A detective and 11-year veteran of the Edmonton Police Service has all but ended his policing career after alleging that there is corruption within the Edmonton Police Service that is protecting one of Edmonton's most well-known criminals. Detective Dan Behiels investigated Abdullah Shah for three years but no charges ended up being laid. After exhausting his options Behiels turned whistleblower on his fellow cops and turned over his entire investigation to CBC reporter Janice Johnston. In this two-part podcast Oumar Salifou of the Is This For Real podcast joins us as we dive into the details of Johnston's excellent reporting. 

After months of teasing folks with noncommittal hints of somehow challenging Kenney, former Wildrose Party leader and UCP-leadership race-loser Brian Jean has announced that he will be taking the courageous step of seeking a position in the UCP caucus and supporting their legislative agenda. In his announcement on social media on Wednesday, Jean made no mention of Kenney, but urged voters to send him back to the Legislature so that he can stop Rachel Notley from winning a majority in the next election. Rachel Notley, says Jean, would be bad for Alberta.

The Allan Inquiry’s long-delayed final report has landed with a giant, wet thud. More than two years, $3.5 million dollars and dozens of scandals later, this key plank of Jason Kenney’s fight back strategy lies in shambles.

Sandy Garossino, columnist with the National Observer, joins us to break down the lies, damn lies and statistics in the Allan Inquiry's final report.

Alberta’s UCP government has been responsible for so many dramatic boondoggles and disasters that we’d nearly forgotten they could be scummy in the banal, cheap way that men in power so often are. This week we are reminded, as Kenney and company scramble to handle allegations of sleaze and sexual harassment at the highest level of the adminstration.

The former chief of staff to Doug Schweitzer, Ariella Kimmel, has filed a wrongful dismissal suit against the premier’s office, and the allegations don’t leave the UCP looking very good. The scene recalls the worst of Alberta’s old-boys’-club politics, with heavy drinking all over the ministers’ offices, drunken cabinet members raging and screaming at staff, and powerful men sexually harassing the women who work there.

After more than two years, $3.5 million dollars and a couple of dozen embarrassing scandals the “Public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns” is finally complete and buried deep in the report, on page 596, you’ll find a sentence that invalidates the whole enterprise. 

Have you ever wondered about the phrase “strike while the iron is hot”? It’s from blacksmithing. It isn’t easy to change something as hard as a lump of metal. You could hammer at it for days and not get anywhere. But get that iron into the forge for a bit and the bonds that kept it stuck loosen up, and for a brief window—until it cools down—it’s malleable. You can change it, if you strike while the iron is hot.

The iron is hot in Alberta today. Across the province, power arrangements in many towns and cities, especially the big two, have been melted down. That’s mostly thanks to Premier Jason Kenney, the least popular Premier in Canada and possibly the most hated Premier in Albertan history. This election was an opportunity to stick it to him, and wow did we ever.

Sprawl city council reporter Jeremy Appel, Jim Storrie and Duncan Kinney break down everything you need to know and make some predictions before the upcoming municipal elections in both Edmonton and Calgary. 

You’d never know it from the tight city councillor races happening in Edmonton and Calgary but just last year there was the largest protest movement in North American history and all of it centred around one simple demand that city councillors actually control: defunding the police.

Trent Daley and Duncan Kinney discuss the defund the police sized hole in the discourse around our municipal elections, some of the wackier school board trustee candidates out there and the incredibly disturbing Moleman case.