Lying liars who lie: Alberta, Canada edition
January 29, 2021 6:13 AM   Subscribe

(Source link: article by Geoff Dembicki in Vice) Climate change journalists around the world are part of a “disturbing” effort to hype up Greta Thunberg and “distribute propagandized climate change issues in their reporting,” says a new report paid for by an inquiry set up by the government of Alberta. The 133-page report says reporters who focus full-time on climate change are aiding powerful progressive global elites whose goal is to abolish capitalism and create a society in which life “will be constantly monitored, short, cold, and miserable, just like pre-industrial times.”

The report is part of a $3.5 million inquiry set up by Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party to investigate environmental opposition to the province’s tar sands, the world’s third largest oil reserves. The inquiry is expected to release its final conclusions by the end of January.

“It’s bizarre to suggest that we’re part of some kind of conspiracy,” Megan Darby, editor of the UK-based site Climate Home News, which was named in the report but not contacted for comment by its author, told VICE World News. “No one tells us what to write.”

Entitled “A New Global Paradigm: Understanding the Transnational Progressive Movement, the Energy Transition and the Great Transformation Strangling Alberta’s Petroleum Industry,” the report also says billionaires George Soros and Michael Bloomberg, along with the World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, are leading an international movement to catalyze massive economic and social changes under the pretext of limiting global carbon dioxide emissions, “a gas essential to all human life.”

... The report was authored by energy researcher Tammy Nemeth, who according to the CBC is currently a home-school teacher in England. She received $28,000 from the Alberta inquiry, whose budget in turn comes from the provincial government, inquiry spokesperson Alan Boras confirmed to VICE World News.


The Editorial Board of the Globe and Mail is not impressed. When the end-of-capitalism screed and two other papers of similarly questionable quality came to light this month, the reception was, as one might guess, not positive. ...To see an official government inquiry even glance at, never mind seem to embrace, such junk research is disturbing. Yet these commissioned papers are only the latest pratfall in a series of self-inflicted wounds that have marked the inquiry since its launch in mid-2019. Like Alberta’s other misguided attempt to sway public opinion – the Canadian Energy Centre, a.k.a. the “war room” – the inquiry into anti-Albertan activities is a bad idea turned farce. ... A new strategy, one rooted in reality, is overdue.

Want more context? Emma Gilchrist has the lowdown in The Narwhal: To bring this latest blunder into sharp focus you have to zoom out, to before the UCP existed: before Jason Kenney, before Rachel Notley, before Alison Redford, before Ed Stelmach, back to those halcyon days of Ralph Klein, who was in charge of my home province for 14 years until his retirement in 2006.

If you only have time to read one article, read Emma Gilchrist's opinion piece, above. As she writes at the end, "Alberta’s economy is going to need to change in the coming decades and change is hard. Real families will face real hardship in the process. But that change is coming whether anyone plans for it or not."
posted by Bella Donna (51 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
You can always count on the Alberta Conservatives party for crap like this.

It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that anyone thought a tax-funded propaganda mill was the correct response to climate change.
posted by Paladin1138 at 6:48 AM on January 29, 2021 [13 favorites]


“a gas essential to all human life.”

Jason Kenney knows a lot about gas.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 6:52 AM on January 29, 2021 [8 favorites]


I just can't get past this quote: “will be constantly monitored, short, cold, and miserable, just like pre-industrial times.”

Yes, the omni-present surveillance state that they had in pre-industrial times was a real bummer.
posted by allegedly at 7:12 AM on January 29, 2021 [38 favorites]


Jen Gerson is not impressed
posted by aeshnid at 7:13 AM on January 29, 2021 [7 favorites]


It is just so terribly embarrassing. I knew this government would be garbage fire of grift, incompetence and conspiracy when they won, but I don't think I truly appreciated how bad they could get.
posted by Kurichina at 7:26 AM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


Dumb question: Who is this report meant to convince? If it's a domestic Alberta audience, does that need convincing on the Conservative agenda?
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:38 AM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


The end of Alberta conservatism?
posted by No Robots at 7:46 AM on January 29, 2021


I think it does. Albertans, even those working in the oil and gas industry, must know that climate change is real. They just pretend otherwise because their livelihoods depend on it. A paper like this gives them some reassurance so they can keep on living as usual. I don't know what it does to the conservatives federally though. Alberta and Saskatchewan are going to be the core of any government they can form but I don't know if there's enough support for climate change denialism in the rest of Canada to get them to a majority.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:51 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


It can be filtered through conservative columnists who can say "A major report by the provincial government in Alberta looked at reporting and found . . . " And so continue the muddying of the waters and the impression that both sides must be doing something wrong.

And I don't know enough about Canadian politics, but in the US a report like this might be a prelude and a sort of trial balloon to restricting critical reporting, like the ag-gag laws. It probably wouldn't work, but the point is less to convince undecided people and more to empower horrible ones.
posted by mark k at 7:51 AM on January 29, 2021 [7 favorites]


It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that anyone thought a tax-funded propaganda mill was the correct response to climate change.

Fun fact: While governor of Indiana, dim bulb Mike Pence tried to create an official state-run news agency, before the project was laughed into oblivion by even Indiana's Republican-dominated legislature as horrifyingly -- and worse, ineptly -- Orwellian.
posted by Gelatin at 7:53 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]




What you expect from a provincial government that wants Canada to declare economic war on the US over the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, except stupidity of this sort?
posted by lesbiassparrow at 8:01 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


Jen Gerson isn't the only one who's not impressed.

Don Breakenridge, Calgary Herald: All this fighting, and Alberta has nothing to show for it.

Even Rick Bell of the Calgary Sun: Premier Kenney, get your act together!
posted by russilwvong at 8:07 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


They've been at this "foreigners are trying to wreck our economy" bullshit for years.
It's particularly amusing given who owns most of the tar sands.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 8:09 AM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


The end of Alberta conservatism?

In the same sense that Trumpism is the end of American conservatism.

Western Canada's oil and gas chauvinism is Canadian MAGA. The sexism, the racism (especially directed at native peoples), the self pitying victim complex, and of course the fact that the end of oil and gas presents the threat of material precarity, all manifest in exactly the same ways.

Their feelings don't care about climate facts.
posted by Reyturner at 8:11 AM on January 29, 2021 [9 favorites]




if you dropped by and know little to nothing about Alberta, and you are casually interested in the type of person Jason Kenney is, just know that he is a Jesuit university drop-out whose anti-abortion stance was sufficiently extreme to raise scrutiny among campus administration.

he parachuted into Alberta politics from a federal profile, and he cheated his way to leadership of a party that, like many other 'conservative' movements in the world, represents a blatant radicalization of some of the worst ideas and urges we find in our populations. all in the name of specific, narrow interests. it is incredibly depressing to know a perfectly capable party was ousted by this asshole.
posted by elkevelvet at 8:17 AM on January 29, 2021 [16 favorites]




Yeah, life will be short because we haven't been making incredible advances in medicine lately. And it'll be cold because there's not enough wind in the fucking prairies to generate enough electricity to heat homes. Pull the other one.

Yeah, the transition to renewables is going to involve some quite large expense, but it's nothing compared to the cost of climate change overall or even sea level rise in particular.
posted by wierdo at 8:21 AM on January 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


Depressingly, here's an excerpt from a letter to the editor that I wrote NINE YEARS AGO:

##########

On Monday, January 9, Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver published an open letter to Canadians in which he referred to “environmental and other radical groups” that, in his mind, are committed to destroying the Canadian economy while being funded by (unnamed) American benefactors and “jet-setting celebrities.”
...
Ironically, given Mr. Oliver's fear of “foreign special interest groups” that seek to “undermine Canada’s national economic interest,” many of these corporations are based not in Canada, but in the United States, China and in other foreign locations. For example, Mr. Oliver neglected to mention the $2.5 billion that PetroChina has invested in the MacKay River project in Alberta. Clearly, the most prominent “outside agitators” in this process are the very foreign investors that Mr. Oliver and Mr. Harper are welcoming into Canada with open arms.

############

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 8:24 AM on January 29, 2021 [6 favorites]


This isn't exactly new; they've been deep into petrochem-is-awesome propaganda for decades, so it's not surprising that the latest jerks in charge would keep at it. And, as the jerks in question are fundamentally morons, it shouldn't be surprising that they'd decide Nemeth was some kind of super-genius.

...I mean, shit, half of our elementary school excursions were to "museums" that glorified oil, coal, or both. Thrill to the Glorious Fractionation Tower! Be Stunned at the size of the Marvelous Dragline! Behold the Amazing Pipeline that will soon bring Civilization to the Frigid Northern Tribes!

I swear, science class was composed of exactly three things: how great oil is, the fact that beavers are great, and how to calculate wind chill to figure out when you'd die if you went outside without a jacket.
posted by aramaic at 8:24 AM on January 29, 2021 [8 favorites]


From the Jen Gerson link above: "And that inquiry into foreign funding — dogged at the outset with reports that its commissioner, Steve Allan, awarded a sole-source $905,000 contract to the law firm in which his own son was a partner, because, of course — has already devolved into a series of delays and controversies."

I read about Allan in one of the other articles and the nepotism did not surprise me much. What surprised me was that Allan has experience as a forensic accountant and was or is chair of Calgary Economic Development. Dunno why that was surprising, exactly.

The Jen Gerson opinion piece is great and includes, "Something needs saying here, and there's no way to say it kindly. Boom times and wealth have conditioned Albertans to believe that we matter a lot more than we do. Money gave this province delusions of self-importance that is reflected in a premier whose bombastic bar-brawl banter is increasingly revealed as short-man bluster. We're the guy who gets drunk and picks a fight but can't actually land a punch."

My heart goes out to those of you in or from Alberta. It's no fun to have lying liars in charge. My condolences.
posted by Bella Donna at 8:31 AM on January 29, 2021 [8 favorites]


it is incredibly depressing to know a perfectly capable party was ousted by this asshole.

I'm glad Rachel Notley is still leading the Alberta NDP, and will have another round against Kenney in 2023. I thought Alberta's 2015 climate policy blueprint was awesome - the federal climate policy (with a carbon price floor which now rises from $50/t in 2022 to $170/t in 2030!) reflects it in a lot of ways.
posted by russilwvong at 8:32 AM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


Alberta NDP hydrogen proposal
posted by No Robots at 8:34 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


...the report also says billionaires George Soros and Michael Bloomberg, along with the World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, are leading an international movement...

These folks seem pretty quick to blame a vast Jewish conspiracy for everything, much like Marjorie Taylor Greene and her Jewish Space Lasers.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:35 AM on January 29, 2021 [9 favorites]




I find it odd for a bunch of nationalists to put their ostensible faith in someone whose name means German... in Hungarian.
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:41 AM on January 29, 2021


Please don't use "Western Canada" and "Alberta" interchangeably.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 8:49 AM on January 29, 2021 [7 favorites]


I'm glad light's being shed on this bullshit, but also, I feel like a over the next few years a lot of people are going to have to get better at articulating the difference between consensus and conspiracy.
“It’s bizarre to suggest that we’re part of some kind of conspiracy,” Megan Darby, editor of the UK-based site Climate Home News, which was named in the report but not contacted for comment by its author, told VICE World News. “No one tells us what to write.”
The defining characteristic of modern conspiracies doesn't seem to be some central actor dictating a message, but an emergent lie (or cluster of lies) that multiple self-interested parties converge on, reinforcing each others' messages. Q's rallying cry is: "Do your own research!" and all of the people involved can honestly say that no one is "dictating" their message; they're making shit up and it propagates based on what best confirms the audience's priors.

Anyways, that doesn't detract from the excellent breakdown of the climate science hitjob going on here, just something that's been kicking around in my head for a while.
posted by verb at 8:50 AM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


> I knew this government would be garbage fire of grift, incompetence and conspiracy when they won, but I don't think I truly appreciated how bad they could get.

Just wait until he and Doug Ford get reelected!
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:06 AM on January 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


They're trying to hold back the tides, and fighting against global efforts to reduce human impacts to the climate to decrease further climate catastrophies. GM To Make Only Electric Vehicles By 2035, Be Carbon Neutral By 2040 (Forbes, Jan. 28, 2021)
General Motors is joining a move by global automakers to shift away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, with plans to sell only zero-emission cars and trucks by 2035 and be fully carbon neutral by 2040. The auto giant, which has an even more aggressive timetable than rivals Ford and Volkswagen, makes the shift as the Biden Administration prioritizes dramatic cuts in U.S. carbon emssions–especially from transportation.

The commitment to the independent Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) is an important component of this effort. SBTi is a coalition between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) with the aim of curbing global temperature rise to 1.5C or less. Among its efforts is a call to action for businesses to change the way they operate to reduce net carbon output to zero by 2050. SBTi can bring together a team of experts to help companies with their planning and evaluation to ensure that efforts will achieve the desired results.

A key element of any SBTi program is that companies aren’t simply buying carbon offset credits or committing to planting a bunch of trees. Companies actually have to revamp products and operations to achieve direct reductions in atmospheric carbon emissions.
See also: Arctic Refuge lease sale goes bust, with no bids from major oil companies (KTOO, Jan. 6, 2021)
One of the Trump administration’s biggest energy initiatives suffered a stunning setback Wednesday, as a decades-long push to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ended with a lease sale that attracted just three bidders — one of which was the state of Alaska itself.

Alaska’s state-owned economic development corporation was the only bidder on nine of the parcels offered for lease in the northernmost swath of the refuge, known as the coastal plain. Two small companies also each picked up a single parcel.

Half of the offered leases drew no bids at all.
While the latter story is not directly about Canada, it is about how international companies are sticking with existing oil and gas fields, and not expanding.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:17 AM on January 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


I honestly find parts of this more hilarious than outrageous. On the scale of outrageous and infuriating things the UCP has done since taking office that they commissioned papers full of bizarre conspiracy theories is just, like, a whimsical side show?

At least compared to, say, opening up the eastern rockies to coal mining and mountain top removal (something which had largely been prohibited since the 1970s) at the headwaters of all of our major rivers, potentially jeopardizing the drinking water of.. well..most everyone. That's just picking something recently in the news.
posted by selenized at 9:23 AM on January 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


I was so horrified by the Barry Cooper report being published in a (deliberately?) non-searchable, non-accessible format that I ftfy and uploaded it to Internet Archive for them to do their magic: Background Report on Changes in the Organization and Ideology of Philanthropic Foundations with a Focus on Environmental Issues as Reflected in Contemporary Social Science Research

cw: where to start? The thinly-veiled isn't particularly at all.

I also made sure that all of the reports and web content on that site were safely archived on the Wayback Machine, because this material shouldn't be deniable.
posted by scruss at 9:27 AM on January 29, 2021 [16 favorites]


I had been thinking of doing a FPP about the idea of petromasculinity, but frankly the Venn diagram between this report and that concept is a circle.
When petro-masculinity is at stake, climate denial is thus best understood through desire, rather than as a failure of scientific communication or reason. In other words, an attachment to the righteousness of fossil fuel lifestyles, and to all the hierarchies that depend upon fossil fuel, produces a desire to not just deny, but to refuse climate change. Refusing climate change is distinct from ignoring climate change, which is effectively what many people who otherwise acknowledge its reality do. Ignoring can be dangerous, too, but it is a passive disposition, often connected to emotions of frustration or confusion, or even fear. Refusal is active. Angry. It demands struggle. In the case of climate change, by refusing it, one also subscribes to an accelerated investment in petrocultures. Refusal can no longer rest at defending the status quo but must proceed to intensifying fossil fuel systems to the last moment, which will often require resorting to authoritarian politics.
Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire, Cara Daggett

I'll also note that there are many of us Albertans who are opposed to this government; recently polling at 26 percent support.
posted by Superilla at 10:11 AM on January 29, 2021 [10 favorites]


(from the Vice article) ...the report also says billionaires George Soros and Michael Bloomberg, along with the World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, are leading an international movement to catalyze massive economic and social changes under the pretext of limiting global carbon dioxide emissions, “a gas essential to all human life.”

When I'm drowning, all I can think about is how water is so essential to human life.
posted by jb at 10:24 AM on January 29, 2021 [6 favorites]


This Cara Daggett paper is great!

And I'd said "Western Canada's oil and gas chauvinism" earlier not as a euphemism for Alberta, but because it is essentially cultural tendency that exists all over, even if it hasn't quite manifested in a mainstream political death cult. There are lots of latent authoritarians in BC (where I live) who are totally on board with the extraction industry mindset, many of whom work white collar office jobs in the city, because it flatters their idea of masculinity and patriotism (mastering the land to make your fortune, the myth of "energy independence" which only ever seems to mean drilling oil, and all that shit).
posted by Reyturner at 11:35 AM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


It's all true, though. We are part of a global conspiracy to provide our entitled children and grandchildren with a planet capable of supporting human life, even at the cost of the fossil fuel industry profits. You caught us.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:43 AM on January 29, 2021 [19 favorites]


There is a real cognitive dissonance here in Alberta, even amongst those who supposedly believe the climate change science but think believe the economy should still be propped up by the fossil-fuel industry going forward. The NDP talked a lot about diversification when they were briefly in power, but I didn't see much action (at least from where I'm sitting).
posted by piyushnz at 1:01 PM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


The NDP talked a lot about diversification when they were briefly in power, but I didn't see much action (at least from where I'm sitting).

David Keith, Sara Hastings-Simon, and Ed Whittingham suggest that the right approach is for Alberta to use its oil and gas revenue to fund more promising industries. The oil sands fundamentals are dire and stark – and Canada shouldn’t spend to revive a dying dream.
All of this adds up to a not-too-distant future when Alberta producers will chase a diminishing market with declining prices, using a product that will likely face carbon penalties. We run the real risk of getting priced out of the market for new production in spite of our best efforts. In a carbon-constrained world trending toward cheap oil, the future for Alberta’s industry is bleak, as evidenced by the huge challenge companies now face to secure capital. ...

Building Alberta back better means using public money to develop and deploy new technologies and industries, and to enhance the province’s other industries. It means focusing on how Alberta can win by leveraging the skills and resources we have within our oil industry to develop new energy pathways, such as low-carbon hydrogen for transportation. It means capturing as much wealth as possible from the parts of the oil sector that remain competitive and putting it toward the profit drivers of the future. ...

We won’t know the exact path up front – whether it will be toward metals, chemicals, manufacturing, transport futures or the new and emerging sectors referenced in Alberta’s recovery plan – but we can build it on what Alberta has in abundance: a high-skilled young workforce and great education.

There is another role for government in managing the dislocation that workers that will face. Transition is a scary word for many working in the oil industry, because it can come across as “transitioning me into not having a job.” But it is less scary than facing market forces with no plan. Instead, we need a transition plan for workers that draws on policy tools such as income replacement, retraining and early retirement.
posted by russilwvong at 1:53 PM on January 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


One of the enduring problems that's coming home to roost is the abject failure of Alberta (and as someone in Ontario, let's be frank -- lots of other provinces would have bungled the handling of a potential windfall of this magnitude too, so this isn't intended as an "Alberta sucks amirite" comment), is its failure to contribute over time to its sovereign wealth fund while the good times were rolling. Even the Fraser Institute agrees (for people outside of Canada unfamiliar with it, the Fraser Institute is kind of like the American Enterprise Institute):

Over the past decade, the province of Alberta treated boom-time resource revenues like a permanent state of affairs. That set the province up for fiscal failure, for multiple lost opportunities.

One high-profile example is the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund. The fund was enacted via legislation from the Alberta government in 1976. It was created, in part, to save for the future by diverting a portion of resource revenues every year that otherwise would end up in the government’s general revenue fund.

In theory, the fund would provide options for future Alberta governments—everything from disbursing cheques to citizens (as occurs in Alaska with the Alaska Permanent Fund) or replacing resource revenue streams when they slow to a trickle.

When then-premier Peter Lougheed created the fund, it was immediately given two deposits—a one-time payment to “kick start” the fund, and a portion of the current year’s resource revenues (30 per cent). That latter practice continued up to and including 1987, though in ever-smaller proportions.

After 1987, no deposits were made until nearly two decades later, when deposits were resumed briefly between 2006 and 2008, only to cease once again.


Had things been handled differently, there would be more of a cushion to fund industries that have a future once the dinosaur bones run out, or you know, just support people when the economy takes a dump.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:50 PM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


And, of course, the province wouldn’t have ratcheted up its sense of normal to spending the whole boom revenue stream right every year, so the loss would also be smaller.
posted by clew at 4:04 PM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


Some of my best friends are petrosexual.
posted by No Robots at 6:10 PM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


And, of course, the province wouldn’t have ratcheted up its sense of normal to spending the whole boom revenue stream right every year, so the loss would also be smaller.

Eons ago, when Allison Redford was premier, the government had a budget website that showed the current provincial budget and the expected shortfall as, at the time, oil prices had just fallen off a cliff. It stuck in my mind because it was interactive: you could fiddle around with cutting programs and see what savings could be had, change the forecast for oil prices and see how that would change our fortunes (iirc at the time resource royalties were ~20% of provincial revenue), but also you could click a check-box and introduce a 5% PST and solve the budget crisis entirely.

At the time nobody took that seriously, and every year since when anyone brings up a PST we're told that it's politically impossible, but it seems like it gets less politically impossible each year.
posted by selenized at 6:38 PM on January 29, 2021 [3 favorites]


Western Canada's oil and gas chauvinism is Canadian MAGA.

that time four or so years ago that crowd at a conservative rally chanted lock her up at then premier Rachel Notley (NDP, kind of socialist, a rare glitch in Alberta politics; basically, the conservative vote got split in 2015 -- this current crowd of geniuses are a direct knee jerk response to all of that)
posted by philip-random at 7:51 PM on January 29, 2021


The deadline for the inquiry to submit its report has now been pushed back to May 31.

I'm skeptical of talk about "petro-masculinity." Joseph Heath has a simpler explanation of the connection between resource extraction and conservative politics:
Under [the "Alberta Fantasy" scenario], we just keep on digging up bitumen and selling synthetic oil, investing in new mines, processing and pipeline infrastructure, subject to absolutely no constraints and a carbon price of zero. And people don’t have to pay taxes, because, yay! we’re digging money out of the ground.
The Christy Clark government in BC followed this approach when pursuing LNG mega-projects.
posted by russilwvong at 8:33 PM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


then premier Rachel Notley (NDP, kind of socialist, a rare glitch in Alberta politics)

A glitch is what the the reactionaries wish it to be. They called the NDP an “accidental government” from the get-go. No word on the decades of hard work, particularly by Grant Notley, Rachel’s father. Nothing about the steadfastness of unions, particularly the Energy and Chemical Workers. Nothing about the effective power of feminism that brought a formidable team of women to the cabinet. Nothing about the increasing complexity of thought not just in cities but in rural areas. Nothing about the growing demand for socialism. I can understand why the reactionaries wish to discount all this. It is harder to understand when it comes from supposed allies.
posted by No Robots at 9:00 PM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


It is harder to understand when it comes from supposed allies.

There's a difference between descriptive and prescriptive assertions.

The Conservatives held power for more than 40 years prior to 2015; they have a pretty solid lock on rural ridings; the 2015 election was a three-way split between the NDP, the PCs, and Wild Rose; the PCs and Wild Rose have now consolidated as the UCP. If you want to predict what's going to happen next, Kenney and the UCP have a good chance of winning the 2023 election.

That's all descriptive (what's likely to happen), not prescriptive (what should happen).
posted by russilwvong at 9:17 PM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


he parachuted into Alberta politics from a federal profile, and he cheated his way to leadership of a party that,

And here's the thing- he didn't need to cheat, the numbers were already good for him, but did it anyways, propping up a dark horse candidate to do smear work on Brian Jean, former leader of the WRP.

The bloom is off Kenney though; his approval numbers are low, he's losing the commentariat (if you've lost Rick Bell...) and politics watchers I tend to trust are talking about discontent in the ranks. The Conservative parties here have a recent tendency of eating their leaders.
posted by nubs at 10:04 PM on January 29, 2021 [3 favorites]




Jen Gerson has a followup: A Word to My Haters.
The world largely accepts the threat posed by climate change. Governments and investors are acting on those threats. We have two choices: We can accept that reality, and take a role in steering the conversation about how to manage the global risks of carbon emissions. Or we can scream and yell and fund war rooms and conspiratorial inquiries — in which case, we will be marginalized, mocked, ignored, and ultimately crushed by that change. ...

COVID-19 is driving young people away from major urban centres, and work is now less tied to geography than at any point in history. Calgary's downtown office vacancy rate is a record-high of 30 per cent. There is a clear opportunity for a city like Calgary here. To submit to despair would represent a catastrophic failure of imagination.

When I speak to my friends who are trying to raise families in cities like Vancouver and Toronto, I am ceaselessly baffled by the kinds of financial and material compromises they make every day. I want to scream at them: "Hey, guys, you can live in a decent house with a nice yard near a charming shopping area for a fraction of the price of your current one-bedroom condo!"

For young families especially, there is no better mix of opportunity and quality of life in all of Canada than what you can get in Alberta. I believe that's true even today. It's why I'm here.
posted by russilwvong at 4:10 PM on January 30, 2021 [2 favorites]


National Observer: The Fall of Jason Kenney

A long piece that outlines the history of how we got here. Note that the discussion about coal mining policy, towards the end of the article, has an update today: Alberta reverses direction on coal development policy
posted by nubs at 1:44 PM on February 8, 2021 [1 favorite]


« Older Wombats Like Three Squares a Day   |   Chaotic Good in its Most Pure Form Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments