jim prentice

Portrait unveiling stands in for the fond official farewell former premier Dave Hancock never had from his PCs

| February 14, 2017

The unveiling of Dave Hancock's portrait in the Legislature yesterday may have been presided over by a New Democrat Speaker and featured a speech by an NDP premier, but it had the warm family quality one might have been expected from the official farewell the former premier never really got from his own Progressive Conservative Party.

Hancock was unexpectedly elevated the premiership by his caucus colleagues at the start of the summer of the Tories' discontent -- the date when he was sworn in was March 23, 2014, immediately after the PC caucus had for all intents and purposes fired his predecessor Alison Redford.

Wildrose reaction to proposed raise for front-line health workers illustrates the party's rightward shift

David J. Climenhaga

| February 5, 2017

Unhappy Progressive Conservative traditionalists have termed the still theoretical united-right party PC leadership Jason Kenney hopes to create after he wins the party leadership in March, "Wildrose 2.0."

But surely this is incorrect. If the Danielle Smith led Opposition party ginned up by oilpatch operators unhappy with former PC premier Ed Stelmach's plan to get Albertans a slightly better return on the resources they own was Wildrose 1.0, surely the B-Team now headed by Brian Jean is already Wildrose 2.0!

That means that in the likely event Kenney succeeds in uniting the right on his radical social conservative terms, the new entity should be called Wildrose 3.0.

For a mild-mannered guy, Stephen Khan's farewell to the PC leadership race was remarkably blunt

David J. Climenhaga

| February 1, 2017

What's remarkable about Stephen Khan's farewell to the Progressive Conservative leadership race -- and almost certainly from the Progressive Conservative Party as well -- is the passion of his fierce critique of both the state of the party and fellow candidate Jason Kenney.

Khan is a Progressive Conservative and there will be no Progressive Conservative Party if Kenney wins the leadership race, he told me bluntly yesterday. "He has been clear. He doesn't want to be the leader of the PC Party. He wants to form a 'unity' party."

'I have as much interest in joining the Wildrose 2.0 Party as you do."

'Real leader' Brad Wall's government feeds the fluctuations of a boom-bust economy as Alberta stays the course

David J. Climenhaga

| January 18, 2017

What a pleasure it is here in the nation's capital to be the one from the only province on the Prairies where grownups are still in charge!

I speak, of course, of Alberta -- but I speak of my home province in the context of the goings on in Saskatchewan earlier today, where the premier according to the best-known candidate to lead Alberta's Progressive Conservative Party is "the real leader of Western Canada."

Lid's still on the unite-the-right soup the Wildrose Party's leader is cooking up, but there are hints about the recipe

David J. Climenhaga

| January 10, 2017

As 2017 begins, we still await the details of Wildrose Party Leader Brian Jean's alternative plan to unite the right.

All we're supposed to know is that it presumably involves him, and not Jason Kenney or some other nominal Progressive Conservative, leading the charge against the NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley in the next provincial general election.

The Wildrose Party is still cooking up their launch strategy, and their only comment is that they won't yet comment. Naturally, idle hands being the Devil's workshop, this leads to idle speculation on the part of bloggers.

Past PC taxes disappear down conservative memory hole amid apocalyptic claims about similar NDP policies

David J. Climenhaga

| January 4, 2017

It's worth remembering as unite-the-right conservatives of all stripes completely melt down over the supposedly job-destroying, economy-destroying, soul-destroying 4.5-cent-per-litre increase in the price of gasoline introduced as part of the Alberta NDP Government's climate strategy, that if Jim Prentice's Progressive Conservatives had won re-election in May 2015 his government would have raised the gasoline tax roughly the same amount.

The Top 10 Alberta political news stories of 2016

David J. Climenhaga

| December 27, 2016

2016: It was the International Year of the Bean. I kid you not …

OK, technically, it was the International Year of Pulses. But you can take it from me, I'm an old agriculture reporter for what used to be a major metropolitan newspaper, and pulses have got nothing to do with heartbeats. It's a bean thing. In plain English, it means the International Year of the Bean. If you don't believe me, you can ask the United Nations.

What are the details of Wildrose Leader Brian Jean's better way to unite the right?

David J. Climenhaga

| December 19, 2016

Wildrose Party Leader Brian Jean keeps saying he's got a better plan to unite Alberta's right than Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Jason Kenney's much-publicized double reverse hostile takeover of the two Alberta conservative parties.

"I think that our plan is, quite frankly, much more palatable to both sets of members," Jean told a reporter last week. The trouble is, as the reporter went on to explain, the Opposition leader "provided few details."

Today marks the second anniversary of the Wildrose Party's mass defection

David J. Climenhaga

| December 17, 2016

It's December 17th. So today is the second anniversary of the epic Alberta floor crossing, the day Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith was in theory supposed to lead her entire Opposition party caucus across the floor of the House join Premier Jim Prentice's Progressive Conservative government.

It was a pivotal moment in the train of events that led to the election of Premier Rachel Notley's NDP Government on May 5, 2015.

Parents' rights survey reveals Jason Kenney's stance on homeschooling and sex ed

David J. Climenhaga

| December 11, 2016

Where does Jason Kenney stand on important issues in education, including the rights of LGBT students, "parents' rights," and funding?

The views of the front-runner in the race to lead the Progressive Conservative Party are not entirely promising, but to give the man credit, at least he was prepared to say what he believes -- albeit in a forum where he had reason to suspect his opinions would not be widely reported.

jim prentice

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