Roundup: The rot in Alberta’s witch hunt

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The Alberta government’s $3.5 million special committee into Un-Albertan Activities “foreign-funded special interest groups” opposed to the energy sector has posted their list of commissioned studies, and they are a collection of climate deniers, and foreign-funded special interest groups – oil companies – who write boosterism for the sector. Oh, and there’s also a bunch of conspiracy theory nonsense in there as well. And yes, they paid thousands of dollars for those reports.

This is what the government spent $3.5 million on, at a time when they are complaining that they are so broke (because they relied too much on a high price of oil) that they are looking to slash and burn public services in the province. The fact that they are funnelling money to hucksters and charlatans, and that they accepted the work of a conspiracy theorist to launch the whole committee in the first place, is par for the course in the province, unfortunately. This whole exercise is a kind of distillation of the absolute rot in Alberta politics that its potency would be fatal if you ingested it. One wonders what the straw that breaks the camel’s back will wind up being (and it may yet be those MLAs’ pandemic vacations), but this particular farce is absolutely galling.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau told Reuters that he plans to serve for years to come, said nothing about Chrystia Freeland as his successor, and ruled out vaccine passports.
  • Major-General Dany Fortin says that vaccine shipments will ramp up to a million doses delivered a week by April.
  • While federal guidance suggests that you can wait up to six weeks between vaccine doses, Quebec is planning on a 90-day gap to get more people their first doses.
  • The government is considering using border data as part of their checks if those applying for pandemic benefits were travelling, and making it retroactive.
  • The change-of-command ceremony for the new Chief of Defence Staff took place virtually yesterday, and Admiral Art McDonald is now in charge.
  • We now have a better picture of what kind of information the RCMP spy was looking to sell to organized crime bosses.
  • The head of Radio-Canada spent December in Miami – but “worked” part of it.
  • Here’s a look at how the Ontario government’s bullshit pandemic set up the province for even worse infection rates, as people grew confused and fatigued.
  • The Association of Black Conservatives is hoping to ramp up their profile in light of the “success” of Leslyn Lewis (if you can really call it that).
  • Jason Kenney has kicked out MLA Pat Rehn from caucus, after his community complained that he has been absent – and went to Mexico over the holidays.
  • Economist Trevor Tombe makes the case for Alberta to phase-in an HST.
  • Susan Delacourt suspects that Trudeau’s farewell with Trump will be one where things just fade out.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: The rot in Alberta’s witch hunt”

  1. “Major-General Dany Fortin says that vaccine shipments will ramp up to a million doses delivered a week by April.”

    Oh, come on, Dale! If the Conservatives tried this kind of spin you would, quite rightly, call them out on it. You know very well that the story is not that Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine shipments will ramp up after Q1. It’s that Canada’s allotment from Pfizer will be reduced by 50 per cent for four weeks during Q1. While that’s not the government’s fault, it is a matter of real concern. The delay will cost lives.

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