Kenney's Campaign Rollout Continues

The plan has to be followed no matter what when an army launches a Blitzkrieg campaign .  Each day brings about another checkers move in Kenney's run for Rideau Cottage.  But I am with David Climenhaga on the subject of the suspicious cheque.

Are you surprised by this being a repeat of Klein's cheesy stunt?  Not me.  These jokers have a very small bag of tricks.

An edit:  I forgot to add that if this was such a great letter, why did he receive it on March 20 and not tweet about it till April 14?Recommend this Post

Any Doubt That Kenney Follows A "Jason First" Policy?

Events sure do overwhelm the best made plans.  Less than 48 hours ago Alberta's Uber-Premier made a play to reset his image on the national stage by offering up Alberta's "surplus" PPE.  For which he received generally positive reviews and expressions of gratitude from other premiers.  I expect he was fairly chuffed.  Then today, it turns out the Emperor has no surplus.

Some Alberta physicians are paying premium prices for medical gear on the open market despite the province sending hundreds of thousands of masks and other safety equipment to other provinces, leaving some doctors on the front lines feeling abandoned.
Anmol Kapoor, for example, is a cardiologist in Calgary who recently secured 1,000 masks from a dental supplier in Toronto for $2 each, compared to the 20 cents he usually pays. He has been sharing supplies with other physicians who are running low on protective equipment.

And even if his surplus wasn't shown to be illusory, how does he expect this to play?

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is calling out Canada's top doctor for advice she gave Canadians at the start of the pandemic and said he will not wait for Health Canada to approve medications, vaccines or tests before rolling them out if other "peer" countries have already approved them. 

and personally attacking the Chief public health officer

Kenney said Tam's suggestion that there are problems with testing kits or medicines being approved in the EU or the U.S. was tantamount to saying Canada's allies are approving things that "are dangerous for public use.""This is the same Dr. Tam who is telling us that we shouldn't close our borders to countries with high levels of infection and who in January was repeating talking points out of the [People's Republic of China] about the no evidence of human-to-human transmission," Kenney said.  "We are not going to feel constrained under our public health act." 

This morning radio report on this pomposity included a comment that some of the medicines he is referring to are hydroxycloroquine.  Really?  He is trumpeting a cure promoted by Donald Trump over medical professionals.  This episode will wear as well as his surplus.

Just when Kenney tries his Prime Minister shoes on for size he can't help but tie the laces together.

Recommend this Post

Methinks Someone Still Has Prime Ministerial Ambitions

I'm not saying it is a bad idea to share PPE and other medical equipment if Alberta actually does have a surplus but consider the source.  As David Climenhaga points out this "surplus" doesn't jibe with the governments own recent estimates.

To wit, if less than a week ago we barely had enough N95 medical masks for Alberta’s hard-pressed nurses, doctors and other front-line health care workers to work for the next 30 days, was the premier wise to give away three-quarters of a million of them to other provinces on the strength of contracts with manufacturers abroad for more? As we have recently seen, some foreign manufacturers will break their contracts if ordered by their national government.

So why would Kenney take this risk with the health of Albertans. Perhaps leverage for future pipelines is the entirety of his strategy.  Or maybe he wants to burnish his image on the national stage.  After all, his image has been tarnished a lot given his recent behaviour.

But just as he did a passable job of pretending to enjoy ethnic food during his role as the designated Minister Curry in a Hurry for the Harper government to court a vote previously inimical to Conservatives, is he following the same playbook with this benevolence?

I don't care if it helps out fellow Canadians without endangering Albertan but I don't expect this particular leopard will have changed his spots.Recommend this Post

Tyler Shandro Should Win The Award As Kenny's Best Minister

The underlings always follow the example of the Alpha Wolf.  As a case in point, Jason Kenny has had to deal with evidence of several illegalities.  As you would expect from a crummy premier, it is a long trail of crumbs.  Defrauding the federal government of rent expenses, kamikaze leadership candidates, a $30 million dollar War Roo / Slush Fund.  While it isn't surprising that Kenny is the head of a theft machine, it is amazing how quickly the corruption has taken hold.

In the context of the UCP, Tyler Shandro's obvious and blatant conflict of interest is not something to be punished.  It is a trait to be rewarded and emulated by others.

The COVID-19 and price war crises are providing a lot of cover for the Kenny government.  Not a lot of light is being shone on the corruption of the UCP at the moment.  But when these events pass and the truth comes out, the grift will be shocking.Recommend this Post

There but for the Grace of the FSM goes Canada

I don't often comment on Alberta Politics because the albertapolitics.ca blog already does such a great job.  But I do reflect on Alberta and the national body politic.  And given that the K-Man is just a surrogate for Stephen Harper, I am very thankful that Harper never got a second majority.  It will take decades to fix Kenny mistakes.  It would have taken Canada even longer to fix the effect these cretins would have had on Canada.Recommend this Post

Is there a path forward for the current Conservative Party?

The historic arc of Canada's conservative parties (Progressive Conservatives, Reform, CRAP, Conservatives and others in between) in the late 20th through early 21 centuries has been fascinating.

The PC party essentially ended with the Campbell implosion at the polls.  Mulroney has stitched together a coalition of Quebec sovereigntists and western conservatives and achieved 2 majority governments.  That iteration fell apart when the stresses of the Meech Lake Accord led to the formation of the Bloc Quebecois and the en mass decamping of the ROC conservative vote to the Reform Party.

That created an opening for Stephen Harper to kludge a new Conservative party from a blend of western Conservatives, social conservatives, somewhat crypto-separatists and an assortment of other  smaller conservative factions. With the help of an unethical RCMP Commissioner, a television journalist desperate to get into the Senate and a weakened opposition, this jalopy was able to cobble together two minority governments and one majority governments  The Harper governments were extremely unpopular and Canadians tossed them out as soon as a plausible alternative became available.

Harper stepped down as leader to manage his puppet, Andrew Scheer, from behind the curtain.  Scheer was unable to leverage faux scandals into a winning campaign.  As a result, Scheer was forced to step down so that Harper can push forward one of his other "Sure Fire Winner" acolytes.

But have the Conservatives slipped back into a repeat of  the Stockwell Day era?  They have a lock on a small subset of voters and can marginally add to that support by ginning up anger at non-scandals but will they ever be able to build a truly national coalition?

Their problem might not be that Harper is still pulling the strings.  It might be that they are trapped in a structure that is fatally flawed.Recommend this Post