The Real Goal of Smith’s Referendum Blitz? Separation

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced a raft of referendum questions Thursday demanding provincial intrusion into federal jurisdiction, cutting services to new Canadians and other anti-immigrant measures, and seeking significant changes to the Canadian Constitution.

There will be five wordy policy referenda on Oct. 19 focusing on immigration and clearly designed to appeal to the United Conservative Party’s base, but worded to sound reasonable at an inattentive glance. There will be four additional questions asking voters to approve an effort to negotiate major constitutional changes.

Dump All Your Carbon Emissions in Alberta, Pitches Smith

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has a solution to Canada’s carbon emissions: dump them underground in Alberta.

Smith is a proponent of carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, where carbon dioxide emissions are captured from large industrial emitters, turned into a fluid and injected underground via pipeline. She is such a booster of the technology that during a Dec. 7 news conference from Dubai, where she was attending the COP28 climate summit, she was irrepressibly positive about CCS’s future.

Danielle Smith Is Really Mad — Again

Is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government now planning to introduce a new, tougher Sovereignty Act to fight Ottawa’s proposed emissions regulations?

As is well known, the plainly unconstitutional Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act has been shown to be a meaningless joke.

So this morning Smith and her environment minister, Rebecca Schulz, who lately has been reduced to the role of an insignificant cheerleader for the premier, published a belligerent statement about the proposed federal “de facto production cap” in which they vowed to “develop a constitutional shield in response to this and other recent attacks on our province by what is fast becoming one of the most damaging federal administrations in Canadian history.” The cap on oil-and-gas emissions was announced by Federal Environment Minister Steve Guilbeault today.

Smith Just Exploded Alberta Health Care. What Comes Next?

Premier Danielle Smith’s declaration last week that she intended to blow up Alberta’s health-care system came 25 years after then-Alberta premier Ralph Klein literally blew up the Calgary General Hospital.

Klein’s demolition on Oct. 4, 1998, involved tonnes of explosives to bring down a health-care icon the government had declared too old, inefficient and expensive. Ten years after its destruction, however, Calgary was still short of hospital beds and emergency room capacity.

On the other hand, Smith’s announced demolition will be much less dramatic but will involve a massive, long-run restructuring of the province’s system and thus affect every Albertan, for better or worse.

Alberta’s Current Carbon Tax Scheme Is an Unfair Sham

Carbon pricing has become a beloved pinata for the political right in Canada. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently threatened yet another court challenge to the federal carbon tax. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre declared the next election will be a referendum on the signature climate policy of the Justin Trudeau government. 

For all the performative caterwauling about the burden of carbon pricing on average Canadians, where is the Conservative outrage about the comparative pittance paid by Canada’s largest emitters?

Alberta to dismantle current patient-care model, create new health delivery system

Alberta's government is dismantling its provincial health-care delivery organization into four entities in a sweeping overhaul that will change the structure and decision-making for the entire health system. 

Heralding it as a "new day for health care in Alberta," Premier Danielle Smith says dividing Alberta Health Services (AHS) into new agencies with a narrower focus, to be overseen by a council of politicians and senior government bureaucrats, will improve access to care in a system under strain.

Danielle Smith’s Dangerous Clean Energy Fantasies

Perhaps Danielle Smith forgot where she was when she told the attendees at the Pembina Institute’s Alberta Climate Summit that clean electricity by 2035 was impossible and anyone who thought otherwise was a fantasist.

The summit attendees paid $400 to $600 for the one-day event, which brought together “thought leaders from industry, government, civil society groups, Indigenous governments and rural communities to hear success stories, identify opportunities and challenges, and explore solutions related to Alberta’s clean energy future.”

Poilievre Walks a Tightrope over Alberta’s Pension Uproar

In an obvious effort to inoculate himself against being identified as an enemy of the Canada Pension Plan, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre Friday inserted himself into the open-letter uproar over the Alberta government’s plan to force the province’s citizens out of the CPP with a statement of his own.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent a forceful open letter to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith vowing to defend the CPP and Canadians’ pensions. Smith responded with an open letter of her own, accusing the PM of fear-mongering and warning of unspecified “serious legal and political consequences.”

Danielle Smith's pension trifecta: Trudeau, Notley and Poilievre agree on something

It's not clear if Pierre Poilievre had already devised a position on Alberta's proposed quitting of the Canada Pension Plan, but the Conservative leader issued one barely a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proclaimed his own stance.

The Liberals' unusually forceful opposition to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's pension ambition has doubled as a political wedge against Poilievre. Alongside trying to criticize the CPP-weakening gambit itself, Liberals applied pressure on Conservatives to squeeze their leader through one of three doors:

Pension becomes another Alberta-Ottawa fight. But this time, Trudeau's on offence

Jim Dinning, engagement panel chair: Thank you, Duane from Camrose. We appreciate all your comments on the potential Alberta Pension Plan. Isn't this telephone town hall format a swell idea? Sarah, please put through the next call.

Operator: Our next commenter is Justin, and he's on the line from Ottawa.

OK, so it didn't quite happen this way, but may as well have.

Trudeau attacks pitch to take Alberta out of CPP in open letter to Danielle Smith

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has sent an open letter to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith calling her efforts to pull Alberta out of the Canada Pension Plan a risk to "certainty and stability."

"With all the uncertainty they face, Canadians should not have to worry whether or not the Canada Pension Plan will continue to be there for them in their retirement," Trudeau said in the letter.

"Alberta's withdrawal would weaken the pensions of millions of seniors and hardworking people in Alberta and right across the country. The harm it would cause is undeniable."

Danielle Smith’s Pension Scam Claims Its First Victim

What a pathetic coda to the respectable if not quite illustrious political career of Jim Dinning!

Once the whiz kid and heir apparent of Alberta’s Conservative establishment, Dinning has resurfaced years later as, in my view, chief snake oil salesman for the scam artists and would-be separatists dreaming of hijacking half the Canada Pension Plan’s investment fund.

Dinning may not have gotten to be the premier of Alberta in 2006, when he was widely seen as front-runner in what was supposed to be not much more than a two-horse race with another former Progressive Conservative finance minister Ted Morton.

Danielle Smith’s Pension Trickery: Why Voters Might Just Fall for It

There is absolutely no way Albertans will fall for it.

Unless they do.

And if they do, every Canadian will feel the impact.

Premier Danielle Smith’s push for an Alberta pension plan is based on so much wishful thinking, imaginary numbers and outright chutzpah you’d think it’s surely doomed to failure.

How Social Conservatives Plan to Take Over Alberta Schools

There’s plenty of chatter on social media about the plan by the United Conservative Party’s powerful and secretive Take Back Alberta faction to stealthily take over the province’s school boards in the next round of elections and set the stage for indoctrinating children with social conservative ideology. 

As usual, though, conservative mainstream media (which is the only kind we have in Alberta) seems to be largely ignoring the story. This is most likely the result of understaffing and pitiful resources devoted to journalism as opposed to actual malice, but who knows for sure?

The Unplugging of a Promising Alberta Solar Project

A solar energy project in western Alberta was poised to not only power 1,200 homes but innovate a new way to pay for such initiatives, say its backers. But then came the “gut-wrenching” decree by Premier Danielle Smith.

Now the future of Western Canada’s first co-operatively financed solar farm is uncertain, following the United Conservative Party’s sudden freeze on approvals for renewable energy projects in Alberta.

The Peace Energy Cooperative, or PEC, was days away from Alberta Utilities Commission approval that would allow construction to begin on a 13-hectare solar farm. Unless the UCP lifts the seven-month moratorium, the co-operative will have to convince investors to not withdraw their money. 

Renewable Energy Pause Could Cost $33 Billion in Investment, Says Pembina Institute

An estimated 24,000 full-time jobs and $33 billion in investments are at risk because of the Alberta government’s seven-month moratorium on renewable energy development, the Pembina Institute said this morning.

Courtney Smith, spokesperson for the Calgary-based clean energy think tank, said Pembina researchers reviewed the Alberta Electric System Operator’s list of electricity generation projects in development in relation to their approval status from the Alberta Utility Commission to determine how many projects are impacted by Danielle Smith government’s freeze on renewable energy development.

Alberta Stumbles onto the World Stage

Whether or not Premier Danielle Smith and her enabler and office manager Rob Anderson carefully planned their freeze on renewable electricity generation last week or just came up with it on a whim, it’s now turning into a three-alarm international dumpster fire. 

On Wednesday the U.K.-based Guardian published a major story on the seven-month moratorium, which caught the markets and commentariat by surprise when Alberta Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf announced it last week.

The Guardian’s story was not a friendly update of the sort typically filed by local media in Alberta. “Fury as Alberta cuts renewables during Canada’s worst fire season ever,” the headline shouted, pointing to an obvious irony.

Researcher says Alberta regulator underestimating impact of thousands of oil spills

A researcher says the agency that monitors Alberta’s energy industry has underestimated the impact of tens of thousands of spills going back decades.

Kevin Timoney, an Edmonton−area consulting biologist, used sophisticated statistical analysis, an extensive research review and comparisons with other jurisdictions to conclude the Alberta Energy Regulator doesn’t have a good handle on how much oil and saline water has been released into the environment or remains there.

Alberta Private Schools Should Not Be Funded By Taxpayers: Poll

Albertans are fed up with seeing public money fund private schools, especially after the historic deficit unveiled in the province's latest budget, according to a recent poll.

A Mainstreet Research poll released Monday suggests nearly two-thirds of Albertans don't want to see taxpayer money supporting private schools.

Hydraulic Fracking to Blame for Big Alberta Bitumen Spill, Regulator Confirms

Three years after an eruption of 10,000 barrels of melted bitumen contaminated the boreal forest and groundwater near Cold Lake, Alberta, the provincial energy regulator has now officially blamed hydraulic fracturing, or the pressurized injection of steam into the ground for fracturing nearby rock.

The bitumen blowout occurred sometime between May and June 2013 at Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.'s Cold Lake project, an operation that uses steam injection to melt bitumen and bring it to the surface.