I have always tried to avoid getting into arguments with Alberta premiers. After all, as a journalist it’s my job to question politicians, not quarrel with them. But sometimes premiers seem to want to get into arguments with journalists.

If nothing else, Alberta’s UCP government has proven itself remarkably efficient. This week it passed a piece of legislation — Bill 22 — that managed to infuriate teachers, upset democracy and prompt a warning from the province’s ethics commissioner. And the government did all this in a matter of days. Hours, really. Opposition leader Rachel Notley called Bill 22 an…

Politics in Alberta is taking a turn from the bizarre to the surreal to the dangerous. On Monday, the UCP government announced its new Bill 22 would eliminate Lorne Gibson’s job as the province’s independent election commissioner. The news hit like a bombshell. Gibson has been investigating fiscal wrongdoing in the UCP’s 2017 leadership race, and has so far levied…

He pits them against each other. Friends get funds, the rest, silence.

It’s dog whistle politics without the whistle. Alberta’s new UCP government doesn’t have to come out and admit it’s much less committed to Indigenous issues than the former NDP government—we can hear it from the silence.