The Kenney administration’s slow war against organized labour continues, and a reckless school reopening in the face of COVID is only days away. Here’s our wrap-up of the week’s political stories in Alberta:

• Kenney performed a mild cabinet shuffle today, moving around a few major and minor players: Kaycee Madu has been moved up from Municipal Affairs to replace Doug Schweitzer as Minister of Justice and Solicitor General. Schweitzer has been given a newly created ministry tasked with implementing the UCP’s economic recovery plan and is sure to make fast friends as he distributes handouts to the UCP’s favored corporate partners. Replacing Madu as Minister of Municipal Affairs is Tracy Allard, the MLA for Grande Prairie.
  
  
• Is the Edmonton Police Service getting a new tank? A source tipped off the Edmonton Journal to the possibility just over a week ago, but EPS is refusing to say yes or no. Unlike other municipal services, like the fire department, EPS doesn’t provide the city with an itemized breakdown when it asks for money to buy equipment, so there isn’t even much of a paper trail. Local media seems to be dropping the ball on this story so we’re investigating. Meanwhile, the Tyee reports that corporate partners including banks, oil companies and financiers are pumping millions of dollars into police departments in Canada to buy military equipment.
  
  
• Why use proven technology when you can play with science projects? That seems to the position of the Premier, who mused last week that Alberta should be getting into building nuclear power plants. Never mind that the former NDP government proved that wind and solar power can be got in this province for an absolute bargain these days, or that small modular nuclear reactors are an unproven technology that isn’t providing power anywhere right now. In the same vein, the UCP have rejected running high-speed rail between Edmonton and Calgary in favor of exploring ‘hyperloop’ technology which may simply never get built.
  
  
• The social conservative movement flexed its muscles this month to ensure the election of Erin O’Toole as new federal Conservative Party leader over his rival, Peter MacKay. A few of the bigger players like anti-choice group RightNow (an organization that also had a great deal of influence over UCP candidate nominations here in Alberta) are doing victory laps this week. O’Toole’s campaign was largely run by folks involved in far-right alternative media like The Post Millenial and the various ‘Proud’ social media operations; on his way out, former leader Andrew Scheer urged conservatives to abandon traditional media and pay more attention to these and other fringe right-wing sources. Expect an even more pugnacious CPC in the days to come.
  
  
• This week on the Progress Report podcast Duncan interviews Norma Dunning, an Inuk academic and activist who was involved in the campaign to change the name of Edmonton’s football team. Edmonton has a dark history regarding the Inuit that you may not know--horrible stuff including even forced medical experiments. Check out the episode for the full story.
  
  
• Also in audio: the latest Alberta Advantage podcast episode features Sean Carleton from the University of Manitoba who’s on to talk about the politics of monuments. From the defacement or destruction of statues of colonizers to Canada’s strange abundance of monuments to actual Nazis, the significance of monuments is a timely topic--great analysis on this episode.
  
  
• Two city councillors are in hot water this month in Edmonton and in Calgary. The Calgary police have asked the RCMP to investigate the expenses of councillor Joe Magliocca, who earlier this year was found to have thousands of dollars in dodgy expense claims. And in Edmonton, the city integrity commissioner has advised council to censure councillor Mike Nickel for making misleading statements about council decisions and city policies online. While the provincial government frequently criticizes both city councils for what it calls fiscal irresponsibility, the (now-outgoing) Minister of Municipal Affairs has been silent on the conduct of these two conservative councillors.

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