Jurisdictions with the most repressive lockdowns have higher death rates per case
The most mentioned reason for lockdowns has been the protection of health-care systems. The claim is that such protection saves lives. So is it fair to ask how well health systems are performing their lockdown life-saving duty? There are several points from which one can compare health jurisdictions and their fight against COVID-19. One can…
Even if everyone is vaccinated, the spread of infection won't stop
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s plan to treat the coronavirus as endemic is the way out of the COVID-19 crisis. That he has adopted provincial restrictions for the fourth time doesn’t negate the endemic approach. But his declaration that we have “a crisis of the unvaccinated” offers no solution. The newest health impositions reveal a vaccine…
Playing on fears, bribing and threatening to produce compliance is unconscionable
I am sorry to be so frank to a man whom I admired and from whom I expected good things. I confess that in younger days, I thought of Albertans mainly as people who cornered too slowly on mountain roads. But I learned, partly from you, that I must think much more of them than…
Vacuous electoral promises and virtue-signalling schemes won’t deliver the outcomes Indigenous Canadians need
Canada has consistently failed to make progress commensurate with the many lofty pronouncements and expectations on the Indigenous file. It’s a national shame that most Indigenous Canadians on reservations live far below acceptable socio-economic standards. Money isn’t the problem. By 2022, the federal budget allocations to Indigenous will have doubled since 2016 to nearly $25…
After all, the high demand for outdoor activities springs from a need for physical activity provoked by government Covid-19 restrictions
Rising costs to operate Alberta’s Kananaskis parks should come out of the province’s health budget. As soon as the provincial government imposed a lockdown in March 2020, Albertans headed outdoors in greater numbers than ever. However, the province and municipal governments soon restricted outdoor gatherings as well. Recall the hysterical complaints about seeing people walking…
We must free internal trade, reform banking and telecommunications and increase incentives for retraining
By Sara MacIntyre and Marco Navarro-Genie Frontier Centre for Public Policy Canadians want change. It’s been more than a generation since we’ve felt the kind of overreaching power of government we’ve experienced in the past year. Daily freedoms have been curtailed, millions of livelihoods impaired, savings drained and countless fines and arrests created for new…
His low popularity comes from his miscalculations and not from his opponents’ abilities
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is in some trouble. A recent opinion survey put the Opposition NDP and its leader Rachel Notley ahead of the United Conservative Party (UCP), within reach of forming a majority if a vote were held now. Kenney’s popularity has eroded during the COVID-19 crisis, even though – or perhaps because of…
A wise statesman doesn’t diminish the moral choices of the people he serves
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney recently posted on social media his reaction to protests on the steps of the legislature and GraceLife Church just west of Edmonton. Hundreds gathered at the legislature in Edmonton on April 12, including many other parts of the province. Those who know Kenney would recognize his style and tone in the…
Joe Biden’s affinity for a Green New Deal and a great reset shows the same hostility for hydrocarbon energy that Trudeau does
As many as a third of Albertans steadily favour breaking away from Canada, according to polls. Some even believe that joining the U.S. as a 51st state is the best option, but that seems less likely now. The impulse to reject Canada is as old as British North America and is rooted in issues that…
Health experts and politicians camouflage their failure by using the only weapon left in their arsenal - instilling fear
We recently marked the anniversary of the COVID-19 confinements that were only supposed to last for only a few weeks. In many ways, fear became the pandemic. Different people drive the COVID-19 fear, but its principal generators are statisticians and the medical bureaucrats – the experts ‘advising’ the politicians, who in turn display appearances of…