Watch as Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne does an epic flip flop on AHS executive bonus pay.

June 2013: Fred Horne fires the entire AHS Board for their refusal not to be arms length from the PC government and do what they are told. (although they did exactly what they were told and did "reconsider its decision to pay executive bonuses." Horne just didn't like their decision.)

March 2013:  “Regardless of how people feel about the decision of the AHS board, I don’t think anybody would want me or a colleague to interfere with the terms of their employment they’ve agreed to. It’s a decision for the AHS board,”

“I don’t have the authority to interfere with someone’s contract of employment.”

“We’ll take the appropriate time as government to look at what they’re planning to do, ask questions and (ask) for clarification,” said Horne.

“It’s important to recognize it’s difficult times, it’s tough choices. When people make those tough choices, we need to be there to support them."

Read the story and watch the video here.

Alberta PCs try to play cheap political games and again fail miserably.

While Albertan's watch government services being cut all around them, including cuts to health care, education and just about everything one can think of, the PC government of Alison Redford has decided to take time away dealing with these problems and running Alberta to play cheap political games in an attempt to smear the official opposition Wildrose.

National Post. Jen Gerson: Alberta PCs try to distract from their own misdeeds by inflating Wildrose robocall ruling.

Edmonton Journal. Graham Thompson: Wildrose shouldn't be tarred with Pierre Poutine brush.


Edmonton SUN Lorne Gunter: Alberta Tories are creating hysteria out of Wildrose robocalls.


Another failure of the PC spin machine.





BTW: I do have to commend the way the Wildrose have handled the situation.


While the PC's turned on their smear machine by making wild accusations, spreading outright lies and making ridiculous demands for a CRTC report not yet released,  and using (it always does) tax payer funded Government of Alberta resources (see RT's) to do so; the Wildrose stepped up and did the right thing.

The Wildrose cooperated fully with the CRTC investigation right from the beginning and when news broke a week ago of the fine they not only paid the $90K but also quickly apologized and asked Alberta's Chief Electoral Officer to investigate. After the complete CRTC report was released had even more to say including the leader Danielle Smith saying that she was "embarrassed" (a word we have never heard or are ever likely to hear used by Premier Redford) by what had happened as well the party released the scripts of the calls in question.


It is easy see why the PC government of Alison Redford would want to try and distract the public from what is going on around them. After promising the moon to get elected last year, including balancing the budget and increased spending for almost every government ministry, the total failure of the PC's to keep those promise and the devastating cuts that we got as a result of that failure, is not something that they want on the minds of Albertans. But with all that going on; wouldn't their time be better spent dealing with the problems their broken promises and surprise cuts are causing rather than playing politics and trying to smear the Wildrose?

If history is any indication we already know the answer; it is clear that Alison Redford and the PC's will stoop to anything to try and score cheap political points.

Since criminals, drugs, politicians and videos are all the rage lately...

May I present a video that you can actually see for yourself (unlike the one you have been hearing so much about lately) of Marc Emery saying he smoked pot with Justin Trudeau.

And it won't cost you $200,000 to see either!


Warning NSFW





Enjoy.

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.