Alison Redford. How low can she go?

 No, I am not referring to her poll numbers, which are going lower every day for reasons which are quite obvious, I am referring to 2 recent photo-ops where she decided it was appropriate to turn official Government of Alberta events into partisan campaign events where for good measure she decided that it was okay to lie to the children in attendance.

Last Wednesday in Calgary and again on Thursday in Edmonton, Redford went out of her way to attack the opposition in front of young children there to see the Redford in her role as premier and in both instances told the children in attendance a blatant lie so over the top that it should make your head spin and your stomach a little queasy knowing she deliberately did so.

“We know we can’t stop building and that’s why we reject the opposition’s build-nothing approach,"

“I wouldn’t let them off the hook by simply saying they don’t want to invest in the future through schools,”

“They don’t want to build hospitals and they don’t want to build roads and they don’t want to invest in bridges or water.”

"Redford told the children — and the parents and dignitaries seated behind them — that while her government is committed to building things, her opponents are not."


The opposition will build "nothing". No roads, schools, clinics, buildings...  nothing! An utterly ridiculous statement that the facts and common sense defy. Perhaps our premier should have asked those kids what the meaning of the word 'nothing' is because she clearly does not know.


None of this should be surprising as the Alberta PC's have long ago lost sight of the line between party and government but what makes these occurrences different is that she decided to do so in front of young kids who were there, and who probably had no other choice but to attend, to see Redford as a representative of their government and not a representative of the PCCA holding a partisan campaign style event which their parents paid for with their taxes.  And she did so, lies included, with the Minister of Education and what looks to be every Calgary PC MLA in attendance at her side cheering and approving her lies to school kids.



They all stood by, in fact they all applauded, and let the Premier lie to children.

Now that is low on anyone's scale.

When is a "long standing policy" at the CBC not really a policy at all? When it involves Justin Trudeau.

So CBC ran Justin Trudeau's latest ad during the broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday night.

Nothing wrong with that, right?

Flashback to 2009

"OTTAWA, June 4 (UPI) -- Canada's cash-strapped public broadcaster is refusing to run the Conservative party's attack ads on the leader of the Liberal party.

The ads that accuse Michael Ignatieff of "just visiting" Canada after 34 years out of the country are airing on all other networks in the country, but the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. declined, saying it contravened a longstanding policy, the Canwest News Service reported.

CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said the refusal wasn't a political statement.

"We'll only accept political advertising like that when there is an election campaign on," he told Canwest. "We have generally pretty strict guidelines."  (highlighting mine)


Federal broadcast law stipulates all broadcasters must allocate time for political campaigning and advertising, but only after an election has been called, the report said.
Ignatieff said earlier in the week he didn't want to bring the Conservative minority government down with a non-confidence vote any time soon, but that he was under mounting pressure from fellow Liberals."

So when is a 'long standing policy" at the CBC not really a long standing policy?

When it involves Justin Trudeau.

Way to go CBC!





Update: As noted in the comments. A great way to voice your concern/displeasure/etc is to email the cbc ombudsman. It does work as this 2010 example: http://thealbertaardvark.blogspot.ca/2011/04/albertaardvark-1-cbc-0-scott-reid-and.html shows. It was with a  different Ombudsman, but oddly enough the current Ombudsman, Esther Enkin, makes an appearance.






h/t Kate from SDA. 

CBC covers for Justin Trudeau's "excluded" comment.

Justin Trudeau: “Now, we don’t know now if it was terrorism or a single crazy or a domestic issue or a foreign issue. “But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded. Completely at war with innocents. At war with a society. And our approach has to be, where do those tensions come from?”

CBC: "Boston bombing suspects were social, but isolated" (please read the story where the author gives their opinion that these clowns "may have felt socially isolated" even though the story lists many example of how they were not)

I know it is not nearly the same type of cheer leading that the Toronto Star does on a regular basis but considering the hubbub over Trudeau's comments and that this story was published under politics it certainly is an interesting choice of words that CBC used for their headline don't you think.  


UPDATE: CBC radically edits the original story. Kills headline, quote about feeling socially isolated removed and basically rewrote the entire piece which originally had a striking similarity to something the NY Times ran. 

Confirmed: AHS paid for health executive to go to US for second opinion.

Yesterday the Wildrose Party raised questions about a $7,233 expense claim for a 3day trip to the Mayo clinic in Rochester Minnesota made by a former Alberta Health Services senior executive.  Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith alleged in the legislature Lahey billed taxpayers for medical treatment abroad, circumvented Alberta’s Out-Of-Country Health Services Committee and jumped the queue for health-care treatment.

The PCs went into full spin mode in the Alberta Legislature trying to dismiss the allegations even though they had no idea of what happened.  Watch Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk as he says that the expenses “probably are legitimate.” calling the suggestion that taxpayers paid for private care for a health executive “irresponsible and wrong.” even though he had nothing factual to back up his statements. (misleading the house?)




Also of note were Premier Alison Redford's comments where she used her favorite catch all line to spin bad news "It did happen in the past." as if anything that 'happened' could have possibly taken place somewhere else but in the past. I can't blame her for trying to use the line though as it makes great cover for everything from outrageous AHS expenses to her own (now broken) election promises from last year. They all were in the past so....

Flash forward to today and it turns out that the allegations were correct and that AHS did pay the expenses for Lehey to go to the Mayo clinic, but not for treatment, as can be allowed in certain circumstances but you do have to jump through AHS hoops to do so, but for a second opinion!

Wow, way to show confidence in the health system you are running AHS. You know, the one that the rest of us have to use because our bosses won't cover our expenses to circumvent the system like AHS clearly did in this case.  Keep up the good work AHS and keep earning those 'at risk' bonuses.


I can't wait to see how Redford's PCs will try and spin this one but given their history I suspect they will again try to lay blame and smear the Wildrose for doing their jobs by bringing up such waste to our attention and asking questions in the legislature.

Wildrose Press release from April 16th.

Ralph Klein 1942-2013

I have been searching for the right words to write to express what the Klein family and Alberta lost yesterday with the passing of Ralph Klein and almost a full day later I still can't come up with anything truly worthy of the man and his legacy. So instead I will link to some of the many wonderful articles written about the man who wanted only to be called Ralph and say thank you for all that he did for this province and say a big thank you to his wife Colleen and the Klein family for sharing him with us. You were one of a kind Ralph and you will be missed.

Gunter: We lost a great Albertan.

The Globe and Mail: Canadians remember Ralph Klein as tributes pour in.

Sun: Ralph Klein was one of us.

Corbella: Just call him Ralph, the peoples premier.

Thompson: Impossible not to like Ralph Klein.

Calgary Herald: We loved him.

Stockwell Day: Ralph Klein was genuine, kept his word.

Calgary Sun: Remembering Ralph

Colby Cosh: The deceptive shape of a shadow.



and a couple that pay tribute to the man and note just how far off track Alberta has gone since Ralph retired in 2006. 

Flanagan: Deficit and debt fighters of today should learn from Ralph Klein.

Braid: Klein's debt fighting legacy at risk.


 

Rest in peace Ralph, Alberta missed you even before you were gone.

Alberta Budget 2013. A few thoughts.

Obfuscate:

1. Render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible.
2. Bewilder (someone).

It has been 3 days since the Alberta Budget was handed down and I still can't figure out what the actual numbers are. But that wasn't a mistake, that was the intention of the Redford budget 2013-14 and I am clearly not alone in that belief.

Graham Thompson called it "arguably the most opaque, obscure and cynical budget yet delivered in Alberta."

Don Braid wrote: "translating this one (budget) is like trying to decipher the Inca alphabet (clue: they didn’t have one.)"

and Derek Fildebrandt from the Canadian Tax Payer Federation tweeted: "I have never seen an attempt to obscure facts and numbers from the public as blatant and serious as this."  (perhaps this is why they tried to keep him out of the lockup)

It is a mess. Nobody can peg an actual deficit and having Doug Horner unsure about the meaning of the word deficit and a Premier who is actually claiming that we don't have a deficit is clouding the matter even more for the average Albertan trying to get a handle on what the hell happened.

The bottom line is as Horner says “we’re in a deficit.”  including an almost $500 million dollar operating debt of which Redford promised just 4 months ago "We will continue to ensure that our operating budget is balanced." and we will be $17 billion in debt by the year 2016. That is if you assume their numbers are correct and the PC track record has not been good in that regard and now Redford has had to break almost every election promise that she made not even 1 year ago.

Oh and fair warning to those that are not happy with Premier Redford about this because apparently if you were one of those who believed Redford's promises of a balanced budget and no debt, that she used to win the election, prepare to be called names and mocked if you believed her or if you believe in such extreme ideologies as honesty or fiscal responsibility for now and the future.

With a fiscal record so bad and now with a trail of broken promises it is easy to see why Redford and the PCs have attempted to obfuscate with their budget to throw the public off the reality of the situation but unlike other years they really had no choice this time; their hand was forced as there is no longer an easy way to hide their incompetence . No longer can the PCs rely on the Sustainability Fund to cover for their fiscal incompetence as they did 5 previous times running deficit budgets; the PCs drained the once near $18 billion dollar fund to almost zero and the jig is up.  Oddly enough that Sustainability Fund which has covered the PCs for the last 7 years was started by Ralph Klein, that same Ralph Klein that progressive conservatives including Redford herself have been slamming lately for being fiscally irresponsible by balancing our books and getting us out of debt and of course giving us that PC butt saving Sustainability Fund.

While I am on Ralph here is one of the laws his gov't wrote and was law in Alberta until the PCs rescinded it in 2008:  "actual expense for a fiscal year shall not exceed actual revenue for that year." 

A far cry from what is in Redford's 2013-14 budget, or at least I think so. It is so hard to tell.

So as we await the start of week 1 of the budget showdown in the legislature, I look forward to not only the great debate but also finding out what heck that thing actually said and what it means to Alberta.



BTW the often politicized Provincial Affairs Bureau, the ones that spin for the government and now on a regular basis flat out attack other political parties for partisan purposes, got an increase in funding.  They may claim otherwise because of the creative bookkeeping trick of rolling 2 budget 2012-13 line items together, killing one of them but using that inflated total to claim that there was actually a cut this year, but the truth is the PCs taxpayer funded propaganda arm is this year getting nearly 17 million dollars to spin you when last year they were given a budget of 15 million. 

So if your local hospital or school has been delayed or if you have already been told that there is no money to give you a wage increase this year, take heart that the PCs consider you so important that they are spending even more money this year to tell you just how good that they and their policies are.

Politicizing Flanagan.The Alberta Edition.

One would expect that the Liberals and the usual crowd of Harper haters would try to politicize Professor Flanagan's comments on child porn for partisan reasons but would you expect so called conservatives to do the same?

Well welcome to Alberta where some conservatives in the PC party have done exactly that and it is making them look silly in the process.


First up Justice Minister Jonathan Denis who on the Rutherford Show today, or as the Alberta Government likes to refer to it; "Wildrose radio", had this to say:  


"Interesting comments from the Wildrose today, hey". ( Note how Denis changes the topic and instigates the smear) I also think the Wildrose has some explaining to do because you know, if you go back, he has been publicly described as a mentor, trusted confident, tenured close personal friend, guided Miss Smith's entire political career ( reading from talking points or just a great memory for old quotes?); I think this goes to more of the core of the party than she would let on."  

There is no way to call this other than what it is; a blatant and calculated attempt to smear an entire political party because of its association to an individual. An utterly ridiculous assertion  made even more pathetic because it was made by someone who also has an association with the same individual. Yes it is true, the same person that Denis used for his smear attempt is the same one with which he coauthored an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen with!  Hypocrisy thy name is Jonathan Denis. 

Since we are on the topic of campaign managers Susan Elliot, the PC campaign chair in the last election and who has a previous history of attacking conservatives, decided to also get into the act by tweeting this smear nonsense:


"Did Danielle know before the 2012 election when she hired Flanagan? 2009 story: http://www.themanitoban.com/2009/11/flanagan-speaks/500/ … #ableg #pcaa #abpoli"
  
Yes, because everyone knew about Flanagan's 2009 comments before today, which is why we heard the PCs use them against the WRP during the election. Oh wait, we didn't see the PC's use those comments did we. (and you know we would have had they in fact known about them) So in other words Elliot is 'upset' that the WRP didn't know about comments that neither the PC party, their operatives or her had any idea had existed before today. Seems logical to me. Not.    More like just another example of how the PC's will say and do anything to stay in power.


There of course were others as well. My friend Stefan Baranski had to get his smear attempts in and the ableg Twitter feed was awash sock puppet accounts with 2-10 followers as well as some of the usual WRP haters who were busy smearing away. Including a certain attention seeking one who gave a textbook example of smear (and possibly libel), blamed someone else, was proven wrong, played the hurt bunny routine rather than admit she was wrong, and even though she claims to be against hate, bullying, lowering the political discourse etc etc went straight into the gutter   (you know, all the stuff she claims to be against) in an attempt to smear someone else. As the kids say on the Twitter it was an #epicfail.

Typical and expected from this crowd of haters but from conservatives who will be crying next week about how the Wildrose are bottom feeders and are lowering the political discourse in Alberta, not so much. 

But that is now how 'conservatives' in Redford's PC party like to operate.

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