does that sound!!) waiting until after the NDP nominates their candidate to set the date?

 

Well, Davenerta's post on the by-election is dated July 2, and as of that time was still treating the by-election as uncalled. And he doesn't have any posts since then indicating otherwise, so I'd surmise that the date has yet to be set.

http://daveberta.ca/2015/07/gearing-up-for-the-calgary-foothills-by-elec...

She is not only waiting until after the federal election for the byelection, she is waiting until afterwards for the provincial budget.

best article ever ....

Quote:

Mr. Fildebrandt’s epiphany – which is apparently taken seriously by the entire mainstream media, including the ones from Toronto who ought to know better – is that the NDP are lying bastards because they keep their promises!

The Globe and Mail featured Mr. Fildebrandt’s excited realization prominently in its print edition Friday under what surely has to be one of the standout headlines of the decade, if not the century: “NDP duped voters by implementing its promises, Wildrose finance critic says.”.....

The author of the Globe’s account breathlessly explained Mr. Fildebrandt’s explication thusly: “Alberta’s ruling New Democratic Party hoodwinked voters into believing it would lean only slightly left and is now implementing ‘hard-core ideological’ policies.” …

“The NDP platform was never intended to ever be implemented,” Mr. Fildebrandt explained to credulous journalists outside the ballroom where the premier had just spoken. It was, he asserted, “a hard-core ideological document” designed to push the then-ruling Progressive Conservative Party led by the hapless Jim Prentice “in a particular direction,” by which Mr. Fildebrandt presumably means a teeny-weenie bit to the left.

“It was never actually meant to be implemented as real policy,” he averred.

http://albertapolitics.ca/2015/10/welcome-to-the-orwellian-world-of-wild...