Jun 19 2019 — Don Braid — Calgary Herald — Tuesday’s Trans Mountain pipeline approval was no whoop-de-do moment. There won’t be a Raptors-style victory parade in downtown Calgary. As Premier Jason Kenney said, the real test is construction — not the courtroom stop-and-start kind, but continuous physical progress of the pipe to Burnaby. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said several times that construction will start […]
Jun 12 2019 — Don Braid — Calgary Herald — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, bent on re-election, is already playing a divisive, dangerous game with the country he claims to lead. On Tuesday, six premiers including Jason Kenney sent him a letter warning that Bill C-69 in its original form, as well as Bill C-48, will damage the economy from coast to coast. On Bill […]
May 25 2019 — Bill Kaufmann — Calgary Herald — Weeks after Jason Kenney used Calgary’s skyline as a backdrop during his election campaign to highlight the city’s empty office space, federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer will use the same view to offer hope in filling them. On Saturday morning, Scheer will meet with reporters on Scotsman Hill overlooking the city’s downtown to detail his […]
May 15 2019 — Don Braid — Calgary Herald — Take a wary look at British Columbia; a shaky NDP government, supported by three Greens, fiercely hostile to the Trans Mountain pipeline. Now, imagine the same dynamic in Ottawa after the fall federal election. Try not to pass out. It’s by no means unthinkable that the Liberals will be reduced to a minority. To stay […]
May 2 2019 — Calgary Herald — Premier Jason Kenney and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened Thursday for their first face-to-face meeting since the Alberta election, saying they are looking for points of agreement. The meeting comes on the heels of an election that featured the new premier deploying heated rhetoric against Ottawa, and particularly Trudeau, almost daily. Kenney, who also made […]
Apr 18 2019 — Licia Corbella — Calgary Herald — Tuesday’s election win that gave Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party a majority government holds many lessons for those who engage in the politics of fear and smear. Not only does it not always work, it can backfire big time. The Alberta NDP ran a disgraceful, cynical campaign of attempted character assassination against United Conservative Party […]
Apr 17 2019 — Licia Corbella — Calgary Herald — The metaphor of a marathon doesn’t begin to describe the journey Jason Kenney embarked upon to become Alberta’s 18th premier with a resounding majority government, making the Alberta NDP the only one-term government in the province’s 114-year history. Even an Ironman metaphor doesn’t adequately symbolize the onerous odyssey that Kenney has undertaken to ensure Premier […]
Apr 17 2019 — Don Braid — Calgary Herald — They arrived on a wind of change in 2015, only to be blown out of office four years later by an even more powerful gale. Rachel Notley’s New Democrats, with all their dreams and hopes and agonies, succumbed exactly as UCP Leader Jason Kenney said they would, overwhelmed by a united conservative bloc that is […]
Apr 15 2019 — Don Braid — Calgary Herald — This election campaign comes to no gentle end. Rather, it slams into the finish line, brakes screeching, as hot and emotional as ever. On Sunday, Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel charged that phony robocalls were going out with a voice that sounds like his, saying that he wants people to vote for UCP Leader Jason […]
Apr 15 2019 — Chris Nelson — Calgary Herald — Well, if you’re going down to defeat anyhow, then dancing with the one that brought you is as effective an election strategy as any other, I suppose. Maybe that’s why, in the dying days of this provincial campaign, Premier Rachel Notley once again put her faith and Alberta’s economic future into the furtive hands of […]
Apr 13 2019 — Licia Corbella — Calgary Herald — During Alberta’s last election night on May 5, 2015, I was so nauseous I had to have a bowl on my lap just in case. Earlier that morning, I had received my first chemotherapy session for the triple-negative breast cancer I’d been diagnosed with that February. I was much too ill to stay up to […]
Apr 8 2019 — Calgary Herald — Last week’s leaders debate did little to sway the majority of Albertans ahead of the provincial election, according to a new poll calling for a landslide United Conservative win on April 16. Forum Research surveyed 1,132 Alberta voters following Thursday’s televised debate and found some 55 per cent of the electorate are in support of […]
Apr 4 2019 — Licia Corbella — Calgary Herald — Irony and hypocrisy are close bedfellows. Both were evident in extraordinary ways in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Less than one day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kicked two strong women out of the Liberal caucus for telling the truth about the SNC-Lavalin scandal, 338 young women — called Daughters of the Vote — […]
Mar 20 2019 — Licia Corbella — Calgary Herald — Politicking — like sausage-making — is ugly business. With apologies to the late Otto von Bismarck for messing with his famous quote about laws and sausages, “it’s better not to see them being made”. That, however, is what has happened with the so-called “kamikaze candidate” scandal — a.k.a. the “stalking horse” scandal — swirling around […]
Mar 20 2019 — Calgary Herald — The Office of the Election Commissioner has fined a United Conservative Party donor and reprimanded two others for donating money that wasn’t theirs in the wake of the kamikaze candidate scandal. The election commissioner’s website shows political contributor Darcy McAllister was fined $4,000 on Tuesday for contributing $4,000 to the Jeff Callaway campaign with funds […]