For everyone who wants to see life return to pre-pandemic normal, I give you this week’s wildcat strike by Alberta health support workers. This is the strike — or one quite like it — we would have seen earlier this year if it wasn’t for the pandemic. Of course, COVID-19 screwed up the timetable, as it’s done so effectively with…

Call it ironic or odd or surreal. But there was definitely something troubling about the optics of the Alberta government’s news conference on Thursday at Calgary’s International Airport. Jobs Minister Doug Schweitzer announced an experimental program that will use testing and monitoring to reduce the self-isolating period for arriving international travellers down to just a few days from the current…

These days, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney must feel like he’s trapped in a multi-dimensional vise, being squeezed from all possible directions. He’s under pressure from a flailing economy, the miserable price of oil, a $24-billion deficit, frustrated voters, environmental groups, public sector unions, the Joe Biden campaign, and, of course, the NDP opposition. He’s even facing internal strain from his…

You have to wonder if Jason Kenney’s paranoia about the federal government is sometimes rooted in fact, not fallacy. Take this week, for example. On Tuesday, the Alberta premier announced a new and ambitious job-creation proposal to recycle plastics. But on Wednesday, the federal government announced a new ban on plastics.

Once upon a time, politics in Alberta was such a relatively tame affair that the leader of the Opposition was kicked out of the legislative assembly for calling a cabinet minister a “mouse.” That was in 1991, when Liberal leader Laurence Decore used “unparliamentary” language to describe then-environment minister Ralph Klein.