Ralph Klein

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.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Jeffery J. Nichols

Leduc No. 1 and Alberta's unluckiest lucky day

David J. Climenhaga

| February 14, 2017

February 13 is the 70th anniversary of the day Alberta simultaneously won the lottery and started to watch everything go to hell in a handcart. February 13...Alberta's unluckiest lucky day.

In other words, 70 years ago, with memories of the Great Depression and the Second World War still very fresh in the minds of the province's population of about 800,000 souls, Leduc No. 1, a few miles south of Edmonton, struck oil and the whole world changed.

Cars didn't have seat belts back in 1947, so no one thought to say: "Fasten your seat belts!" But by gosh, they should've!

Advocates of more choice in education unite to condemn school board chair's call for more choice in education

David J. Climenhaga

| February 12, 2017

Conservative politicians, their vocal supporters, private school operators, separate school system officials, charter school advocates, administrators from such institutions, and parents of home schooled children have all been chanting the mantra of "competition is good" for so long most of us can hardly remember hearing anything else.

So the reaction to Edmonton Public School Board Chair Michael Janz's suggestion last week that the public system should offer its own Roman Catholic education specialty program has been interesting, to say the least.

They hate it!

It turns out that competition is always good … except when it isn't! Who knew?

Former Alberta premier Dave Hancock to be the subject of a hanging Monday afternoon at the Legislature

David J. Climenhaga

| February 10, 2017

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

As predicted in this space three years ago, it was only a matter of time before we Albertans had added to our premier provincial collection new portraits of first ministers Alison Redford and Dave Hancock.

Fred Henry, departing Catholic bishop, held strong pro-labour stance in addition to controversial social conservative views

David J. Climenhaga

| January 5, 2017

It seems odd to refer to Frederick Bernard Henry as "retiring" -- the outspoken Roman Catholic Bishop of Calgary was never very retiring, even though it was announced yesterday that he is.

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.

Canada's Conservatives have bulldozed their greatest strength into the ground for the sake of Trumpism

David J. Climenhaga

| December 21, 2016

Alberta’s most extreme right-wingers are not just talking these days as if it's only a matter of ticking the weeks off their calendars until they automatically defeat Premier Rachel Notley and the province's NDP government, but as if the same thing is bound to happen soon in Ottawa as well.

Soon enough, they seem to reckon, prime minister Kellie Leitch, Chris Alexander or Brad Trost will be Making Canada Great Again.

Jason Kenney flaunts his backers despite their questionable pasts

David J. Climenhaga

| November 24, 2016

It was almost 26 years ago that Ray Speaker, Minister of Municipal Affairs in the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Don Getty, rose in the Legislature in Edmonton in response to a member's question about a story that had appeared the morning before in the Calgary Herald.

The story had appeared on the front page of the Calgary Herald and said, in effect, that the PC government of the day had robbed Peter to pay Paul to build low-income housing in big cities. Or, more to the point, that it had robbed one group of people in need of a hand up to help another group in a similar situation and then put out a misleading press release implying it was spending new money.

The puzzling legacy of Calgary mayor Rod Sykes: Not even a cul-de-sac has been named after him!

David J. Climenhaga

| November 20, 2016

Rod Sykes was Mayor of Calgary from 1969 to 1977. Three consecutive terms is not a bad run for the chief magistrate of any big Canadian city.

During that time, through his remarkable force of personality, the one-time CPR real estate executive put in motion major projects that continue to benefit Alberta's largest city, among them development of Calgary's downtown convention centre and the city's sprawling light-rail transit system.

Yet, as my friend and former Calgary Herald colleague Andy Marshall told me recently, one of the puzzles of the legacy of James Rodney Winter Sykes is that "there's not even one pathetic street of drab, look-alike houses named after him. Not a cul-de-sac!"

Where's the evidence for a health care sustainability crisis in Canada?

Barret Weber

| November 16, 2016

Guest Post

There is no overwhelming evidence Canada's health-care system suffers from the dire sustainability crisis we hear so much about from mainstream media and right-wing think tanks.

Just the same, we hear plenty nowadays about the need to "bend the health-care cost curve," in Alberta and across Canada.

A recent book by Gregory Marchildon and Livio Di Matteo, Bending the Cost Curve in Health Care, identifies three main phases of health spending in recent Canadian history:

Ralph Klein

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