Nine months! A mere three quarters of one year are all that remains for Alberta’s UCP administration, and the governing party is already falling to pieces.

The membership drive ahead of the UCP’s October 6 leadership election has now ended, and if you didn’t buy a membership to vote, I congratulate you on not being scammed out of ten dollars. Travis Toews (formerly Kenney’s finance minister, and the architect of most of the brutal austerity since 2019), former Wildrose party leader Brian Jean, and other former Wildrose party leader Danielle Smith are the only candidates not polling within the margin of error of zero. One will briefly be Premier, from October through to the election scheduled for next May.

I was waiting for the results of a COVID-19 test when the long-term care home called to say my mom didn’t have long to live.

The police budget debate that’s coming this fall as Edmonton city council decides on the next four year budget cycle is set to get even more contentious as recently released budget documents show that the Edmonton Police Service has burned through its financial reserves and expects to run an unprecedented deficit of $5.4 million this year. 

Two separate police disciplinary decisions from this year show the lengths that the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) will go to keep the identities of police officers who break the rules a secret. 

Chief McFee investigated a citizen’s complaint into the Edmonton Police Service’s response to the February demonstrations by the anti-vax "Freedom Convoy,'' and Chief McFee discovered in his investigation that Chief McFee did a great job and that Chief McFee wouldn’t change a thing.  

The next chief of Alberta’s human rights commission, Collin May, wrote “Islam is not a peaceful religion misused by radicals. Rather, it is one of the most militaristic religions known to man,” among several other questionable remarks in his glowing 2009 review of Islamic Imperialism: A History by British-Israeli historian Efraim Karsh in C2C Journal. 

Alberta’s coffers are suddenly overflowing. Thanks to a few matters out of the control of anyone around here (the Russians invading Ukraine, mostly) the price of oil has been flying higher and higher since about February. And that’s changing the agenda for next year’s election dramatically.

The price of a barrel of Western Canada Select is higher now than it was before the precipitous collapse at the end of 2014. In fact, if I’m reading these charts correctly, Alberta oil has only once ever been worth more, during the brief spike in 2008—and for all we know it could get there again soon.

A proposed rail project between Calgary and Banff—whose backing by the Invest Alberta Corporation critics described as “a layer cake of conflicts of interest”—is unlikely to get financial support from the provincial government, according to sources contacted by the Progress Report. 

Host Duncan Kinney sits down with Dr. Jamie Livingston of Saint Mary's University to discuss why UCP's wrongheaded approach to centering police in mental health care and addictions and why we need well-funded, community led, civilian-led, unarmed mental health crisis response programs yesterday. 

The exact salary of Calgary’s chief of police is being kept secret in order to protect his privacy despite the fact that every other major Canadian city discloses the salary of its chief of police.