COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MAY 30, 31, 2023. If the question was will the May 29 election in the fourth-largest, oil-and-gas-rich Canadian province of Alberta be more like the May 14 election in Thailand (vaguely progressive, maybe), or the May 14 and 28 elections in Turkey (quite conservative), the clear answer is the still intriguing […]

SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, GRAND BEND, ON. 18 MAY 2023. My only first-hand memories of Turkey go back almost 16 years, to the early fall of 2007. It was just after the big second victory of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the July 22 election that year. But it was […]

Yesterday Premier Rachel Notley finally announced that Alberta’s long-anticipated provincial election will be held some four weeks hence, on Tuesday, April 16! Opinion polls have long been showing that former Stephen Harper federal cabinet minister Jason Kenney’s new United Conservative Party is well ahead of Premier Notley’s New Democrats. And a “new poll from Ipsos,” […]

For a while now it has been clear enough that the wildrose province of Alberta is thirsting to leave some new mark on the evolving story of the Canadian confederation of 1867. The not-so-great debate on Senate reform since the 1980s – pushed along by an Alberta provincial government report called Strengthening Canada –  is […]

[UPDATED APRIL 13]. One thing that keeps our free and democratic Canadian politics going these days – in spite of many good reasons otherwise – is its recurrent capacity for surprise. It’s like the woman (or man if it also works in that direction) who continually fascinates you, because you can never quite figure out […]

GANATSEKWYAGON, ONTARIO. SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2015. 2:30 AM ET.  The early summer storms that have lately been battering this region have returned. Right now you can literally hear the wind and the rain in the darkness outside the back office window, here at the edge of the great lake. There does seem some kind of […]

I can’t think of another election where what I wanted to see happen has actually happened to quite the same extent as in Alberta on May 5, 2015. (It’s almost scary.) See, eg, “Alberta Election: NDP surges to majority government” and “New Democrats crush Progressive Conservative dynasty.” As one Conservative Albertan pointed out on CBC […]