Premier Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party Government -- which all Albertans have been taught by the opposition conservative parties can do no wrong -- has decided to amalgamate their province's 12 localized health regions into a single massive province-wide health region this fall.

Since Alberta conservatives seem to believe everything Wall does practically amounts to earthly perfection -- Progressive Conservative uniter-o-the-righter candidate Jason Kenney calls him "the real leader of Western Canada" -- it's fair to wonder what they'll do now that the Saskatchewan premier has done something a lot of them fervently believe is perfectly wrong.

The question must now be asked: Were the attacks by Saskatchewan's premier over the past year and a half on the policies of Alberta’s NDP government just an interprovincial rivalry with an ideological tilt, or were they made in return for more than $2-million in donations from Alberta corporations reported Tuesday by an Edmonton-based progressive advocacy group?

The surprise shouldn't be that Alberta's Wildrose Party went Full Trump at its annual general meeting in Red Deer Friday night and yesterday. It should be that anyone's surprised.

Still, mainstream media were agog at this turn of events. To give credit where credit is due, several journalists actually used the T-word to describe both Wildrose Leader Brian Jean's bleak fantasy about the state of Alberta's society as we near Halloween 2016 and the Tea Party policy prescriptions set out for his party by its members.

CALGARY

Was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's announcement Monday of a national carbon tax really a complete surprise to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and her closest advisors, as most media were persuaded to believe? Or was a quiet and mutually beneficial deal between the Ottawa Liberals and the Edmonton NDP done first?

A compelling counter-narrative has emerged in the hours since Trudeau's "bombshell" was detonated. To wit: That the Alberta NDP and the federal Liberals have been talking to one another and the New Democrats in Edmonton know perfectly well that the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion is going to be approved by the Trudeau's government.