On February 26, 2020 Heavoil Tech Inc. changed its name to Equity Health Services. Just a few months later, on May 10, Equity Health Services announced it had won a “significant contract” for COVID-19 testing capacity with Alberta Health Services (AHS). It was an unusual windfall for a company that had been in the healthcare business for less than a hundred days—and a big win for a lobbyist and conservative insider whose son is a political staffer under the health minister.

For months Alberta’s UCP administration has been painting critics of its plans to expand coal mining in the Rockies as cranks. Sometimes the word from on high was that they weren’t getting rid of the old coal policy. Other times, that the old coal policy didn’t ban open pit coal mines. Occasionally they’d just fall back on the argument that hey, coal mining isn’t even that bad, what’s a little toxic selenium in your drinking water anyway?

The UCP told us that their changes to Alberta’s coal policy were minor technicalities, but that’s not what the industry saw. Coal lobbyist (and former PC environment minister) Robin Campbell told the CBC just last May that it was very difficult for coal companies to get exemptions under the old coal regulations, and that rescinding the policy was a huge boon to them.

Bundled up in her scarf, tuque, and mask, my non-Muslim friend joked that she was as covered up as a Muslim woman in hijab. Yet she wasn't, she realized, subject to any of the harassment that those Muslim women face.

We sit down with Senator Paula Simons on what is to be done with the senate. Is it a vestigial structure from a bygone era – the coccyx of Confederation? Or is the newly reformed senate actually providing value to Canadians? Listen and find out. 

Workers from Alberta’s few remaining unprivatized care homes for people with developmental disabilities, and the residents of those facilities and their families, won a significant victory against the provincial government last week, forcing the UCP administration to halt its plans to sell the homes off.

A report commissioned by Alberta’s public inquiry into “anti-Alberta energy campaigns” advances a conspiracy theory that a unified international cabal of environmental philanthropists, environmentalists and socialists is hell-bent on using climate change and COVID as pretexts to end “capitalism and our modern way of life” beginning with attacks on Alberta’s fossil fuel industry.

Miranda Rosin, the United Conservative Party MLA for Banff-Kananaskis, improperly claimed $796 in meal per-diems in the first nine months of 2020, an analysis of her expense reports shows.

We speak with Dean Dettloff about his recent piece on how Jason Kenney is at odds with the Pope on carbon pricing, austerity and how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. We also touch on the history and the reality of the Christian left in a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation. 

On November 27, 2020, Premier Jason Kenney held an all-day meeting at Government House for at least 12, and as many as 30 senior government officials and staffers. The very same day, Kenney shut down banquet halls and conference centres across the province. 

Jason Kenney may have blown billions of dollars of Albertans’ public money betting on Donald Trump and Keystone XL, but it’s paying off for him personally.

He’s been doing the rounds in the media all week playing up a performance as the great pipeline defender, the champion of Alberta oil.