Jason Markusoff

While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Jason Markusoff.

Jason Markusoff

Lacombe-Ponoka MLA who made derogatory remarks about trans students could return to UCP caucus: Danielle Smith

Premier Danielle Smith is open to letting MLA Jennifer Johnson back into the UCP caucus, but not until after the legislature passes new transgender policies this fall.Johnson was elected last year as a United Conservative member for the Lacombe-Ponoka riding, but the UCP excluded her and made her sit as an Independent because of derogatory remarks she had made about transgender students.

Jason Markusoff

Inside the pressure campaign on Danielle Smith to make gun ownership (and more) an Alberta right

Premier Danielle Smith intends to strengthen the little-known Alberta Bill of Rights this fall to include protections for people who refuse to be vaccinated, but she's facing heavy pressure from United Conservative activists to go much farther in her overhaul, CBC News has learned.A group from the premier's riding in Medicine Hat, which calls itself the Black Hat Gang, has met with senior government officials and proposed a massive new draft of Alberta's rights document. The "gang" wants it to enshrine an array of new rights, including confidentiality of health information and "informed consent" to medical care, as well as rights to keep and bear firearms, to use "sufficient force" to defend one's property, and "freedom from excessive taxation."

Jason Markusoff

The cheers and jeers of Danielle Smith's private party summer

A couple of Tuesdays ago, Premier Danielle Smith's evening began with her facing heat for not rushing to ban COVID vaccines for children.Then it moved on to Smith having to answer about why she wasn't pushing harder to remove Alberta from the Canada Pension Plan.Before the night's end, she also fielded questions on whether she'd legalize property owners holding up intruders at gunpoint, and if the Alberta government would act on the "chemtrails" theory that aircraft are emitting chemical clouds for "geo-engineering" in the skies above us.

Jason Markusoff

Helplessness and the Jasper inferno

There's a wash of emotions that surely hit the firefighters having to retreat from the wall of flame, and the Jasper residents learning by social media and rumour that their homes and businesses were lost, and Alberta's premier tearing up while waxing rhapsodically about what was lost and what will be recovered.

Jason Markusoff

So many self-inflicted wounds, so few allies. Alberta's energy war room was long doomed

It was never really the war room that former Alberta premier Jason Kenney dreamed of.And even if it had turned out that way, it's not clear it would have worked any better than the pro-oil entity his UCP government actually wound up creating.Either way, the Canadian Energy Centre never seemed to reach its promised potential. And this week Premier Danielle Smith abandoned the idea, dissolving the organization into her own government, making it a lesser tool in her own fight on behalf of the oil and gas sector.

Jason Markusoff

Shannon Phillips targeted climate and parks action. Then she got targeted. The NDPer is now leaving office

The Rachel Notley government's consumer carbon tax wound up becoming a weapon the UCP wielded to drum the Alberta NDP out of office. But that levy-and-repayment program, and the wide-ranging "climate leadership plan" around it, also stood as the NDP's boldest, provincial-reputation-altering move in their single-term tenure.And as the party reignites its bid to return to government this summer with a new leader, New Democrats will do so without the veteran MLA who led the party's push to make the world take Alberta more seriously on climate action.

Jason Markusoff

Albertans think Danielle Smith is bad on affordability. Here's why she isn't paying for it

The three most important issues to Albertans are health care, the cost of living and housing affordability — and fewer than one-third of Albertans think the provincial government is handling any of those files well, according to the latest batch of Janet Brown's polling for CBC News.You might think these findings of public opinion ought to set off multiple fits of panic in Premier Danielle Smith's office. The big three issues, and they're all stinkers for the United Conservative government?

Jason Markusoff

The 'Redmonton' party no more: Alberta NDP's base has shifted to Calgary

You don't have to go far back — 2012, or four elections ago — to find a time when the Alberta NDP hardly registered in Calgary.Sure, they ran candidates, but none of them seriously door-knocked or campaigned. They averaged less than five per cent of the votes in Alberta's largest city in 2012.

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith, big government's unlikely fan

When Premier Danielle Smith put forth the ambition of building a multi-city passenger train network to link Banff, Calgary, Edmonton and many other points, the questions came quick: are you setting up Alberta taxpayers for a multibillion-dollar boondoggle or two?

Jason Markusoff

Can't they ever just get along, Justin Trudeau and Danielle Smith? Sometimes, yes!

In among all the pokey words Premier Danielle Smith flung at the prime minister (and his environment minister) after meeting with Justin Trudeau, one gentler term nudged its way into her rhetoric.Gratitude.That's right. From a premier from this western province to a PM with that surname.

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith bets Albertans would rather save than spend — finally

Premier pitches massive Heritage Fund as she shelves tax cut, tightens spending. There's paying attention, and then there's paying for attention. The latter has become quite an Albertan habit.Premier Danielle Smith has picked up the habit that Ralph Klein started in the early 1990s and delivered her second paid-time premier's televised addresses Wednesday — though all the other premiers in between these two former broadcasters have also done so, including Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney.

Jason Markusoff

NDP MP wants to treat oil like tobacco. Alberta NDP doesn't smoke the same stuff

New Democrat MP Charlie Angus's message this week that the oil and gas sector needs to have its "big tobacco moment" and no longer be advertised positively will play well among the Canadians who largely view fossil fuels as climate-ravaging toxins that must be shunned as quickly as possible.The federal NDP member's message and new private member's bill will play less well among the Canadians whose livelihoods rely on the production and sale of the fossil fuels that nearly all other Canadians wind up using on a daily basis to move around and stay warm.

Jason Markusoff

Ex-mayor Nenshi loathes partisan politics. He may run for Alberta NDP leader anyway

Former Alberta justice minister Kathleen Ganley kicked off her bid Monday to lead the NDP, stressing her Calgary roots. By this time next week, Edmonton caucus mates Rakhi Pancholi, Sarah Hoffman and David Shepherd will likely have joined her in the race to replace the departing Rachel Notley.That lineup of leadership candidates has been reported publicly for some time now, and campaign teams have been quietly jostling for support since at least last autumn. With no clear front-runner, it's shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable and interesting NDP leadership contests anywhere in Canada in some time (they tend to be relatively sleepy affairs with little competition or none at all).

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith bids to transcend politics with Canada's toughest trans youth rules

Premier Danielle Smith swore for months that she didn't want to politicize issues around the rights and aspirations of transgender, gender-fluid or questioning youth, and has now declared Canada's most restrictive and wide-ranging set of policies governing the rights and aspirations of those same minors.She didn't want to politicize it, and yet there Smith was on Thursday, by herself at the news conference lectern. The health, education and sport ministers weren't on hand to explain the various reforms, nor any civil servants or subject experts — only Alberta's chief politician.

Jason Markusoff

Tucker Carlson brought controversy to Danielle Smith's Calgary — then took her somewhere dicier

U.S. commentator presses Alberta premier on convoy-related legal cases. Back at work in Alberta after two weeks of vacation, Premier Danielle Smith chose as her first public appearance in 2024 a conversation on stage with Tucker Carlson, the U.S. commentator whose views and remarks became too much for his Fox News bosses to tolerate.On Tuesday night, they enjoyed a private dinner together in Calgary, these two former mainstream broadcasters, one now a government leader and one who's fielded speculation about becoming Donald Trump's vice-presidential running mate.

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith eyes an Alberta go-between for federal-city deals

Here's a non-exhaustive list of things that Premier Danielle Smith's government would like to know by month's end:

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith warned about 'net-zero' 2035. Alberta power grid's woes showed up early

In white text on black boards, messages that were both visually and rhetorically stark flanked Premier Danielle Smith last fall as she launched a big advertising campaign against Ottawa's clean electricity regulations."No one wants blackouts in –30°C.""No one wants to freeze in the dark."Both statements are universal truths, no doubt.

Jason Markusoff

Notley made Alberta NDP a winner and planted unlikely dream: winning again

For a sense of how colossal the Alberta NDP's debt is to Rachel Notley, consider this.Their three best election results were in the three under her leadership, the party winning a combined 116 seats in those races. Across the 12 elections before that, the NDP won 51.That's fewer than the number of MLAs elected under Notley's banner in 2015 alone, to make her premier.

Jason Markusoff

In 2024, Alberta NDP decides who it is without Rachel Notley as leader

Since at least her days as premier, NDP Leader Rachel Notley has worn the same wristwatch. No luxury wrist bling — it's a digital number, though not as smart as an Apple Watch either.Notley instead relies on the simplicity of a Garmin Forerunner 35 with a silicon wristband. Big digital time display, and it can sync with her phone's texts with her husband and her music player.

Jason Markusoff

A matter of time: Danielle Smith is putting in the hours to prevent UCP unrest

A decade ago this coming spring, Alison Redford resigned as Alberta premier, largely under the crushing weight of revelations of her profligate flight habits.At the time, some commentary wondered why government-funded flying proved fatal to Redford but never seemed to dent former premier Ralph Klein, whose use of provincial aircraft prompted critics to dub the fleet Air Ralph. Was there some sort of gender double standard?Sexism might always lurk in some form or another around our politics. But let's propose another factor into why high-flying felled one Tory premier and not another:

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith would never accept Ottawa's oil emissions rules, no matter how flexible

It might not have mattered for the Alberta government's reaction that what the Trudeau government promised as a 42-per-cent cap on oil and gas emissions will actually only require that industry to curb emissions by 20 to 23 per cent by 2030.It might also not have been significant that there's ample flexibility and allowances that technology might not be ready by decade's end for aggressive emissions curbs — stuff that green advocates call "loopholes."

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith to invoke Sovereignty Act on Ottawa power rules next week, say sources

The Danielle Smith government intends to put its Sovereignty Act into action next week to shield Alberta power companies from the proposed federal clean electricity regulations, CBC News has learned.The province will use the controversial law to introduce a resolution in the legislature that declares Ottawa's plan to slash grid emissions an unconstitutional federal measure, and spell out ways the regulations would not be enforced in Alberta, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Jason Markusoff

Preston Manning's fiction made real in his Alberta pandemic report

Preston Manning's report on the government's COVID response concluded that emergency management agencies should lead over the health department, demanded economic impact assessments for any health protections and criticized the courts' deference to "demonstrably justifiable" limits on freedoms.You might think we're referring to the panel report Manning was commissioned to lead for Alberta's government. You'd be partly right.

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith's UCP base has big demands. She's wary of going quite that far

Alberta's premier leads a party whose most active members almost unanimously want the province to refuse to house trans women in women's prisons, and require schools to tell parents if their children want to secretly change their pronouns, as New Brunswick and Saskatchewan have controversially done.United Conservative Party members also voted unanimously at their convention to eradicate diversity and inclusion offices at universities and colleges, ban safe drug consumption sites, and prohibit electronic vote tabulators — on suspicion that election tampering may happen (or already has).

Jason Markusoff

Alberta UCP activists want 'control' of party board — but to do what with it, exactly?

David Parker's bespectacled eyes widened as the leader of Take Back Alberta told fellow political activists what will go down at the United Conservative Party's annual convention this weekend.It's different from what most traditional politicos will say is happening at Calgary's BMO Centre — a political schmoozefest where members get to clap thundersticks for leader Danielle Smith, get tipsy at hospitality suites and choose the party apparatchiks who manage fundraising dollars and help constituency associations file documents on time.Parker sees it in more revolutionary terms.

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith's pension numbers suggest bumpy ride for contributors — with cushions removed

When Danielle Smith says Albertans would save $1,425 a year in an Alberta Pension Plan and other Canadians would pay "only" $175 more, the Alberta premier is trying to excite one group of people and calm the jitters of another.But if these are the numbers Smith is using, then she's adding an extra layer of bumps and uncertainty to a future that has Alberta outside the Canada Pension Plan — and envisioning a world in which employees' contribution costs would bounce up and down from year to year.

Jason Markusoff

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:

Jason Markusoff

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.As limited as the province's engagement process has been thus far on Alberta going it alone on pension — a sunny-side-up questionnaire and phone-in forums — the largest stakeholder in this matter was bound to weigh in.

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith's big-money sales pitch on Alberta pension plan hasn't worked yet

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can usually only count on polite applause when he's talking to an Alberta business crowd.But when executives hosted him this week at an Ottawa reception, he found one line worked surprisingly well — praise for the national pension program that Premier Danielle Smith wishes to exit.In a list of federal programs assisting Alberta (health care, transit, housing), Trudeau added: