Roundup: Frozen Alberta’s electricity woes

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Amidst the frigid cold-snap on the prairies over the weekend, Alberta started facing a crisis of its power grid, with emergency alerts going out to ask people to reduce consumption lest rolling blackouts start happening. People complied, and crisis was averted.

Nevertheless, this gave the opportunity for certain premiers to try and blame this on clean energy rules, or to misconstrue those rules in the face of what took place over the weekend in order to tout how great coal is in order to score points, none of which helps anyone. But when your only calculus is to score points, well, that’s what politics has become.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia fired 37 missiles and three drones at Ukraine early Saturday, and only eight of those missiles were shot down, likely because of a deficit of air defence ammunition, and as a result, Dnipro and Chernihiv were struck. Meanwhile, Russians have been spending big on infrastructure projects in occupied territories to both draw closer links to Russian territory, but to convince people that they can better rebuild the territories.

Good reads:

  • Canada is looking to take a leadership role in helping to recover Ukrainian children forcibly displaced to Russia and Belarus by the invasion.
  • A gay diplomat has been awarded compensation by a labour tribunal after he was denied expenses to travel out of country for the birth of his child via surrogate.
  • A group of two Liberal and three NDP MPs are heading to the West Bank to connect with Palestinians there, at the expense of the Canadian Muslim Vote non-profit.
  • While in Sudbury, Pierre Poilievre promised faster approval of mining projects.
  • Yves-François Blanchet worries that Montreal is becoming too disconnected from the rest of the province, with all of its diversity and multilingualism.
  • Blaine Higgs continues to refuse to answer questions about his (false) assertions about trans kids getting medical interventions with little difficulty.
  • Quebec still hasn’t published its plans to save caribou habitats, in spite of years of promising they’re going to.
  • Heather Stefanson is set to step down as Manitoba PC leader, as she fends off accusations she tried to push through a silica mine approval.
  • A Saskatchewan woman was given a conditional discharge for her threats to kill the prime minister.
  • Kevin Carmichael is dubious about the warnings of doom about the supposed looming “mortgage cliff” as people are due to renew at much higher rates.
  • Philippe Lagassé explores the challenges the Canadian Forces are facing dealing with domestic disasters, but also why there are few alternatives to them doing so.
  • Shannon Proudfoot calls out the Rebel Media arrest for the busking that it is, with a side of dystopian world-building.
  • Paul Wells adds another dose of perspective comparing the incident with Rebel and Trudeau visiting the Toronto police chief, and what it says about political direction.

Odds and Ends:

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3 thoughts on “Roundup: Frozen Alberta’s electricity woes”

  1. Please check out the link to Continue reading. For the last week or so it opens a browser page that does not load.

    • That sounds like a WordPress issue that I have little control over, but I’ll see what I can figure out from my end.

      • Worked today after several attempts by the browser to connect. Whatever you did worked 🙂 Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

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