Hats off to Thomas Lukaszuk and the Forever Canadian campaign for getting Prime Minister Mark Carney to agree to show up at the group’s remain-in-Canada rallies in Calgary and Edmonton tomorrow and Friday. Mr. Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, is enormously popular right now throughout Canada, including supposedly rebellious Alberta, so that should help […]

Advance voting in Premier Danielle Smith’s needless and divisive separation referendum begins at 9 o’clock this morning. If Elections Alberta’s prediction that 80 to 85 per cent of the provincial electorate is likely to turn out to vote this year, there will be lineups at in-person advance polls and on Election Day on Oct. 19. […]

Leaders of pro-separation groups were complaining on social media yesterday about a decision communicated to them by Elections Alberta just after 5:30 p.m. advising them that third-party advertisers will not be allowed to have scrutineers in polling places or ballot-counting locations on during the Oct. 19 referendum. Former People’s Party of Canada candidate and pro-separation […]

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her municipal affairs minister, Dan Williams, announced yesterday that their United Conservative Party Government will overrule Edmonton City Council’s infill housing policy, a decade in the making including three years of public engagement. At a back-yard news conference in northeast Edmonton’s Newton neighbourhood, Ms. Smith and Mr. Williams said they […]

It’s no surprise the Most Hated Man on Earth thinks that Canada should be busted up and sold for scrap. But it does clear the air to have it right out there, don’t you think? I speak of course of Elon Musk, although I realize that the title of Most Hated Man on Earth is […]

We’re less than two weeks out from the Oct. 19 separation vote that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was determined to put us all through come hell or high water and the election gong show continues unabated. With the hardest part yet to come, we all have to know its only likely to get worse from […]

Early last May, news media reported that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had been granted “Top Secret” security clearance. Really? A report in The Globe and Mail Saturday with new details about what a group of self-appointed separatist leaders got up to in Washington D.C. in 2025 raises intriguing questions about Ms. Smith’s security clearance. According […]

Quite naturally, most of the focus by the groups hurriedly formed to support a remain-in-Canada vote in the separation referendum that has been aided, abetted and forced on Albertans by the United Conservative Party of Premier Danielle Smith has focused on getting out a strong “remain” vote on Oct. 19. While it shares other groups’ […]

Hallelujah! Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Canadian government has designated Alberta’s next bitumen pipeline to the Salish Sea a project of national interest, big smiles all ’round – including, of course, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s. “In a more volatile, dangerous and divided world, speed, certainty and predictability are competitive advantages,” Mr. Carney said yesterday in […]

Have you noticed how Alberta separatists who a few months ago were boldly predicting a massive separation victory on Oct. 19 have turned to whinging about how we need to “send Ottawa a message”? Even Keith Wilson, the St. Albert lawyer behind the Let Alberta Decide group, could recently be found pleading with voters who […]

It’s a three-hour drive from Edmonton to Calgary – maybe less with Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen’s new higher speed limits. So does it really make sense to spend $38 billion or more to build a high-speed passenger-only rail system between the two cities? Of course it doesn’t. But – what the hell? – Canadians […]

One of the most disgraceful episodes of the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta took place on April 18, 2020, when Devin Dreeshen, Jason Copping and Deena Hinshaw assured employees of Cargill Inc.’s meat packing plant in High River during a telephone town hall that their workplace was safe. At the time, Mr. Dreeshen was the minister […]

The $64,000 Question, as they used to say, is whether urban voters in Alberta are growing disaffected with Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government because of Danielle Smith’s divisive separation referendum or with Danielle Smith herself. I say it’s the referendum and predict that if the Remain side wins decisively on Oct. 19, many of Premier […]

Lorne Gibson has served both as Alberta’s chief electoral officer and its election commissioner. The latter position was created by the NDP Government of premier Rachel Notley in the spring of 2018 to enforce election legislation. It was eliminated by Alberta’s first United Conservative Party Premier, Jason Kenney, at the end of 2019. Mr. Gibson […]

Say what you will about the big strategic brains behind Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government, at least they didn’t repeat their midsummer “energy rebate” bungle. Mind you, they’re bringing in so much money thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump’s war of choice on Iran, which was only supposed to last a week or two, that […]

Whatever happens on Oct. 19, the United Conservative Party of Premier Danielle Smith will have left Alberta a worse place than it was before the 10 referenda scheduled to be voted on that day. After the ballots have been counted, Alberta will be angrier, more divided, more radicalized, and not incidentally a worse place to […]

The United Conservative Party decision to provide Alberta political parties with a “list of electors” with no electors listed in it for the Oct. 19 referendum vote either “demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of election scrutineers or disdain for the role that they play,” says former Alberta election commissioner Lorne Gibson. Mr. Gibson, […]

According to a news account by The Canadian Press that will be read across the Dominion, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith delivered an emotional appeal to Albertans to remain in Canada yesterday as “Conservative elder statesman” Preston Manning benevolently looked on. I’ll concede this much about Premier Smith’s performance as the warm-up act for Mr. Manning’s […]

As Alberta careens toward a chaotic and divisive vote on separation seemingly drafted to discourage the United Conservative Party’s dominant separatist faction from trying to force Premier Danielle Smith out as party leader, her cabinet on Thursday approved a temporary policy the Opposition NDP says is intended to help separatists. The cabinet order – Order-in-Council […]

At the end of their exertions, even the reliable team of neoliberal apparatchiks assembled by Premier Danielle Smith’s favourite economist last June couldn’t come up with a “scenario” in which Alberta separation could be made to look like a good idea. The final report on the cost of Alberta separating from Canada by the “independent […]

On the day of the Calgary-Shaw by-election, a photo began to appear on social media of United Conservative Party candidate Mike Derry’s campaign manager, Craig Chandler, planting signs begging Conservatives not to split their vote in the riding. “Don’t split the vote! Vote UCP!” urged the message, which showed up close to official signs encouraging […]

Alberta NDP candidate Kyle Campbell won the Calgary-Shaw by-election last night, beating the United Conservative Party’s Mike Derry in a contest that looked too close for comfort most of the evening as vote numbers trickled onto Elections Alberta’s website. But the final unofficial result – 7,461 votes for Mr. Campbell to 6,879 for Mr. Derry […]

Tomorrow is by-election day in Calgary-Shaw. Voters in that riding in the city’s far south will have an opportunity not just to spank the United Conservative Party of Premier Danielle Smith for its devotion to private health care, open-pit coal mining, AI data centres and questionable ethics, but to send a message to Donald Trump […]

Admittedly, the revelation by The Narwhal yesterday that Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government is seriously pondering a scheme to create public corporations to build and operate pipelines to carry natural gas to a multitude of AI data centres across the province, and to force private companies to invest in the project, comes as a shocker. […]

There’s a substantial and growing body of economic research that separation would be a catastrophe for Alberta and Albertans, especially working people. As economist Jim Stanford observed in his Aug. 31 report on the false promises made by Alberta’s separatists and the grave risks their scheme presents, “economists are unanimous that the costs of establishing […]

Conventional wisdom in Canadian political and media circles seems to be that Albertans are almost to a man and woman deeply discontented with their relationship with the rest of Canada. Yet recent polling about the divisive and deceptively worded separation referendum foisted on Albertans by their province’s now separatist dominated United Conservative Party Government strongly […]

On Thursday, a mostly anonymous group of some 47 individuals identifying themselves as “the Alberta Transition Council” dropped a document they called “The Alberta Transition Plan, a Practical Analysis of Alberta’s Transition from Province to an Independent Country.” Only two authors are named in the document, St. Albert lawyer Keith Wilson, a leader of the […]

Never let it be said that the Alberta’s United Conservative Party government isn’t in favour of recycling stuff – at least as long as that can be used to create higher costs and more red tape to help strangle the development of renewable energy. Yesterday, the UCP opened a new front in its War on […]

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith marked the “Alberta Day” moment in time with a couple of significantly different official messages and an apocalyptic prophecy. Yesterday morning at 10 o’clock, an email from the government showed up in journalists’ email accounts bearing Ms. Smith’s official Alberta Day message. This was obviously considered important enough to be reproduced […]

Good morning, my fellow Albertans! Happy Alberta Day! (Such as it is.) No, you can’t sleep in. Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney’s lame celebration is a “recognized commemorative day.” So, no day off for you. And no overtime either. Better get crackin’! The legal holiday is next Monday. You know, Labour Day, a national holiday. […]

Oddly, Alberta media seem to have had very little to say about the new analysis by the Pembina Institute that the $13-billion Artificial Intelligence data centre planned by Meta Platforms Inc. in Sturgeon County could add from $270 to $460 a year to Albertans’ electricity bills once the hyperscale installation has powered up. “At the […]

Now seen from coast to coast as the weakest link in the national response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ugly tariff war on Canada, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith took to a podium in Grande Prairie yesterday to do some reputational damage control. She trotted out a few pieties about how unfairly U.S. President Donald Trump […]

With a few exceptions, most Canadians seem to agree that while a tariff war with the United States is far from ideal, the only sensible way to respond to bad-faith bargaining by the Trump Administration in the United States is with dollar-for-dollar reciprocal tariffs, targeted to hit Americans where they’ll feel it. The rare exceptions […]

Now that voters everywhere in North America are turning against Artificial Intelligence data centres hard and fast, what’s Alberta’s United Conservative Party going to do? They’ve spent two years planning to woo data centres to Alberta as if they were the greatest industrial development since the invention of the steam engine. They even quietly created […]

If a country had to pick a moment to strike back with targeted countervailing tariffs at the Trump Administration’s habitual bad-faith trade bargaining, surely it would be difficult to imagine a better moment than the day after Labour Day 2026. As is now well understood by almost everybody on both sides of the world’s longest […]

You’d think Danielle Smith, of all people, would have seen her government’s troubles with Artificial Intelligence data centres coming right up Highway 2. After all, back in 2011 and 2012 when Ms. Smith was the still the new leader of the fledgling Wildrose Party, she ruthlessly exploited the Progressive Conservative Government’s plans to build multi-billion-dollar […]

If Alberta separatists manage to eke out a victory in Danielle Smith’s Oct. 19 referendum, she says she’ll “have to” move quickly to a binding referendum before voters have a chance to pass judgment on her United Conservative Party Government in a general election. So say couple of far-right, pro-separatist outlets that are normally simpatico […]

We’re all going to learn some interesting stuff, beyond the usual government-versus-opposition popularity contest that has typified Alberta politics for the past decade, from the Sept. 14 by-election in Calgary-Shaw called yesterday to replace former United Conservative Party leadership candidate and cabinet minister Rebecca Schulz. Will the fact that the UCP standard bearer in the […]

Where the hell is Dale Nally now that we actually need him? For those of you who missed the memo, Mr. Nally is the “minister of red tape reduction” in Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party Government. Unfortunately, as anyone living through this government’s existence should by now understand, no one loves red tape more than […]

Oh for crying out loud! Preston Manning, 84, the superannuated Godfather of the Canadian right, has teamed up with another tiresome has-been from conservative Western Canadian politics to try to polish up Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s tarnished October separation referendum with a two-day “virtual assembly” in late September. Mr. Manning’s sidekick in this elaborate constitutional […]

What are we to make of that “mysterious cash surge” in donations to the Republican Party of Alberta just before the June 2025 by-election in the Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills riding? At the time, RPA Leader Cameron Davies was running in the by-election to replace former United Conservative Party MLA Nathan Cooper, the Speaker of the Legislative […]

Sorry folks, but encouraging Calgary lawyers to dress up in cowboy hats and Cuban heels like extras on the set of Yellowstone for 10 days every July does not a distinct society make. What’s more, it’s about as close as Alberta’s going to get to a “distinct legal tradition,” too. Yeah, Alberta’s United Conservative Party […]

ST. ALBERT, Alberta – The St. Albert Public Library Board has estimated it will cost about $100,000 next year to comply with the United Conservative Party Government’s unprecedented library censorship scheme, which is now the law of the land. Bearing in mind that the UCP book ban is a policy intended to solve a […]

Professional Biologist, author and educator Lorne Fitch, a frequent contributor to this blog on environmental and conservation topics, returns with a disturbing list of reasons Albertans should be concerned about the state of conservation in Alberta. The current troubling state of affairs is the result of the policies and attitudes of both the United Conservative […]

“In Alberta we believe in free speech. Full stop.” So says Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith. And it’s true … sort of. We absolutely believe in free speech here in Wild Rose Country … except when we don’t. And there are no exceptions, ever … except when there are. Well, you’ve got to hand it […]

Alberta separatists, having run our uninspiring Tory Blue provincial flag up the metaphorical flagpole and declared it to be a symbol of independence and “absolutely gorgeous” to boot, have their knickers in a twist because the display of the flag in some businesses has become a topic of a teapot tempest. Being a movement steeped […]

The United Conservative Party Government must be encountering stiffer opposition than it expected to its plan to make Alberta North America’s dumping ground for the Artificial Intelligence data centres that citizens most everywhere else are organizing to fight. Consider the slick propaganda section that’s appeared on the Government of Alberta’s official website, which bizarrely tries […]

Owing to the vagaries of the Georgian calendar, Labour Day won’t happen this year until Sept. 7. This may or may not be a disappointment to the Big Brains of Alberta’s United Conservative Party. On the one hand, they’re stuck with Sept. 1 for former premier Jason Kenney’s lame celebration of Alberta’s achievement of official […]

“Hi, I’m Danielle Smith, and I believe no one should ever have to pay out of pocket to see a family doctor.” So said Alberta’s premier in a 30-second pre-election video posted to the Internet on April 12, 2023. The video continued, with Ms. Smith explaining in her chirpy, personable, reassuring public voice: “That’s why […]

“Too big to rig,” proclaimed yesterday’s Canadian Press headline, carrying more than a little water for Jeffrey Rath, house legalist of the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project, who spoke the words. “Alberta separation petition succeeds with 223K verified signatures,” the rest of the headline said, factually enough up to a point. So there’s your hard-news summary […]