Pandemic? What pandemic? Watching Alberta politics these days is like riding a time machine into the past when COVID-19 didn’t exist or into a future where it’s been conquered. Or perhaps we woke up in a parallel universe. Because Alberta politics is beginning to act as if the pandemic suddenly disappeared.

During debate in the legislature, premier referred to the virus as ‘influenza’ six times Premier Jason Kenney is tired of the COVID-19 pandemic. And who isn’t?

Well, so much for Alberta’s War Room setting the record straight. Or for telling Alberta’s story to the world. Or whatever it is the War Room (a.k.a. the Canadian Energy Centre) is supposed to do.

“Oil is dead,” says Elizabeth May. No, oil is not dead. But it does have an expiry date. Even Stephen Harper acknowledged that when, as prime minister in 2015, he joined other Group of Seven leaders in a pledge to stop burning fossil fuels by the end of the century.

As a journalist, covering Alberta’s United Conservative Party government is a bit like trying to jump aboard a speeding locomotive. So much weight is moving at such great velocity that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to keep up.