Alberta politics started October 31, 2018

Kenney is an idiot and I hope his voting base finally figures that out. But for all we know, they all believe that the Biden election victory is a fraud. I hope the Feds are smart enough to stay clear of appeasing Kenney. Let him have his hissy fit and figure out how to dig himself out of the shithole he buried himself in. Meanwhile, I hope his plan for coal mining also get stopped in its tracks.

Kenney and the UCP blocked a NDP motion to release information on the cost of the now dead $7.5 billion Keystone XL pipeline investment to Albertans thereby leaving them in the dark about the issue and the waste of their money on a project that was predictably a money loser. 

Members of Premier Jason Kenney’s caucus have refused an Opposition NDP bid to make public details of Alberta’s $7.5-billion investment in the failed Keystone XL pipeline project.

The eight members of the governing United Conservative caucus rejected an NDP motion in public accounts committee today to ask Kenney for the details, along with any financial risk advice he was given when he made the investment last March. ...

At that time, the Keystone XL line was facing multiple court challenges and the emerging Democrat party candidate, now President Joe Biden, was on record against the cross-border pipeline. ...

Alberta has directly invested $1.5 billion with another $6 billion in loan guarantees, but the NDP says Albertans need to know the rationale Kenney used to make what it calls a risky decision and what the final bill will be now that the project is shelved.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7600240/alberta-ndp-ucp-keystone-xl-investmen...

Can they recall the government in Alberta as Rachel can't return as Premier soon enough.

Meet the Albertans Ditching the Jason Kenney Government

Doctors, entrepreneurs and businesspeople are packing up. That’s bad news for the province’s future.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/01/22/Meet-Albertans-Ditching-Jason-Ken...

Kenney is facing growing questions about his leadership and the possibility of a leadership review, mostly from members of the right wing of the UCP, over a range of issues and with the NDP leading them in four of the last five polls listed on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/31st_Alberta_general_election) and in with the NDP raising more money than the UCP in 2020 (https://globalnews.ca/news/7592484/alberta-ndp-ucp-fundraising-parties/).

Early in the new year, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney stood at a podium taking questions about his jet-setting caucus members enjoying foreign travel during a pandemic. ...

January brought a fresh set of challenges for Alberta's UCP government, such as the public outcry over strict pandemic health measures and intense blowback over its coal mining policy. And while top Alberta government officials looked for ways to turn the page, some in the party were musing about whether it was time to turn the page on Kenney himself.

"We definitely talked about a leadership review," one constituency president from southern Alberta told CBC News. 

Other constituency associations were taking a hard look at the premier's track record and having the same conversation. 

CBC News spoke to nine UCP constituency association presidents and members of constituency association boards from across the province. CBC has agreed not to name some of them as they were not authorized to speak publicly about party matters.  ...

Most of those who spoke to CBC said their association boards had talked about whether it was time to look for a new leader. One riding association president said that about 80 per cent of their board expressed dissatisfaction with the party's leadership. Others said that while they'd heard rumblings of unhappiness with Kenney, their own boards had not talked about triggering a review. ...

Members of those constituency boards considering a review said the idea has faded into the background for now, for several reasons: the UCP has no obvious candidate to succeed Kenney, there's little time to get a new leader up to speed before the 2023 election, and internal party disputes could boost the NDP's chances of victory. "Do we change or fix what we have?" one constituency association president asked. ...

Constituency association presidents said party members will be watching the premier closely this year to see if he can change course. His approval rating has dropped significantly since the election and the party's poll numbers have dropped along with it. ...

The constituency presidents expressed concern about recent decisions such as the one to rescind the 1976 coal policy, which protected parts of the Rocky Mountains from mining. The UCP government swiftly reinstated the policy last month in the face of mounting criticism.

They also pointed to the confrontational nature of some of the province's interactions with doctors, confusing communication on public health restrictions and the COVID-19 situation in long-term care facilities. 

Other constituency association members in rural areas said that many members believe public health restrictions to control the pandemic have had a disproportionately heavy impact on their regions and have damaged businesses unnecessarily. ...

Under a new UCP resolution passed at the party's most recent general meeting, a leadership review could happen sometime in 2021 or 2022. But the party hasn't said when that rule will come into effect, or whether it will be applied to this election cycle.

Constituency associations can trigger a special meeting for a leadership vote; if Kenney failed to hit 50 per cent support in such a vote, the party would launch a leadership election. 

Right now, however, no constituency association appears to want to be the first to go public with the idea — in part because of the awkward timing of a leadership campaign in the middle of a public health crisis. All the UCP members CBC spoke to said they've decided to put the idea of a leadership review on hold for now, but many want to see significant changes from Kenney.

"He has a fight on his hands," said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary. "How do you govern a province in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of escalating budget deficits ... [while] protecting your own flank and trying to protect your own job from within?"

Rural constituency associations saw the most intense discussions about a leadership review, while many urban associations discussed it but didn't give it serious consideration, the presidents said.

Bratt said Kenney and the UCP need to keep 90 per cent of rural ridings onside in order to secure another majority government.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kenney-leadership-review-ucp-albe...

As Luff's expulsion from the NDP Caucus demonstrated at the time, the Alberta NDP is a top-down organization where bullying and silencing is rampant. That has become very clear given the NDP's response to the covid crisis. Rather than simply calling out Kenney's cuts and advocating for stronger public services, Notley has gone full-blown authoritarian and called for even stricter lockdowns that have been shown to not work at all. It's quite clear that the NDP won't be happy until they can lock every Albertan in their residences and tell them not to come out until the NDPsays it  is safe. Remember, Notley is the same Premier who capitulated to the oil companies on the royalty issue, and with her stance on pipleines, managed to alienate not only progressives but failed to win over anyone for whom pipelines were the main issue. So it's not at all surprising that she would compensate for that lack of vision and principle by trying to capitalize on the covid crisis and wanting to be in total control. It does not say much for her confidence in any public policy programme, if the Alberta NDP even has a coherent one to present. Heaven help us if this group ever achieves political power.

Justice Minister Kaycee Madu nails it:

Quote:

Kaycee Madu made the remarks last week, a few days after the UCP government introduced more restrictions to contain a surge of COVID-19 cases in Alberta.

In the comment section of another user's Facebook page, Madu wrote that the government needed to act or run the risk of leaving Albertans "in field and makeshift hospitals, gasping for breath because we have [run] out of ventilators, manpower etc."

"My point is that I don't think it will be responsible to simply wait until we have a disaster on our hands," wrote the member of the legislature for Edmonton-South West.  

"That's what the NDP, the media and the federal Liberals were looking for and want. We simply couldn't allow that to happen."

...

But a spokesperson for Madu defended the justice minister's comments. 

"The minister was referring to the increasing tendency of different groups, including the NDP, to exploit the pandemic for their own political purposes," press secretary Blaise Boehmer said in an email. 

"We see this every day with the NDP's overcooked and incendiary rhetoric, both in the legislative assembly and on social media. The minister won't apologize for stating the obvious."

Nor should he apologize. It's quite clear that the media pumped this up to sell disaster to boost ratings, and that politicians of all stripes have used this as a political football, rather than accepting that the spread of the virus cannot be controlled, and that the best that can be done is to mitigate the harm while it runs its course.

So here is the covid rescue plan that I would put in place for Alberta:

Kenney needs to go ASAP. He has nobody in his corner. Many people in his support base are unhappy with the restrictions, and he cannot put in enough restrictions to satisfy the NDP. He needs to be replaced by one of the MLAs who have questioned the lockdowns. It may cost the UCP the next election, but at least the new Premier will be in touch with the public opinion of the nearly 50% of Albertans who think the lockdowns go too far.

The new Premier should have an expert round-table as Florida Governor DeSantis did last Fall. Sit back and let the experts talk. Invite all the media, the opposition, and the general public to ask questions of these experts. They are all well-respected in their fields. They will be able to help design plans and protocols that protect vulnerable Albertans, and they will work. DeSantis listened to these experts, dropped the lockdowns and mask mandates almost immediatley after this round table, and things began to improve.

Once the protection plan is in place, the new Premier needs to draft a plan to open up and stay open. As part of this plan, Hinshaw needs to be fired, and her replacement should be told in no uncertain terms that any future lockdown or business restriction is permanently off the table. The UCP can't go any lower in the polls than they are. Of course there will be howls of anger and cries of impending disaster. But once things stay open and people see that things are fine, the panic pushers will lose credibility. The same thing happened after the Super Bowl in Florida last year.

Keeney O'Toole dissing Keeney O'Toole.2 I love what babble has become.

UCP MLA and former caucus chair Todd Loewen's chair brutal attack on Kenney's leadership yesterday has led to his and another MLA being booted out of the not-so-united United Conservative Party. This is addition to MLA Pat Rehn who was booted after his own "constituents complained he wasn't doing any work or listening to their concerns".

The party caucus met Thursday evening to discuss a letter in which former UCP caucus chair Todd Loewen announced his resignation as chair, and stated Premier Jason Kenney was causing “dysfunction” within the party. ...

The party voted to remove both Loewen and southern MLA Drew Barnes from the government caucus. ...

“There is simply no room in our caucus for those who continually seek to divide our party and undermine government leadership, especially at this critical juncture for our province,” [party whip] Mike Ellis added. ....

Barnes, MLA for Cypress-Medicine Hat, signed a letter, along with more than a dozen other UCP MLAs in April criticizing the government’s public health restrictions. ...

Both Loewen and Barnes said they will sit in the house as Independents. 

"I was delivering a message on behalf of a lot of our supporters, a lot of Albertans, a lot of UCP members and a lot of conservatives across this province," Loewen, representing the northern rural riding of Central Peace-Notley, said in an interview.  "And instead of taking ownership of the problems, the premier shot the messenger." 

Barnes added the party -- a 2017 merger of Alberta's previous conservative parties, the Wildrose and PCs -- “was meant to be a team” tolerating debate and supposed to be “the party of grassroots conservatives. Instead of MLAs representing the views of their constituents to caucus, MLAs are expected to represent the views of the premier to the constituents. I could never abide by this – this is not why I entered politics – and this is not how a grassroots party is meant to work.”  ...

Loewen and Barnes are the second and third members expelled from the UCP caucus in 2021, after constituents complained backbencher Pat Rehn wasn't doing any work or listening to their concerns. 

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/ucp-removes-loewen-barnes-from-caucus-after-...

In case you didn't know Premier Kenney is “the leader God raised up.”

UCP MLA Ron Orr, who previously signed the anti-COVID restriction letter, said after the UCP caucus mini-revolt and the booting out of UCP MLAs Drew Barnes and Todd Loewen: “the premier has been more than fair and transparent with caucus. I also believe he is the leader God raised up for these times even though I don’t like these times any more than you do.”

Gosh, are we back, here in Alberta, in the 1600s during Louis XIV’s reign when he declared l’état, c’est moi, meaning “I am the state?” ...

I note that the UCP MLA for Lacombe-Ponoka, Ron Orr, refers to Jason Kenney as “the leader God raised up.” If so, God is far more punishing than previously believed to be. ...

Mind you, this is the same MLA who said, in 2017, that the legalization of marijuana could lead to a communist revolution. I look forward to Mr. Orr’s future pearls of wisdom.

https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/letters/tuesdays-letters-no-divine-r...

In another political ploy that has no real meaning beyond stirring up the political pot among Conservatives, Kenney's proposed referendum on removing  equilization payments from the constitution, has no chance of changing anything. 

Legal and economic experts say there's virtually no chance Alberta's planned referendum on equalization will result in changes to Canada's Constitution.

Instead, they say Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party government is using equalization as a pinata for broader economic grievances with the federal government.

"It is about mobilizing an angry political base motivated by an idea that the government of Alberta thinks is in its interest, which is that Ottawa has been unfair to Albertans, and that there is somebody to blame for economic downturn, and there is someone to blame for the movement away from the carbon-based energy industry," said Eric Adams, a constitutional law expert and University of Alberta professor.

On Monday, Premier Jason Kenney said he will put a proposed referendum question on equalization before the Alberta legislature, while aiming to run the referendum in concert with October municipal elections.

If Kenney's motion gets the OK from a majority of MLAs, Albertans will be asked on Oct. 18: Should the section of the Constitution that commits the Government of Canada to the principle of making equalization payments be removed?

A referendum was a UCP election promise in 2019 and a recommendation of the Fair Deal Panel, which studied how Alberta could exert more independence. ...

"For millions of Albertans, equalization has become the most powerful symbol of the unfairness for Alberta's deal in confederation and for good reason," Kenney said during a news conference Monday. 

The result of the yes-or-no vote would have no immediate bearing on the program since scrapping equalization would require a constitutional amendment. ...

The federal transfer program, which is funded by federal taxes, the GST and import tariffs, sends unconditional payments to lower-income provinces to enable them to provide comparable public services across Canada. ...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/kenney-update-equalization-refer...

The Alberta NDP is calling for an investigation into why the Kenney Alberta government poured $1.3 billion into the risky Keystone pipeline when they knew Biden promised to cancel it. 

Even more important is the statement  of the CEO of a Calgary-based energy-consulting firm, Duane Reid-Carlson, , recognizing the enormous problems the Alberta tarsands faces in finding customers: "What worries me more," the EDC Associated Ltd. CEO said, "is the ability for the oil and gas industries in Alberta to continue to expand with these kinds of headwinds. (It) really kind of spells doom and gloom for the economic prosperity and growth of Alberta," he added. "We can't get our products to market. You can't fight the U.S. government." 

Continuing to bet on fossil fuels not only makes on environmental sense, it makes no economic sense. 

Dutch boy Jason Kenney deals with global oil glut

Alberta's official opposition leader Rachel Notley is calling for an independent review of the Jason Kenney government's failed Keystone XL deal.

The Alberta NDP leader declared her intentions during a news conference on Thursday afternoon. "Jason Kenney's incompetence has cost Alberta taxpayers $1.3 billion, at least," said Notley. "He made an incredibly reckless gamble with Albertans money and he lost it."  

Notley's remarks come a day after Alberta's UCP government and energy infrastructure builder TC Energy officially terminated the Keystone XL pipeline deal. ... In March of last year, Alberta committed $7.5 billion to Keystone XL, a $1.5 billion investment and $6 billion in backstop loans.

On Thursday, Notley blamed Kenney's desire for a "photo op" for motivating the Alberta premier to make the deal. "Now that the government has reached an exit agreement with TC Energy, the time has come for an independent investigation of this disaster," she said. ...

In a written response to CTV News Edmonton, TC Energy said its "first priority is to make sure we wind down construction activities safely and with care for the environment.  "We will continue to coordinate with regulators, stakeholders and rights-holders as we progress cleanup and reclamation work to safely exit the Project." The company added that over the coming months it will evaluate long-term plans and "identify opportunities to recover capital. We have not made any decisions regarding options for investment recovery," the statement read in part. TC Energy had built 150 kilometres of the pipeline in Alberta, before the cancellation.

The CEO of a Calgary-based energy-consulting firm, Duane Reid-Carlson, told CTV News Edmonton the official Keystone XL pipeline cancellation is not just a blow to that project alone. "What worries me more," the EDC Associated Ltd. CEO said, "is the ability for the oil and gas industries in Alberta to continue to expand with these kinds of headwinds." "(It) really kind of spells doom and gloom for the economic prosperity and growth of Alberta," he added. "We can't get our products to market. You can't fight the U.S. government."  ...

According to Mount Royal University political science professor Keith Brownsey, the recently renegotiated trade deal between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. no longer allows for any legal recourse for Canada over its southern neighbours. "It was removed in those recent negotiations from our free trade arrangement," Brownsey told CTV News Edmonton of the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. "We can't really sue."

Brownsey said that by making the Keystone XL deal, the UCP government put themselves in a "very difficult position. I like to joke that my local financial advisor down at the strip mall would have chased me away from the Keystone XL investment," he said. "Yet the province decides to invest $1.3 billion in a project that they understood was under very strict scrutiny and could be cancelled almost at any time. There were no surprises here," Brownsey added, "except apparently for the UCP."

Brownsey believes the public money lost in the Keystone XL pipeline that never was will lead to public sector layoffs that could help pave the way for an Alberta NDP win in the 2023 provincial election.

"All the New Democrats are going to have to do in the 2023 campaign is remind voters," he said. "The beginning of January, 2023 the NDP can come along and say, 'They can't govern,' and it will all fall into place." 

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/alberta-ndp-calling-for-independent-investig...

Leger poll July 22-26 (https://2g2ckk18vixp3neolz4b6605-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uplo...)

NDP 45%

UCP 34%

Wildrose 8%

Alberta Party 6%

Libs 4%

Other Party 2%

Another poll by a respectable pollster suggests that if an Alberta provincial election were held today Rachel Notley's New Democratic Party would triumph handily over Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party. This is starting to look like a trend. ...

More than half the 1,377 Albertans who responded to the pollster's questions between July 22 and 26 thought the province was headed in the wrong direction. Only a quarter gave the direction the province was heading as being the right one.

The NDP led in all parts of the province, even among the UCP's rural base. Its support was overwhelming -- 45 per cent of committed voters, compared to the UCP's 28 per cent -- in the Edmonton region.

The NDP also has the committed support of most younger voters, polls very strongly among women, and leads quite strongly among men. Only the geezers -- present company excepted, of course -- seem to still support the UCP.

The timing of the poll, obviously, means Leger's questions were posed before the Kenney government announced its effective surrender to the coronavirus and its decision to stop collecting statistics about COVID-19 that might make it look bad, or requiring anyone with symptoms of the disease to get tested or self-isolate.

Friday's announcement could well turn out to be the moment when very large numbers of Albertans decide the direction in which their province is heading is actually now at that point of the compass commonly known as "going to hell in a handbasket."

This, in turn, may make Leger's poll a complementary development to Elections Alberta's revelation at the end of last week that the NDP raised more than twice as much in contributions as the UCP did in both the second quarter and the first half of 2021.

Those spending decisions by politically alert Albertans were also made before anyone knew what their UCP government was going to do on the COVID file. ...

Naturally, Postmedia's coverage tried hard to find a silver lining for the UCP in this cloudy forecast. "NDP has wide lead on UCP, but many Albertans aren't fully committed: poll," said the Calgary Herald's headline, a little wistfully.

Political columnist Don Braid quoted Leger Western Canada VP Ian Large saying "there's lots of potentially good news for the UCP" upcoming -- included in his calculus was the Trans Mountain pipeline that's being built thanks to the efforts of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Lorne Gunter, another right-wing Postmedia columnist (is there any other kind?) made some sound points. To wit: that committed UCP support is actually up, just not as much as committed NDP support, and that Kenney needs to shore up support with the party's far right.

My guess is the UCP's fringe -- tempted by a smorgasbord of fringy separatist parties and infected by the Q-virus from south of the Medicine Line -- will already be pretty happy with Friday's announcement of the government's new COVID policy.

So if that doesn't work, there's probably not much more Kenney can do to win them back and get them contributing again -- short of welcoming back rebel MLA Drew Barnes from exile, anyway. (Wait for it.)

Meanwhile, a majority of Albertans appear to think the new COVID policy actually is lunacy. However, we'll need to see some polling on that issue from someone to know if that is really true.

The UCP does have a long time to get its mojo back, and still could.

Kenney, though, really seems to have a talent for doing things that infuriate large groups of voters. So it wouldn't necessarily be a good bet at this point to put money on the proposition Kenney won't continue to mess up right up to the next election in 2023, or whenever it ends up being called.

https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2021/08/more-bad-news-ucp...

Please don't rush Kenney out the door yet. We want him running against Notley so we will ensure that Albertans don't get another right-wing government.

If Kenney goes now, who knows who will replace him.

https://theline.substack.com/p/jen-gerson-well-i-guess-kenneys-fucked?ju...

https://twitter.com/charlesadler/status/1440774964299272197?s=20

Latest polls 

Innovative Research Oct.5

NDP45

UCP 29

Alb 5

Lib 9

Gre 2

Wild 8

Commonground Oct. 6

NDP49.5

UCP 26.9

Alb 6.7

Lib 5.2

Gre -

Wild 5.3

Mainstreet Oct. 13

NDP45

UCP 29

Alb 6

Lib 2

Gre 1

Wild 13

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/31st_Alberta_general_election

Premier Kenney doesn't need more problems, mostly self-inflicted, to deal with. But today he got one with Brian Jean's announcement that he plans to run for the nomination in the Fort MacMurray-Lac La Biche byelection. Jean's comment today that "When you think you are the smartest man in the room, you're usually not" left little doubt about who was talking about and the approach he will take with regard to Kenney. 

Former Wildrose Leader and UCP MLA Brian Jean hopes to be the UCP’s candidate in the upcoming Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche byelection, which has yet to be scheduled. ...

The party will decide whether he can seek the UCP nomination or not. In other words, Kenney will decide.

Jean says something has to be done and that something is for Kenney to clear out. Jean says with Kenney leading the UCP, the opposition NDP with Rachel Notley will win “an overwhelming majority.”

“I’ve called on Jason Kenney to step down. I stand by it. I would not have made that comment if I didn’t believe it and I will stand by it,” Jean told Bell. “I think he’s got an opportunity for people to think very highly of him. There’s only one thing he needs to do and that’s to step down graciously and immediately so the conservative movement in Alberta can get back to what we do well and that’s governing for Albertans.”

If the UCP allows Jean to run as its candidate, he told Bell he would “speak my mind to power just like I always have.” “That’s why I want to return to the legislature. So I can be a catalyst for change,” he said. ...

The Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche riding has been vacant  after Laila Goodridge resigned as UCP MLA in August . Goodridge stepped down so she could be acclaimed as the Conservative Party’s candidate for the Fort McMurray-Cold Lake riding.

When the Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties merged into the UCP, Jean and Kenney both pursued the leadership position. Kenney won the leadership spot in Oct. 2017.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/brian-jean-running-for-ucp-nomin...

More trouble for Kenney as 22 UCP constituency associations demand a leadership review within three months. 

About two dozen United Conservative Party constituency associations are demanding a leadership review of Jason Kenney within three months.

“Therefore, having attained at least 22 constituency associations (being over one quarter) necessary as set out in section 5.7 of the party bylaws, we have met the threshold to trigger a Special General Meeting for the purpose of conducting a leadership review,” the letter from the constituency associations to party president Ryan Becker reads.

In an announcement on Monday, several United Conservative Party constituency association presidents said a procedural threshold was recently met. They said more than 22 constituency associations passed a special motion demanding a leadership review be held before March 1, 2022.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8374316/kenney-alberta-ucp-leadership-review/

Kenney is blaming environmentalist David Suzuki for inciting violence. Any distraction will do when even one quarter of your party wants you gone yesterday, eh Jason. 

Suzuki made it clear he does not condone violence and that protesters have engaged in peaceful civic disobedience while the government and police have been violent at times. 

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is standing by his accusation that environmentalist David Suzuki was inciting violence with his comments at a climate change protest over the weekend.

The premier first made the claim in a tweet that linked to a National Post article, which quoted Suzuki as saying: "There are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don't pay attention to what's going on."

Suzuki made the comments amid a "Funeral for the Future" protest in Victoria on Saturday, organized by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion. ...

At a news conference on Tuesday, Kenney reiterated that he believes Suzuki is implicitly inciting people to eco-terrorism. "It's like in the gangster movies where they say, 'You know, nice little pipeline you've got there. It'd be a terrible thing if something happened to it.' This is totally irresponsible," he said.   Kenney added that Suzuki has a track record of outrageous comments that should have had him "cancelled." ...

He cited an example from 2016, when Suzuki opined that former prime minister Stephen Harper should serve prison time for "wilful blindness" to climate change, which was reported by theNational Post at the time.

Suzuki told CBC News he does not condone blowing up pipelines, but that he suggested he fears it may happen if groups get fed up with inaction. "Our leaders are not listening to the urgency that is demanded to meet the issue of climate change. And I was worried that this is just the next step — if it goes on — to people blowing up pipelines," he said.

Many climate-related protests have been examples of "peaceful civic disobedience," Suzuki said, suggesting the violence is coming from government and the RCMP.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kenney-suzuki-climate-change-1.62...

Alberta's ambulance service is in full crisis mode with the large cities of Calgary and Edmonton very frequently having to send ambulances to critically ill people by calling for help from ambulance services in small communities up to 150 km away that take up to a hour or more to arrive going at full speed with sirens screaming because there are not enough local paramedics or vehicles when in many medical emergencies minutes are the difference between life and death. The small communities then face the reality that their community lost their ambulance service. What kind of hell-care is this?

Critics are raising concerns over Alberta’s EMS response times after Calgary saw four red alerts on Saturday amid ongoing staff shortages.

A red alert is issued when there are no ambulances available to respond to emergency calls in a jurisdiction. According to the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA), which posts alerts to a Twitter account , this type of alert happened four times in Calgary Saturday. On that day, additional ambulances from 12 municipalities as far away as Banff were dispatched to Calgary to field calls in the city.

Speaking to media Monday, Opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley called EMS response times a “crisis.” She said an increase in calls amid the COVID-19 pandemic is one factor behind the overwhelmed system, but noted that the province must hire more frontline staff to keep up with that demand.

“The system is under a tremendous amount of pressure,” Notley said. “As government, at the end of the day what they should be doing is looking at how to solve the crisis . . . and coming up with the solutions that will ensure that Albertans get the ambulance response and the ambulance care they need when they need it.”

Red alerts have become routine in Calgary, with the HSAA posting about a red alert being issued for the city 53 times across 22 days during November and at least one each day since Friday. A city paramedic not authorized to speak publicly told Postmedia that staff shortages have become the norm in recent months, leading to consequences for patient care.

That’s a concern for Calgarian Marcello Di Cintio, whose 95-year-old grandmother waited an hour for paramedics to arrive after a fall Saturday. While Di Cintio said the slow response may in part be due to family communicating to EMS dispatchers the situation wasn’t immediately urgent, he said the delay could have had serious consequences.

“What if she had broken something? What if she had fallen because of a heart attack?” Di Cintio said. “What infuriates me first, of course, was my grandmother. But when I found out that no one in Calgary had an ambulance available several times during that day — that’s insanity.” ...

Local pressures in Calgary are also having an impact on communities whose ambulances are being called upon to respond to emergencies out of their jurisdiction.

Canmore Fire Fighters Association president Steve Westlake said all eight of the city’s full-time firefighters are trained paramedics, a decision made a decade ago in order to retain local medical capabilities when the town divested its EMS response to AHS.

When ambulances leave Canmore, firefighters have to provide on-site care to patients, routinely waiting for ambulances to arrive from Banff or Kananaskis which can bring patients to hospital if they need additional, sometimes critical treatment.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/alarms-raised-over-lengthy-ems...

“When we’re missing crews because they’re doing calls in the city, that’s very unfortunate to our local citizens,” Westlake said. “We don’t replace the ambulance. We help them. We’re sort of an unofficial stopgap, but we can’t transport in a firetruck.”

Another Leger poll found former Wildrose leader Brian Jean more popular than Kenney. 

Albertans are more likely to vote for Brian Jean than Jason Kenney or Danielle Smith, a new Leger poll shows.

Jean has support from 18 per cent of Albertans, the premier is preferred by 15 per cent and former Wildrose leader Smith polled at 11 per cent.

A slight majority of Albertans, 51 per cent, said they would not vote for the UCP under any leader.

"These poll results show that public mood in Alberta has shifted decisively against the United Conservative Party, most likely as a result of the way the governing party has handled the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis," said Remi Courcelles from Solstice Public Affairs, the company that commissioned the poll.

"A change in leadership won’t necessarily solve all of the UCP’s problems. That being said, it would appear that a UCP led by Brian Jean would improve the party’s electoral fortunes."

Regionally, Kenney was preferred in Calgary, he and Jean are tied in Edmonton but Jean was favoured 23 per cent to 15 per cent for Kenney outside of the big cities.

Kenney has struggled in polls throughout the pandemic, with an Angus Reid survey recently pegging his popularity at 22 per cent.

The UCP tossed two MLAs who criticized Kenney, roughly 25 per cent of its constituency associations are demanding an early leadership review and the governing party has finished second in some fundraising races to the NDP.

Jean – who lost a provincial election to Rachel Notley's NDP in 2015 as leader of the Wildrose Party – has publicly asked for Kenney's resignation and said he could do a better job of leading the UCP.

"If he doesn't leave we are going to have an NDP majority," Jean said in November.

"The UCP will not be in competition. It won't be competitive in the next election. That's very concerning to me."

Jean is attempting to win a UCP nomination and a by-election to become the MLA for Fort McMurray-Lac la Biche.

Kenney has publicly questioned Jean's reliability to finish his term and his commitment to the UCP.

Smith has expressed interest in the job as well, but has not launched a campaign.

Kenney will face a UCP leadership review in April 2022, if not sooner.

The online survey was conducted between Nov. 16-29. It had a sample size of 1,000 adult Albertans.

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/brian-jean-preferred-as-ucp-leader-over-jaso...

Here are Jason Kenney's ten greatest scandals (of course there are more) of 2021. 

10. AIMCo Follies. Not only did the Alberta government’s pension management Crown corporation lose $2.1 billion gambling on market volatility, but it’s grabbing the retirement savings of Alberta’s teachers, nurses and other public employees while the premier schemes to hijack all Albertans’ Canada Pension Plan savings for its use. 

9. Animal House on the Prairie. That is, the former minister of agriculture’s office, where day drinking and generally disreputable behaviour were allegedly all routine once the doors were locked and a cry of “shields up” uttered. Were it not for a wrongful dismissal suit by a political staffer, we might never have known a thing.

8. Mountaintop Removal. The government’s scheme to sell off huge swaths of the southern Alberta foothills for a pittance to Australian coal-mining companies to build giant open-pit mines and pollute rivers all the way to Hudson Bay is this low on the list only because a huge uproar has temporarily stopped it. Count on it to be back again in 2022. 

7. Sky Palace Patio Party. When Kenney was busted by a mystery photographer breaking his own pandemic rules with a group of UCP cabinet heavyweights and advisors during a boozy rooftop dinner at the notorious Sky Palace in Edmonton, a huge uproar ensued. Does anyone even remember now? 

6. The Alberta (Non) Inquiry. Conceived as a way to harass foes of oilsands development into silence, the “Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns” soon descended into farce. Delayed multiple times, it cost $3.5 million, never met in public and ultimately delivered no evidence of wrongdoing. It may have cost less than the War Room, but it looked sillier. 

5. Alohagate. The first scandal of 2021, Alohagate saw at least eight UCP MLAs and staffers caught taking mid-pandemic holidays in the sun while the rest of us were instructed to hunker down at home and avoid COVID. The public, even die-hard UCP supporters, was outraged. That didn’t seem to influence UCP behaviour much, though.

4. Home Alone. When the fourth wave of COVID hit Alberta, Kenney got going. To this day, no one knows where. Wherever he went, though, no one was left in charge, and for 23 days Albertans were on their own at home as the pandemic raged and the ship of state drifted. 

3. Curriculum Catastrophe. Kenney thinks students are being “hard-wired with collectivist ideas” by a school system run by liberals. His solution is the worst curriculum imaginable, panned by teachers, reviled by curriculum experts, and mocked internationally as age-inappropriate, outdated, Eurocentric, jargon-riddled, inaccurate, unconcerned with developing critical thinking skills and rife with plagiarism.

Jason Kenney’s Lethal Negligence

READ MORE 

2. Here Today, Gone Forever. Kenney forked over $1.3 billion of Albertans’ money to TC Energy Corp. to complete the KXL Pipeline once Donald Trump won the 2020 U.S. election. It was a terrible bet. The first thing President Joe Biden did once he was sworn into office in January was pull the plug on the project. Albertans’ money disappeared into thin air that instant — possibly with a few billion more in loan guarantees — never to be seen again.

And the No. 1 UCP scandal of 2021 is…

1. The Best Summer Ever! Despite warnings not to do it from just about everyone except the UCP’s informal anti-vaccine caucus and the party’s anti-vaxxer base, Kenney declared the province Open for Summer on June 18 and promised us the Best Summer Ever. We all know how that turned out.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/12/29/The-Kenney-Countdown-Alberta-Top-...

Angus Reid poll January 2022

NDP42

UCP 31

Wildrose Independence 16

Alberta Party 8

Liberals 1

For the fourth time since March of last year, the Alberta NDP led by Rachel Notley lead in vote intention over the governing United Conservative Party led by Premier Jason Kenney. Two-in-five (42%) Albertans say they prefer the NDP, compared to three-in-10 (31%) UCP voters.

The UCP government has once more found itself embroiled in controversy. Justice Minister Kaycee Madu called the Edmonton chief of police after he received a distracted driving ticket. Kenney asked Madu to step back from his duties while the minister undergoes an “independent review” of his conduct.

Kenney is also facing other challenges from within – Brian Jean, former leader of the Wildrose Party and the runner-up in the 2017 UCP leadership race, who will seek the UCP nomination in his hometown of Fort McMurray – and without – the Wildrose Independence Party, a right-wing party formed in 2020 through the merger of the Freedom Conservative Party and the Wexit Alberta party that repurposed the Wildrose name. Sixteen per cent of Albertans say they will vote for WIP, led by Paul Hinman, a former MLA who led the old Wildrose party in its nascency in 2008:

https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2022.01.20_provincial_p...

Kenney's support of the Ottawa trucker protest has boomeranged on him. Now that there is a trucker protest at the Alberta-US border, he is denouncing it.

It would be ironic if Premier Jason Kenney’s baseless claim a week ago that Ottawa’s vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers had led to empty shelves in Alberta grocery stores ended up causing real shortages.

Mr. Kenney’s tweets of photos of empty grocery shelves and his tendentious assertionsthat “with a quarantine rule for unvaccinated truckers, Ottawa is making a bad situation much worse,” were obviously intended to undermine Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal federal government – which appears to be the premier’s principal policy goal these days.

Whether the tweets did Mr. Trudeau any harm is an open question. But they certainly emboldened the far-right organizers of the protest convoy to Ottawa that dominated the news over the weekend. As blogger Susan Wright argued last night, Mr. Kenney was in effect telling the unvaccinated truck protesters and vaccine holdouts generally that his United Conservative Government has their back.

This may have contributed to the federal Conservative Party getting caught on camera handing out coffees to protesters who clearly had a bigger and uglier agenda than just resisting COVID-19 vaccinations. A number of Conservative Members of Parliament will rue the day they ventured up to Parliament Hill to mingle with that crowd. 

But it also seems to have inspired the copycat convoy in southern Alberta that is now blocking the high-traffic U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Coutts, Alberta, and Sweet Grass, Montana.

If this situation is not dealt with swiftly by police – who so far are handling the blockaders with kid gloves – it could lead to actual shortages for which Albertans will have no one to blame but their premier himself. 

https://albertapolitics.ca/2022/01/did-jason-kenneys-support-for-ottawa-...