$10-a-day, publicly-subsidized child care is on the way to Alberta, finally. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Edmonton to announce it at a press conference with Jason Kenney on Monday and you could tell the Premier wasn’t feeling it.

At 4 pm last Friday afternoon a press release went out, not on the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation website (AIOC) or through the Government of Alberta news alert email list but through a service called GlobeNewswire, that the CEO of the AIOC, Alicia Dubois, was stepping down. 

Const. Ben Todd, the Edmonton Police officer at the centre of a police brutality case which alleges that he kicked an Indigenous teenager in the head so hard he now has a tennis-ball sized hole in his skull, was a school resource officer (SRO) at Austin O’Brien High School in 2019-2020 and was frequently in Edmonton-area high schools as part of the Edmonton Police Youth Recruit Academy.

The latest horrifying instance of police brutality from the Edmonton Police Service has made national headlines. It really highlights how broken our police accountability systems are and shows us again why we must defund the police.  

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.