Jason Kenney was determined to swallow much of the news cycle over the long-ish weekend (depending on where you were in the country), first by announcing on Friday that he had appointed a “fair deal” panel to look at ways in which Alberta can assert more independence – but many of those items don’t make any sense, especially as they will be more costly in the long run (or look particularly suspicious, like replacing the RCMP provincial policing contract with an Alberta Provincial Police when the RCMP is deep in investigating the UCP leadership contest corruption). In fact, the former chair of the province’s “Firewall” panel from 2003 says that this is just an exercise in blowing off steam that won’t amount to anything that they didn’t learn back then, which will be amplified over social media into promises that could never be fulfilled – which is a problem. Kenney then doubled down with a lengthy speech at the Manning Centre conference in Red Deer on Saturday, where most of these items were further listed.

This all having been said, I’m hearing from my friends and family in Alberta that Kenney’s cuts are already starting to affect them, and that anger may start to hurt him sooner than later. (Family examples: I have a nephew with special needs whose school aide’s hours are being slashed, and my brother-in-law is a volunteer firefighter, and their training budget has just been decimated). I fully expect that Kenney is going to go hard on trying to direct the anger to Justin Trudeau and Ottawa in order to deflect the anger from his cuts, and you can bet that he’s going to go to absurd lengths to stoke it.

Meanwhile, here are some reality checks into the kinds of things that Kenney is proposing for his “Fair Deal” nonsense, whether it’s for the creation of their own provincial pension plan, or to collect federal taxes on their own.

"Fair Deal Panel" will look at changing the CHT and CST transfers into tax points. https://t.co/Ig7T2GvvYQ That's a non-starter. Tax points worth more to some than others. Historically, uneven cash transfers compensate. To go purely PIT point transfer benefits only three provs. pic.twitter.com/7eoyrjJwnk

— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) November 10, 2019

Many of the panel ideas will unavoidably involve more red tape and larger government for Albertans. An expensive stick to poke Ottawa with, imho. This also makes them less credible ideas if the goal is merely "leverage".

But ¯_(ツ)_/¯

— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) November 10, 2019

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1193379952961277952

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194018713629904897

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194072739243446272

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194075167506386945

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194092599918944256

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau has his meeting with Andrew Scheer this morning, whose demands include summoning Parliament by November 25^th.
• A new report says that Canada, along with Australia and South Korea, are the three G20 countries unlikely to meet their 2030 emissions reductions targets.
• In the lead-up to the election, people were trying to falsely claim over social media that voting by pencil meant ballots could be “smudged” and discounted.
• Afghan-Canadians employed as civilian advisors under federal contract during the Afghanistan war still can’t get federal compensation for their actions.
• There are calls for Canadian intelligence agencies to be more transparent about their use of AI and other algorithms for their data crunching.
• New Liberal MP Lenore Zann once voiced Rogue on the X-Men animated series (and was an NDP MLA for a decade before making the jump to the federal Liberals).
• Conservative MP Garnett Genuis is accusing the Liberals and NDP of “anti-Catholic bigotry,” which is amusing considering that Trudeau is a practicing Catholic.
• The Green Party’s “interim leader” wants to court Jody Wilson-Raybould to run for the party’s leadership.
• In case there was any doubt, the UCP private members’ bill in Alberta about “conscience rights” will impact accessibility for some medical services.
• Stephen Maher got a glimpse in last week’s Conservative caucus meeting, and the two factions emerging inside of the party.

Odds and ends:

Here is the Ottawa Citizen’s “We Are the Dead” Remembrance Day research story.

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