Jason Markusoff

Jason Markusoff

Russia and U.S. amplifying Alberta separatist narratives to stoke division, distrust: report

Moscow's influence scheme is covert, while Trump-aligned meddling is overt and public. A year ago, weeks after the Carney Liberals won the last federal election, the website albertaseparatist.com sprang up, accompanied by similarly named TikTok and YouTube accounts. Article headlines included “The case for sovereignty over statehood” and “Ottawa’s piggy bank wakes up” — but these sites don’t appear to...

Jason Markusoff

If court halts separatists' referendum bid, they'll push Danielle Smith to approve it anyway

Alberta separatists aren’t just enthused by the fact they have apparently surpassed the necessary 177,000 signatures to force their referendum onto ballots — they’re also celebrating when they reached the target. Stay Free Alberta claimed that accomplishment a week before a judge in Edmonton hears a First Nation’s injunction bid against the citizen’s initiative on April 7, arguing that the...

Jason Markusoff, Joel Dryden

Alberta separatism casts shadow over Conservative convention

Conservative leader expected to address separatism in speech tonight. The Conservative Party convention boasts roughly 2,650 delegates, which doesn’t make this the largest right-leaning political gathering this week in Calgary — or even the biggest on the Calgary Stampede park grounds. That title would belong to Stay Free Alberta’s separatist rally and petition signing event that drew more than three...

Jason Markusoff

How a UCP bill renewed Alberta separatist bid to force referendum, after court shot it down

Alberta separatist leaders expect to start canvassing in January to get their independence referendum question on the ballot, thanks to the provincial government’s latest legislation to make it easier for them to succeed. Were it not for the United Conservatives’ speedy passage of Bill 14 this week, the Alberta Prosperity Project’s citizens initiative would have been in peril, thanks to...

Jason Markusoff

How Danielle Smith's deal with Ottawa will go over with her anti-Ottawa base

At weekend UCP convention, activists might not settle for federal accord when what they want is separation. B.C. Energy Minister Adrian Dix purports to see right through Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her pipeline deal-making with Ottawa. To him, the memorandum of understanding to be inked today by Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney is really all about her base...

Jason Markusoff

Nenshi’s NDP relaunch gets big outside help: NYC mayor's ad agency and Ottawa Liberals

New party ad stresses Albertans' struggles on affordability, health — light on details of how to fix them. Nearly a year and a half after Naheed Nenshi began serving as Alberta NDP leader, and about two years out from the next scheduled election, his party has determined it’s time to reintroduce him to Albertans this week. The newly released video...

Jason Markusoff

A farmer protested policy at a Danielle Smith town hall. 5 days later, it was paused

Premier earning reputation for hearing a plea, being persuaded, acting. Chad Anderson had travelled 90 minutes from his farm near Cremona, Alta., to bend the premier's ear, but it was starting to look futile. He'd come to a town hall with Danielle Smith and Agriculture Minister RJ Sigurdson in Okotoks, an apparent rehearsal of sorts for the Alberta Next panels...

Jason Markusoff

Ex-UCP MLAs reviving Alberta's Progressive Conservative Party

Independent members seek signatures to re-register PC party that led Alberta for decades. Two Independent MLAs expelled from the UCP are bidding to resurrect the old party brand of Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein. Peter Guthrie and Scott Sinclair are petitioning to re-register the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta — the party that governed Alberta from 1971 to 2015, before...

Jason Markusoff

Which 'next' is Danielle Smith's Ottawa-affairs panel steering Alberta toward?

Before taking their latest chance to weigh in on the wisdom of exiting the Canada Pension Plan, Albertans must first watch a five-minute video, most of which tries to persuade them how great an idea it is. The promise of lower premiums and higher benefits hasn't sold well in the past. We recently learned that only 10 per cent of...

Jason Markusoff

Albertans for Carney? They're as impressed with new PM as they are with Poilievre: poll

Liberal leader rated very or somewhat impressive by 4 in 10 CPC voters. Alberta's politics are not without their complexity. Here's one striking new example. While this is a province where many people are newly interested in separating from Canada because the Liberals won — again — and nearly all ridings went Conservative — again — Albertans appear as likely...

Jason Markusoff

Want to boost Albertans' support for leaving CPP? Ask the question differently

It's apparent that a fourth Liberal victory has triggered a surge in anti-Ottawa sentiment in Alberta, but have things changed so much that a populace long opposed to pulling the province out of the Canada Pension Plan now supports it? One reading of fresh polling commissioned by the Premier Danielle Smith's government argues as much.

Jason Markusoff

Separatist group releases potential Alberta referendum question

Alberta Prosperity Project says it will push the premier to hold referendum in 2025. An Alberta separatist group released on Monday a referendum question on independence from Canada that it will petition to get in front of provincial voters — but only once it has garnered support from 600,000 Albertans. That's more than triple the number of signatures the Alberta...

Jason Markusoff

Will Danielle Smith steer Alberta away from separation, or will this train keep gathering steam?

When Premier Danielle Smith speaks, she's still placing the Canadian flags behind her in among the Alberta provincial flags. As much as critics insist she's either a separatist herself or is opening the door wide to the Alberta secessionist movement by easing the rules to have a referendum next year, the premier herself maintains that she wants Alberta to stay...

Jason Markusoff

Danielle Smith's reform is nudging Alberta separation vote from 'if' toward 'when'

One hundred and seventy-seven thousand people. That's roughly 3.5 per cent of Alberta's population. It's also the amount of signatures that will be needed to force a separation referendum designed to take those five million people and their land out of Canada.

Jason Markusoff

Mark Carney offered some change. Albertans wanted more. Now what will they demand from him?

Canadians have elected a prime minister who promised to pursue energy corridors across Canada, to slash project approval timelines and boosted an oilsands carbon capture project during the English leaders' debate. But this wasn't the Conservative prime minister that most Albertans were hoping for. They didn't reject the Liberals with the same ferocity and lopsided results they'd delivered to Justin...

Jason Markusoff

Big voter turnout needed for Conservative victory, Poilievre tells hometown Calgary crowd

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre took his message of change Friday to Calgary, where his supporters will hope there's minimal change as Liberals push for multiple victories in the predominantly Conservative city. Speaking to what organizers said was more than 3,000 people, he stressed the importance of ensuring all their friends and relatives vote in Monday's election.

Jason Markusoff

Red ripple in blue Calgary? Liberals eye record gains in Conservative stronghold

A veteran political organizer in Calgary asked Lindsay Luhnau if she'd consider running for the Liberals last fall. It was an easy "no thanks" for Luhnau, director of a local investment co-operative — Justin Trudeau's party was polling miles behind the Conservatives, and the leader's name was mud nationwide, let alone in blue Alberta's biggest city.

Jason Markusoff

Alberta separatists getting organized — a unity challenge for Canada and Danielle Smith's party

Prominent campaigners will push for provincial independence, inside and outside of UCP tent. You don't need to be a Preston-Manning-like soothsayer to imagine western separatist sentiment ticks upward if the Liberals win re-election. You just need to remember 2019 and the Wexit movement. Justin Trudeau's Liberals narrowly won a second term that fall, and disgruntled Albertans and Saskatchewanians self-branded a...

Jason Markusoff

Alberta New Democrats for Carney? It's more complicated than that

At the height of the debate about oil pipelines last decade, relations became so strained between the Alberta NDP and the federal wing that ex-premier Rachel Notley wouldn't even say she was definitely voting for Jagmeet Singh's party in 2019. Tensions appear to have thawed. Notley, now in private life, has publicly endorsed the Edmonton Centre NDP candidate in the...

Jason Markusoff

'No democracy': Frustration with Conservatives as Calgary candidates appointed without contest

Activists organized, sold memberships for nomination races that never happened in Calgary McKnight, Skyview. Several federal Conservative activists in northeast Calgary are criticizing their party after they'd organized and sold memberships for a year or longer in hopes of running in the election, only to watch the party appoint other candidates at the last minute in two key ridings. There...

Jason Markusoff

At Florida gala, Danielle Smith tried to laugh off 51st state rhetoric. Here's what she said

CBC News has obtained video of Alberta premier's onstage discussion with podcaster Ben Shapiro. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's response to a U.S. podcaster's quips about Canada as the 51st state last week was to tell him and a conservative group's Florida donor gala that they'd regret having tens of millions of progressive Canadians voting for the U.S. president, according to...

Jason Markusoff

When Danielle Smith tried explaining Poilievre to Americans, Canadians heard it too

Premier saying Conservative leader 'in sync' with Trump rattles both federal and provincial politics. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith came into the federal election campaign hoping her words would leave an imprint.

Jason Markusoff

Alberta cabinet member urges Danielle Smith to remove health minister

Peter Guthrie calls for Adriana LaGrange to be moved to 'another unrelated ministry' amid AHS probes. A UCP cabinet minister is urging the premier to remove Health Minister Adriana LaGrange from her post while investigations continue into serious allegations a fired Alberta Health Services CEO has made about major health contracts, CBC News has learned.

Jason Markusoff, Julia Wong

Former Alberta Health Services CEO alleges wrongful dismissal in $1.7M lawsuit against province

The former CEO of Alberta Health Services has filed a $1.7-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit against AHS and the province, claiming she was fired because she'd launched an investigation and forensic audit into various contracts and was reassessing deals she had concluded were overpriced with private surgical companies she said had links to government officials.

Jason Markusoff

Team Canada mates no more: how tariff threat put Ford and Smith on divergent tracks

As Albertans will testify after experiencing the Tory dynasty and the last couple of UCP premiers, conservatives are not all built the same. Jason Kenney took Alberta in directions past Progressive Conservative leaders never dared to, while Danielle Smith rose to leadership by repudiating Kenney's COVID management — and he did his share of rebuking her Sovereignty Act idea.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...