A visit to Fort Chipewyan as First Nations seek answers on Imperial Oil spills
Amid the fallout from Imperial Oil’s tailings pond spill in northern Alberta, we headed up...
Danielle Smith is the premier of Alberta. After taking over as the leader of the United Conservative Party, she steered the UCP to victory over the NDP in the 2023 Alberta election.
Many thought Smith’s political career was over in 2014 when, as the leader of the now-defunct Wildrose Party, she led a mass floor crossing to the governing Progressive Conservatives.
The surprise move angered her supporters and was considered a major factor in the election of Alberta’s first NDP government. That, in turn, was a driving force in the unite the right campaign that eventually merged the PCs and the Wildrose into the current United Conservative Party.
After leaving politics, Smith soon found herself hosting a radio show and eventually heading up the Alberta Enterprise Group — a business advocacy organization which lobbied the provincial government.
Despite predictions that she’d never return to politics, Smith entered the race to become leader of the UCP in 2022 after Jason Kenney stepped aside following months of controversy and dismal polling numbers. She won the race in October 2022.
During the leadership campaign, Smith courted anger at pandemic public health policies which helped to bring down Kenney, and promised to stick it to Ottawa with her proposed Alberta Sovereignty Act that she insisted would allow the province to ignore some federal laws.
Those promises and the wave of frustration that crowned her leader of the UCP have been a source of controversy now that she’s in government.
The new premier has struggled under the weight of controversies — from claiming unproven Indigenous heritage, to her watered-down Alberta Sovereignty Act, to saying the unvaccinated face more discrimination than any other group, to her proposal to subsidize oil and gas companies to clean up their messes and a short-lived war of words over proposed federal “just transition” legislation.
Amid the fallout from Imperial Oil’s tailings pond spill in northern Alberta, we headed up...
Conservation advocates are ringing alarm bells about ‘1,000 cuts’ to Alberta’s parks. We dig into...
The tailings ponds in Alberta are growing — and leaking. The feds need to ask...
An annual teachers’ conference featured a speaker from a member of the Pathways Alliance —...
The proposed pilot oil and gas cleanup incentive program — first pitched to the government...
The federal government funded the Site Rehabilitation Program to kickstart work and tackle a massive...
The alliance wants to achieve net-zero emissions from oilsands operations. Is it just another greenwashing...
AER has ordered the company to contain the leak and fix the problem at Kearl...
Alberta’s energy war room campaign to promote the carbon-intensive LNG industry comes as B.C. admits...
As members of B.C. Premier David Eby’s new cabinet headed to their swearing-in ceremony on Nov. 18, they were greeted by about two dozen people...
Continue reading