Canadian soldiers played a defining role the famous First World War battle, which took place from April 9 to 12, 1917, by taking the ridge at great cost from the German Imperial Army. More than 3,500 Canadians were killed at the battle, which has become part of our country’s patriotic narrative as a defining moment in our nation’s history.
My great grand uncle, Private Edmond Croteau (photo above), fought in and died from wounds received in the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
Born in Saint-Sylvestre in October 1880, he left Quebec as a young man and traveled west to the Yukon during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. When the gold rush died out, he moved south, settling in Maillardville, which is part of present-day Coquitlam. He enlisted in the Canadian Army in New Westminster in June 1915. He initially served with the 104th Regiment Westminster Fusiliers of Canada and later with the 47th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, who he served with at Vimy Ridge.
Private Edmond Croteau was seriously wounded on April 11, 1917, during the successful attempt by Canadian forces to take Hill 120 (also known as The Pimple), a fortified point at the northernmost point of Vimy Ridge. He died on April 14, 1917 at the No. 6 Casualty Clearing Station. He was 36 years old.
He was buried at the Barlin Communal Cemetery Extension, Pas de Calais, France.
Edmond Croteau’s headstone at the Barlin Communal Cemetery Extension, Pas de Calais, France.
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended April 2, 2017, compiled on April 4, 2017, by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.
EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS
1. Believing is not the same as Being Saved (Poetry) – Lisa Martin*†
2. The It Girl and Me: a Novel of Clara Bow – Laini Giles*
3. Fifteen Dogs – Andrè Alexis
4. Ragged Company – Richard Wagamese
5. Something Unremembered – Della Dennis *†
6. Encountering Riel – David D. Orr*†
7. The Break – Katherena Vermette
8. Milk & Honey – Rupi Kaur
9. Punk – Lex J. Grootelaar*
10. Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty
EDMONTON NON-FICTION BESTSELLERS
1. My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell – Arthur Bear Chief†
2. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World – Peter Wohlleben, Tim Flannery
3. The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet – Sheila Watt-Cloutier
4. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood – Trevor Noah
5. When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
6. The Bosun Chair (Memoir/Poetry) – Jennifer Bowering Delisle*†
7. Edmonton Cooks: Signature Recipes from the City’s Best Chefs – Leanne Brown, Tina Fiaz *
8. Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life – Jessica Nutik Zitter
9. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race – Margot Lee Shetterly
10. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, And the Quest for a Fantastic Future – Ashlee Vance
The deadline is fast approaching. On March 31 at 5:00 p.m. we will know for sure who, if anyone, wants to lead Alberta’s Liberal Party. The race to choose a replacement for the party’s last permanent leader – Raj Sherman, who resigned in January 2015 – has been less than exciting.
David Swann was the only Liberal to be re-elected in 2015, and that was largely due to his own personal popularity in Calgary-Mountain View. He was the party’s leader from 2008 to 2011 and interim leader since 2015.
Crouse’s departure only days before the deadline left the party in a lurch. Party executives scrambled to ensure that they would have at least one candidate, or maybe even two, submit their papers before 5:00 p.m. on March 31. It would be incredibly embarrassing if no one signed up to run.
In the wake of Crouse leaving the race, rumours circulated that former Tory MLA Thomas Lukaszuk could become a candidate, but those rumours appear to have dried up.
Cundal ran as a federal Liberal candidate in the 2015 election, placing second to Conservative Ron Liepert in Calgary-Signal Hill. She was involved with the Progressive Conservative Party in support of Sandra Jansen’s brief leadership campaign and the “Renew” faction of the party that opposed Jason Kenney’s campaign.
Khan is a Calgary-based lawyer who ran as a provincial Liberal candidate in Calgary-West in 2014 and in Calgary-Buffalo in 2015. He was the executive vice-president of the party until recently (his name has been removed from the party website). He has also become a frequent political commentator on CBC’s national politics program, Power & Politics.
Jacob Huffman
Neither Cundal or Khan have formally announced their plans to run.
A third potential candidate, University of Calgary student Jacob Huffman, launched a Facebook page announcing his candidacy shortly after Crouse dropped out. The way this race has progressed it might be hard to tell whether or not his candidacy is serious, but at the rate it is going Huffman might be acclaimed (he’s already planning his victory party).
Who will actually run for the leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party? Wait to find out at 5:00 p.m. on March 31, 2017.
Photo above: Liberal Party executive director Gwyneth Midgley and David Khan at the reception following the 2017 Speech from the Throne.
According to reports from Postmedia, when asked about Gay-Straight Alliances, Kenney told the editorial board of the Calgary Herald and Sun that he would allow schools to inform parents if their students join a Gay-Straight Alliance.
Gay-Straight Alliances are student-initiated clubs meant empower students to create safe environments in their own schools. A study from the University of British Columbia found that Canadian schools with GSAs may reduce the odds of suicidal thoughts and attempts among both sexual minority and straight students – which is why having schools track their involvement in these clubs and informing their parents is not just creepy but could be dangerous.
As Postmedia columnist Paula Simons wrote today, ”…why should publicly-funded schools treat GSAs differently than they’d treat any other student-led club? Why, that is, unless deep deep down, we still do believe that it is, in fact, a shameful, dangerous thing to be gay — or to associate with gay friends.”
Now that Kenney has secured the leadership of the PC Party, he is now effectively running for the leadership of the Wildrose Party – which he wants to merge his party into.
Kenney is known for his social conservative views and he shied away from publicly commenting on social issues during the PC leadership race. But now that he is running against Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean for the leadership of a new conservative party, we are beginning to see his open appeal to the party’s social conservative base.
While Kenney’s comments are directed toward social conservative voters he will need to win the leadership of a new conservative party, they are reckless. Allowing schools to “out” students to their parents would undermine the ability of Alberta students to create clubs that are proven to help make school environments more safe and welcoming for some of their classmates.
Crouse drops out of Liberal leadership race, Lukaszuk in?
Thomas Lukaszuk
The only candidate running for the leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party has dropped out two days before the nomination deadline.
St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse announced on his website that he was withdrawing from the race for personal reasons. Crouse’s candidacy would have been a big catch for the Liberal Party, which currently only has one MLA in the Alberta Legislature.
Rumours are swirling that Crouse’s departure could make way for former Tory MLA Thomas Lukaszuk to potentially enter the Liberal Party leadership race before the March 31 deadline. The former deputy premier and 2014 PC leadership candidate publicly trashed his PC Party membership card after Kenney won the party leadership on March 18.
The race is being held to choose a replacement for past leader Raj Sherman, another former Tory MLA who crossed the floor to the Liberals in 2011. He resigned as leader in January 2015.
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended March 26, 2017, compiled on March 28, 2017, by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.
EDMONTON FICTION BESTSELLERS
Assdeep in Wonder (Poetry) – Christopher Gudgeon
Fifteen Dogs – André Alexis
Encountering Riel – David D. Orr*†
Break – Katherena Vermette
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
The Summer Before the War – Helen Simonson
A Dog’s Purpose: A Novel for Humans – Bruce W. Cameron
4 3 2 1 – Paul Auster
Medicine Walk – Richard Wagamese
Something Unremembered – Della Dennis*†
EDMONTON NON-FICTION BESTSELLERS
The Event Planner – Celebrating Canada’s 150th – Cathy Harvey*
Trees in Canada – John Laird Farrar
The Burgess Shale: The Canadian Writing Landscape of the 1960s – Margaret Atwood†
Earls: The Cookbook – Jim Sutherland
Lion – Saroo Brierley
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World – Peter Wohlleben, Tim Flannery
Medicine Unbundled: A Journey Through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care – Gary Geddes
Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations – Richard Wagamese
As the October 16, 2017 municipal elections approach, we are starting to see a number of candidates from the 2015 provincial and federal elections putting their names forward to run for municipal office. At least three former Progressive Conservative MLAs who were defeated in the 2015 election have put their names forward to run:
Linda Johnsonannounced she is running for Calgary City Council in Ward 11. Johnson was the Progressive Conservative MLA for Calgary-Glenmore from 2012 until 2015, when she was defeated by 6 votes by New Democrat Anam Kazim. Current Ward 11 councillor Brian Pincott, who is not seeking re-election this year, is considering a run for the NDP in Calgary-Mountain View in the next provincial election.
Former Fort McMurray-Conklin PC MLA Don Scott is running to become the next mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. Scott served on council from 2010 to 2012 and as MLA from 2012 until he was unseated by Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean in 2015. He served as Minister of Innovation and Advanced Education from 2014 until 2015.
Former PC MLA Dave Quest will be a municipal election candidate in the Strathcona County, though it is unclear whether he will run for a council spot or for mayor. He represented Strathcona-Sherwood Park from 2008 until 2015, when he was unseated by New Democrat Estefania Cortes-Vargas. He is married to Ward 8 councillor Fiona Beland-Quest. UPDATE: Beland-Quest has announced that she will not seek re-election. Rex Adam, husband of former Sherwood Park PC MLA Cathy Olesen, announced he will run in Ward 8.
A few other recent provincial and federal candidates are running as well:
Jim Black is running for city council in Medicine Hat. He was an Alberta Party candidate in the 2015 provincial election.
Rod Frank is running for mayor of Strathcona County. He earned 20 percent of the vote as the 2015 federal Liberal candidate in the Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan riding.
Earlier this year I submitted a series of recommendations to Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission, the appointed body tasked with redrawing Alberta’s provincial electoral districts for the next election. I initially meant to share this after I submitted it, but for no particular reason I never got around to posting them. The commission will scheduled to submit its interim report to the Legislative Assembly on May 31, 2017 and, after another round of public hearings, it will submit its final report on October 31, 2017.
Here are the recommendations I submitted to the commission in February 2017:
Population in each district
The previous Commission did a good job keeping the population of most electoral districts within ten percent of the provincial average population per electoral district. But some districts have become outliers as populations grow or decline, which creates a system of unequal representation in the Legislative Assembly.
According to Statistics Canada 2016 Census data made available on Feb. 8, 2017, there has been tremendous growth in Alberta’s urban areas, including the Edmonton region, Calgary region and the Red Deer corridor which spans the length between the province’s two largest cities. Communities like Airdrie and Cochrane have seen significant growth of more than 40 percent since the last census. Because of this, it would be appropriate to redistribute new districts into these regions of the province.
The census data also shows a decline in population in areas west of the Red Deer corridor and in east central Alberta. It would be appropriate to redistribute the boundaries of these districts to reflect this population decline.
I recommend that the commission attempt to keep districts within ten percent, but ideally within five percent, above or below the provincial average population per electoral district.
Special districts
I would prefer that no district fall below twenty-five percent of the average, as increased funding should be allocated to MLAs in geographically larger rural ridings for additional offices, staff and travel costs. But political necessity will likely lead to the existence of one or two of these special exceptions.
I recommend that if special districts are required, that be created only in extreme circumstances and be kept to a minimum number.
Naming districts
In the past there has been little or no guidelines for the Commission to name electoral districts. Some districts are named after geographical locations and some after prominent figures from Alberta’s political history.
I recommend that the Commission or the Legislative Assembly create a protocol for naming of electoral divisions for the guidance of future commissions and legislatures.
Noncontiguous districts
The Wetaskiwin-Camrose electoral district.
There is currently one district that is noncontiguous, meaning that a portion of the district is completely surrounded by another district. A portion of the Samson Indian Reserve #13 located in the Wetaskiwin-Camrose district is currently completely surrounded by the Drayton Valley-Devon and Lacombe-Ponoka districts.
I recommend that all districts be contiguous.
On this topic, it appears that the communities of Maskwacis are divided between two districts – Drayton Valley-Devon and Wetaskiwin-Camrose. This appears to be an anomaly as all other First Nations communities in Alberta which are adjacent to each other are kept in the same district. If the commission is seeking draw district boundaries around communities of interest, it would make sense for Maskwacis to be included in the one district.
Rural/urban perspectives
As the provincial population increases in urban communities and decreases in many rural communities, it seems inevitable that outlying districts may be fewer and larger in the future. As stated by the previous commission which existed in 2009/2010, this raises a question about how large a division can be before it involves so many non-common interests that it is impractical for the disparate issues of the electors to be represented, and for the MLA to represent them.
As was recommended by the previous commission, I agree that the Legislative Assembly needs to seriously consider how the urban/rural perspectives will be addressed in the future.
An Alberta author and publisher top this week’s list of bestselling books. Ranking first in the fiction category is Nuala: A Fable, written by award winning Red Deer poet and author Kimmy Beach and published by University of Alberta Press. In the non-fiction category, Margaret Atwood’s The Burgess Shale: The Canadian Writing Landscape of the 1960s is also published by University of Alberta Press as part of the Canadian Literature Centre’s Kreisel Lecture Series.
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended March 19, 2017, compiled on March 22, 2017, by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.
Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers
Nuala: A Fable – Kimmy Beach * †
The Lonely Hearts Hotel – Heather O’Neill
Fifteen Dogs – André Alexis
If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You – Adele Barclay
The Break – Katherena Vermette
Encountering Riel – David D. Orr * †
Company Town – Madeline Ashby
Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
Swimming Lessons – Claire Fuller
Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestsellers
The Burgess Shale: The Canadian Writing Landscape of the 1960s – Margaret Atwood †
Medicine Unbundled: A Journey Through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care – Gary Geddes
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race – Margot Lee Shetterly
The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love and Loss – Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt
I’ll Be Damned: How My Young and Restless Life Led Me to America’s #1 Daytime Drama – Eric Braeden
The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet – Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Feast: Recipes and Stories from a Canadian Road Trip – Lindsay Anderson, Dana VanVeller
This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence – Terry O’Reilly
Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt joined Jason Kenney on the eve of his victory in the PC Party leadership race. (Photo credit: @pcyouthalberta on Twitter)
Shifting into the second phase of his campaign to unite Alberta’s two largest right-wing political parties, newly elected Progressive Conservative leader Jason Kenney met with Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean this week. According to an email from Kenney’s campaign, the two men, who are both expected to run for the leadership of a new conservative party, shared a carton of Tim Horton’s coffee in the official opposition offices located in the Federal Building.
Brian Jean
Kenney emerged from the meeting alone, holding a press conference by himself without Jean outside the building to announce the creation of conservative discussion groups. Jean probably made a good decision not to participate in a joint press conference at this point, as he would have certainly been made to look like he was playing second fiddle to his main leadership rival.
Jean told CBC that he wants a new party to hold a leadership race before October 15, 2017. This is slightly ahead of the timeline proposed by Kenney, which would have the leadership vote held later in 2017 or in early 2018.
An October 2017 vote would coincide with the creation of new electoral boundaries for the next provincial election, when parties are expected to begin nominating candidates in earnest. The final report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission is due to be presented to the Legislative Assembly on October 31, 2017.
Jean also reiterated his position that a new party should exist within the current legal framework of the Wildrose Party, which puts him at odds with Kenney’s previously stated plans to either merge the two or create an entirely new party.
Wason Resigns
Troy Wason
PC Party executive director and long-time party activist Troy Wason resigned his position over the weekend. “It’s very difficult to put a round peg into a square hole,” Wason was quoted as saying about Kenney’s PC-Wildrose merger plans in response to the Feminism is Cancer email sent out the Wildrose campus club at the University of Calgary last week. His departure was not a complete surprise but a signal that the Kenney’s victory has some moderate Tories looking for an exit.
It is also notable that former Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel’s name disappeared from the PC Party website this week. Mandel, who briefly served as the PC MLA for Edmonton-Whitemud and health minister from 2014 to 2015, was the party’s northern Alberta finance committee chairman. As I wrote earlier this week, Mandel is rumoured to be backing an upcoming “unite the centre” meeting to discuss the potential creation of an alternative to the PC-Wildrose coalition.
Merger aims to keep Tory cash
A group of PC and Wildrose associated lawyers calling themselves the Alberta Conservative Consolidation Committee believe that Elections Alberta’s statement that political parties cannot legally merge is wrong. The group is chaired by former Canadian Taxpayers’ Association president Andy Crooks and includes past Wildrose candidate Richard Jones and PC constituency president Tyler Shandro and two other lawyers.
The desire to merge the two parties rather than create a new party is likely partly driven by the estimated $1.5 million believed to be sitting in dozens of PC Party constituency bank accounts and candidate trusts. If a party dissolves, the funds are held in trust by Elections Alberta and later transferred into the Alberta government’s general revenue.
Former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk, who is spending much his political retirement on Twitter, posted a photo online showing the PC constituency association in Edmonton-Castle Downs, which he represented in the Assembly from 2001 until 2015, had liquidated its financial assets by donating the funds to local charities.
I do not expect a new conservative party would have trouble raising money before the next election but new donation limits have lowered the maximum annual contribution from $15,000 to $4,000. The NDP also banned corporate and union donations, which the PC Party relied heavily on before the last election. The Wildrose Party, like the NDP, have cultivated a large individual donor base, but losing that $1.5 million would be a hit.
Gotfried and the Red Menace
Richard Gotfried
Calgary-Fish Creek MLA Richard Gotfried, the lone rookie PC MLA elected in 2015, evoked his father’s flight from Bolshevik Russia and Maoist China during a speech criticizing the NDP government in the Assembly this week. It takes a special amount of partisan and ideological gymnastics to draw connections between brutal and tyrannical dictatorships and a freely elected democratic government in Alberta, but Gotfried did it.
This is not the first time an opposition MLA has drawn these kinds of connections. Last summer, Drumheller-Stettler Wildrose MLA Rick Strankmanapologized, twice, for an open-letter signed by nine Wildrose MLAs that compared the NDP government’s carbon tax to the Holodomor, the genocide that killed an estimated 2.5–7.5 million Ukrainians in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
What does Jason Kenney’s PC Party stand for?
Kenney has played it pretty smooth since entering provincial politics last summer, largely avoiding getting directly caught in any of the controversy generated by his campaign. But that will not stop his political opponents from reminding Albertans of his more controversial, and in some cases totally bizarre, political statements.
There is no doubt Kenney has his share of political baggage, but his opponents, including the governing New Democrats, would be foolish to underestimate him. Despite his apparent belief in some weird conspiracy theories, Kenney is an extremely capable campaigner.
Main photo: Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt joined Jason Kenney on the eve of his victory in the PC Party leadership race. (Photo credit: @pcyouthalberta on Twitter)
Oshry, the current councillor for Ward 5, announced earlier this month that he would like to see stricter rules around who can run in Edmonton’s municipal elections.
CBC reported that for the next election in 2021, Oshry would like to see candidates putting their names forward be required to collect 100 signatures and provide a $1,000 deposit. This would be an increase from the current requirement of 25 signatures and $100 deposit.
Michael Oshry
I am supportive of a change that would require potential candidates to collect 100 signatures, which I think is fair and probably good practice, but I am reluctant to support such a drastic increase to the financial deposit. For many first-time candidates, especially those without support from private sector developers, $1,000 is no small amount of money in a campaign budget.
We should not seek to limit the number of individuals seeking election by creating unnecessary financial hurdles but we can gauge their seriousness and commitment by increasing in the number of signatures required on their nomination forms.
Tracking Calgary election candidates
I have been asked by a number of readers whether I will also be tracking candidates running in Calgary’s municipal elections. The answer is no, but thankfully, Sarah Elder-Chamanara has launched a new website tracking candidates in Calgary. I will definitely write about any interesting races that develop in other municipalities during the campaign but my focus on municipal politics remains in Edmonton.
His only opponents, Vermilion-Lloydminster MLA Richard Starke and Calgary lawyer Byron Nelson, earned 21 percent and two percent support from the voting delegates.
Kenney’s leadership bid was more of a hostile takeover than a traditional leadership campaign. The central point of his platform was his plan to dissolve the 8-MLA PC Party and form a new party with the official opposition Wildrose Party. Kenney has said he plans to meet with Wildrose leader Brian Jean on Monday to further discuss his plans.
Over the course of the campaign, Kenney and his legions of social conservative supporters, many who also happen to be card-carrying members of the Wildrose Party, worked tirelessly to marginalize progressive voices in the party. Two leadership candidates, Sandra Jansen and Stephen Khan, said they and their supporters faced threats and bullying by Kenney’s supporters before they dropped out of the race. Jansen later crossed the floor to join the New Democratic Party and Khan endorsed Starke.
Kenney’s reputation for being a focused campaigner helped him win an overwhelming number of delegates at the local constituency votes. The lethargic and uninspiring campaigns mounted by his opponents were left in the dust.
Despite all the big talk by party stalwarts about the strength of the progressive-wing of the party, the political moderates just did not show up to vote in this race. The progressives who showed up in droves to vote for Ed Stelmach in 2006 and Alison Redford in 2011 stayed home this time. Or maybe they, like Sandra Jansen, like what they see from Rachel Notley’s NDP government?
Clark claims that a number of former PC MLAs and activists, including former deputy premier and vocal Kenney critic Thomas Lukaszuk, are in discussions with his party. This may be related to an upcoming “unite the centre” event in Red Deer that former PC MLA and Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel is said to be behind. Another former PC MLA, Heather Klimchuk, said in an interview on The Broadcast podcast that she is watching St. Albert mayor Nolan Crouse‘s campaign to lead the Liberal Party.
What we discovered today is that less than two years after Alberta’s natural governing party lost its first election in 44 years, the PC Party is a shell of its former self and was ripe for a takeover by Wildrose Party supporters.
In his victory speech, Kenney confidently told delegates at the PC Party convention that he plans to repeal all the changes made by the NDP when he becomes Premier in 2019. That would mean the repeal of policies unpopular with conservatives, like the carbon tax, the Climate Leadership Plan and new farm safety laws, all introduced by the NDP.
Thomas Lukaszuk
If Kenney is true to his word this would also mean that corporate political donations would be reintroduced, small business taxes would be increased, the minimum wage would be lowered, school fees would be increased, the wealthiest Albertans would get tax cuts, and laws protecting sexual minorities from discrimination would be repealed.
When Kenney pledged today to repeal all of the changes made by the NDP, he was not talking to the now former progressive-wing of the PC Party. He was talking to the social conservative and rural base of the Wildrose Party.
Now that the takeover of the PC Party is complete, Kenney will set his sights on his main challenger for the leadership of a new conservative party, Wildrose leader Brian Jean.
There were few surprises when Finance Minister Joe Cecistood to table the New Democratic Party’s third budget since forming government in 2015.
What I expect were strategic leaks over the past week revealed some popular highlights included in the budget, giving the government some positive media in the days before the budget was released. The construction, revitalization and renovation of schools and funding for a new hospital in south Edmonton were two of the most notable tidbits to be released in advance of yesterday’s budget speech.
If the leaks were indeed intentional, it was not a bad communications strategy considering the government’s current financial situation. It created a positive distraction from two big numbers that the conservative opposition parties want to focus on – total budget spending and the budget deficit.
But when the budget was tabled yesterday, neither of these numbers were really a surprise. We knew the NDP was not planning to make deep cuts to provincial program spending in this budget. And we knew from Ceci’s third-quarter update from the last fiscal year that the deficit would likely remain over $10 billion – it is projected to be $10.3 billion, down around $500 million from $10.8 billion last year.
Also not surprising was the response from Liberal leader David Swann, who took a more reasoned approach by applauding the government on investing in public services and infrastructure, and then pointing out where the budget failed.
The government continues to make significant investment in public infrastructure, which is long overdue in Alberta. Along with a new hospital in Edmonton, the budget includes funding for renovations at the Misericordia Hospital and new construction at the Royal Alexandra and Glenrose hospitals (which was not previously announced, so that was a surprise).
One question that remains unanswered is how, in the long-term, the government plans to deal with the revenue shortfall created by the drop in the international price of oil. For many years, the Alberta government became over-dependent on oil and natural gas royalties to pay for a large portion of the daily operations of government.
The old PC government used those high royalty revenues to subsidize corporate and personal tax cuts, which proved politically popular in the short-term but financial irresponsible in the long-term. When the international price of oil dropped in 2014, so did about $10 billion worth of expected government revenue.
The NDP took some steps to diversify revenue with moderate increases to corporate and personal taxes after they were first elected 2015 but it was nowhere enough to fill the revenue shortfall (Albertans still pay some of the lowest taxes in Canada). The positive news is that Alberta still has the advantage of having a low debt-to-GDP ratio, which means at least in the short-term our province should be able to deal with being in a deficit situation.
Overall, I am not surprised about what is and is not included in the 2017 provincial budget. I am encouraged that the NDP is not heeding the calls of the conservative opposition parties to make deep funding cuts to public services and infrastructure investments, which would be detrimental to Albertans’ quality of life during this economic downturn.
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended March 12, 2017, compiled on March 14, 2017, by Audreys Books and provided by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.
Alberta author David Orr’s new book Encountering Riel is on the bestseller list for the third straight week. The book is published by Edmonton-based Stonehouse Publishing.
Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers
Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
Encountering Riel – David D. Orr * †
Fifteen Dogs – Andre Alexis
Nostalgia – M.G. Vassanji
The Lonely Hearts Hotel – Heather O’Neill
The Break – Katerena Vermette
The German Girl – Armando Correa
The Naturalist – Alissa York
Company Town – Madeline Ashby
A Dog’s Purpose – Bruce W. Cameron
Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestsellers
Open Hear, Open Mind – Clara Hughes
Medicine Unbundled: A Journey Through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care – Gary Geddes
Fur Trade in the West (Children’s Nonfiction) – Phyllis Arnold *
This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence – Terry O’Reilly
Feast: Recipes and Stories from a Canadian Road Trip – Lindsay Anderson, Dana VanVeller
Edmonton Cooks: Signature Recipes from the City’s Best Chefs – Leanne Brown, * Tina Faiz *
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race – Margot Lee Shetterly
The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet – Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood – Trevor Noah
Representing PC supporters who want to renew the party, rather than dissolve it, Vermilion-Lloydminster MLA Richard Starke has announced a string of endorsements from former PC cabinet ministers and MLAs over the past few days, including former Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel and former leadership candidate Stephen Khan.
Starke’s list of endorsers include former MLAs Doug Horner, Doug Griffiths, Thomas Lukaszuk, Mike Allen, Rob Lougheed, Hector Goudreau, LeRoy Johnson, Jack Hayden, Ron Casey, Cal Dallas, Arno Doerksen, Bridget Pastoor, Dave Quest, Teresa Woo-Paw, Ron Ghitter, Verlyn Olson, Genia Leskiw, Iris Evans, Cathy Olesen, Heather Klimchuk, Pearl Calahasen, Ray Danyluk, Jim Horsman, Peter Elzinga, Linda Johnson, and Jacquie Fenske.
It seems like an odd strategy to pull out a list of prominent endorsers after the delegate selection meetings have been held but it could be the last card that Starke’s team had to play. Kenney is an impressive campaigner and his organization solidified a solid lead in the elected delegate count.
Jason Kenney
After party delegates vote to elect Kenney as their leader on Saturday, March 18, 2017, the PC Party will become a vassal of the Wildrose Party, which Kenney also seeks to lead into a new conservative party. His campaign against Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean has essentially already begun.
Starke’s campaign to renew the PC Party released a “Common Sense Plan” in January 2017 which laid out a vague plan to work with the Wildrose Party without merging with them, but even at the time it felt like a last ditch attempt to ward off Kenney’s juggernaut.
It is unclear what Starke and his supporters will do when Kenney wins the leadership in a landslide on March 18, 2017. He and his only supporter in the PC caucus, Grande Prairie-Wapiti MLA Wayne Drysdale, will have to decide whether they want to remain in a Kenney-led PC Party which could potentially cross over to the Wildrose caucus before the 2019 election.
Maybe they will start a new moderate conservative party, or join another party? Calgary-North West MLA Sandra Jansen left the PC leadership race and joined the NDP caucus in November 2016. Perhaps hoping to gain a caucus-mate, Alberta Party leader Greg Clark has been pushing his ‘Centre Together’ message targeted at centrist Tories unimpressed with Kenney’s Wildrose merger plans.
What comes after a bozo-eruption? A bozo-aftershock.
Last week I wrote about the “Feminism is Cancer” email sent out by the Wildrose Party campus club at the University of Calgary promoting the screening of a Men’s Rights film on International Women’s Day. The Gauntlet, the campus newspaper, reports that the student who the club claimed to have fired as communications director after the incident may have not actually existed. The newspaper was unable to find any student with the name “Robert McDavid” listed with the university’s registrar or the party membership list.
If The Gauntlet report is correct, either the club did not actually fire their director or they fired someone who did not want their name to be publicly associated with the “Feminism is Cancer” email.
I’ll be joining Edmonton’s historian-laureate Chris Chang-Yen Phillips and guests for a live recording of the Let’s Find Out podcast at the Needle Vinyl Tavern on Saturday, March 11, 2017.
1. Believing is not the same as Being Saved (Poetry) – Lisa Martin*†
Here is the list of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold in Edmonton for the week ended March 12, 2017, compiled on March 14, 2017, by 
Representing PC supporters who want to renew the party, rather than dissolve it, Vermilion-Lloydminster MLA 
