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.  

If, like approximately 77% of Albertans, you think that Jason Kenney’s got to go, this month there’s a great opportunity to give him a swift kick in the ass: municipal elections are on all across the province.

Back in 2020, the UCP had big plans for this year’s muni elections. They changed the election financing laws so that big donors could dump money into conservative campaigns. They planned a fake senate election and a meaningless referendum that they thought they could use to drive their supporters to the polls.

But all of that planning isn’t working out so well in the face of the UCP’s COVID disaster.

The executive director of the Friends of Medicare, Sandra Azocar, returns to the pod to discuss the state of Alberta's healthcare system and the deliberate choices by Jason Kenney and the UCP that led to this catastrophe. 

A small Alberta-based oil and gas company that has received substantial financial support from Alberta pensioners, the Alberta government, and the federal government is now getting into crypto mining—the energy-intensive and not-very-climate-friendly process of creating digital tokens like Bitcoins. Their windfall of government funding comes despite a dysfunctional relationship with its university research partner, regular failures to make interest payments to debtors, and a spotty environmental record.

Jason Kenney’s utter beating in the media last week was apparently not a turning point in Alberta’s ongoing COVID disaster. We’re hurtling along in exactly the same direction again this week, and at this point things are starting to get a little absurd.

We wash the latest federal election nonsense out of our mouth with an interview with Judith Gale, the leader of Bear Clan Patrol Beaver Hills House here in Edmonton. This group hits the streets multiple times a week to distribute food, water, clothing and harm reduction supplies to people who need it. This group is doing invaluable work during a time of crisis, learn more about what Bear Clan does and how they do it in this must-listen interview.

If you were expecting fireworks when the federal election got out of the way and the fractious UCP bench was free to start going wild, I’m sad to report none have been lit. Jason Kenney had his big post-election caucus meeting yesterday and contrary to some very optimistic speculation in the media, there was no caucus rebellion. 

One source told an Edmonton journalist that the caucus was too scared to hold a non-confidence vote without a secret ballot, which is a great demonstration of why card check is an important labor policy but not a great demonstration of courage. Jason Kenney’s popularity rating is somewhere below that of syphilis these days and it’s hard to imagine what he could threaten any elected MLA with. What’s he going to do—kick them off the sinking ship?