Jason Kenney/UCP vs BigFoot: Lying big oil pimping $120 Million War Room attacks a cartoon (even though Alberta had planned and plans to nuke bitumen & there are plans to frac with nuclear waste).

Malcolm Mayes cartoon, Edmonton Journal, March 30, 2021

Stupidly and expensively spun for us via the liars at UCP’s $30 million a year War Room that propagandizes for billion dollar profit-raping oil and gas companies (mostly foreign-owned), name later changed to Canadian Energy Centre (to make it sound less stupid and more official, like the federal Canadian Energy Regulator, previously NEB?).

Some hilarious tweets on UCP’s Silly War Room (Oil & Gas Industry Pimps) Censor Culture:

Val Jobson@softgrasswalker Replying to @pmmcc and @CDNEnergyCentre

Maybe the sequel could tell the truth about tailings ponds and deformed fish.

Dr Dan Shugar@WaterSHEDLab

Absurd they don’t let you change the letter text to something more appropriate.

Schrödinger’s Dog blowing the tops off mountains@bachausProtonm1 Replying to @WaterSHEDLab and @pmmcc

ROFLMAO I tried the same thing …. Lol they want a canned reply that pushes their agenda … We wouldn’t want the truth of how people actually feel.

Yuri Wuensch@enigmamachine Replying to @pmmcc

Oh good! I am sure this will make Deutsche Bank reconsider its divestment from the oilsands. Reputation saved!

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Alberta investing in small modular reactors to cut emissions in oil production by caracampbell, Mar 26, 2021, 660 News

… Speaking at a news conference Thursday, premiere Jason Kenney said Alberta is in talks with the federal government to expand the use of SMR’s.

… SMR’s are nuclear fission reactors that are relatively small, and mobile compared to traditional nuclear power plants.

One of the major applications the Government of Canada has identified is used in oilsands extraction.  According to the SMR roadmap, “oilsands producers and remote mines would benefit from medium-term options for bulk heat and power that would be more reliable and cleaner than their current energy sources.”

The reactors use high heat to generate power.

“That heat can be used to produce steam, which you can use to produce electricity, but you can just as easily use that high-temperature heat to use steam that’s used in oil and gas extraction,” said Gorman.

… As for safety and byproduct concerns, Gorman says the technology is safe and produces very little waste that’s already being managed. …

Alberta energy minister defends war room petition attack on children’s Bigfoot movie by The Canadian Press, March 16, 2021, The Globe and Mail

Alberta’s energy minister is defending her government’s attack on a children’s movie about Bigfoot that she says is “quite offensive” and carries an inaccurate anti-oil message.

Sonya Savage also says it’s critical the government push back constantly against what it sees as false narratives that cast Alberta’s wellspring industry in a negative light.

“Not everybody is going to agree with every single tactic of the Canadian Energy Centre. I don’t either,” Savage told a committee examining the Energy Department’s budget on Tuesday.

“But I did find that the comments that I’ve heard in that cartoon were quite offensive. And the comments have to be countered somewhere.

“And there’s no question whatsoever that we have to find a way to counter the kinds of campaigns and the kind of narrative and the significant misinformation that is targeted at our energy sector.”

Savage was referring to a petition campaign recently launched by the energy centre, informally called the war room, against the animated movie Bigfoot Family, which can be viewed on the streaming giant Netflix.

The film features talking animals and a domesticated Bigfoot character battling an oil magnate who is seeking to blow up an Alaskan wildlife preserve to gain easier access to petroleum.

The war room is urging followers to send Netflix messages that say the movie is “brainwashing our kids with anti-oil and gas propaganda.”

The Sasquatch debate spilled onto the floor during question period.

Opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley said the United Conservative government is making the province a laughingstock. Premier Jason Kenney accused Notley of supporting those who would deride Alberta’s big-ticket industry. Ya, industry raping Alberta blind, to the tune of $300 Billion in liabilities the industry refuses to address, still letting big companies sell to no bit companies, walk from clean up, refusing to honour contracts with landowners and refusing to pay rent, mega rich corporations hanging landowners with corporate utility bills, more and more oil and gas companies not paying taxes to municipalities to the tune of hundreds of millions, frac’d and contaminated aquifers, waste dumped on food lands, roads and in water ways, and many more “big-ticket” ripoffs.

“Which investors in Zurich do you think were swayed by your brave stand against a child’s cartoon character?” Notley asked Kenney.

“I know the NDP hates oil and gas. They’ve always despised this province’s largest industry and I’m sure they’re cheering on the propaganda in that Netflix story, but we’re correcting the record as we should,” Kenney countered.Such a pathetic unimaginative liar. Notley reduced royalties for the patch when in power, and dramatically lied to further enable and subsidize frac’ing, with full support from NGOs, CAPP and other oil patch faithfuls.

Notley replied: “More people laughing at you is not a win.”

The fuss over the film has prompted a renewed debate between the UCP and the NDP over the war room’s goals and purpose.

The centre was started in late 2019 to fulfil a campaign promise by Kenney to challenge what he called misleading and inaccurate statements designed to put the energy sector in a critical light and thereby buttress public support against megaprojects such as pipelines.

The war room was given a $30-million annual budget and immediately stumbled into several high-profile gaffes. It was found to be using another company’s logo and its staff had referred to themselves as reporters when speaking with sources.

It also attacked, and later apologized, for a series of tweets about the New York Times, saying the newspaper had been “called out for anti-Semitism countless times” and had a “very dodgy” track record.

The war room’s budget was cut last year as the COVID-19 pandemic took a wrecking ball to the economy. The centre’s budget for the current fiscal year is $10-million and is forecast to be $12-million next year.

The NDP has repeatedly criticized the war room as a high-profile embarrassment and a waste of tax dollars.

NDP energy critic Kathleen Ganley, noting the popularity of the Bigfoot movie is rising, renewed that argument with Savage before the committee on Tuesday.

“It was getting very little notice, in fact, until such time as the war room came along and suddenly it shot up to be on the list of Top-10, viewed-in-Canada movies on Netflix,” said Ganley.

“The war room seems to be having what I would argue is the opposite effect of the effect that it is intended to have.”

UCP member Peter Guthrie, also on the committee, said the Netflix bump could be interpreted as testimony to the reach and effectiveness of the war room.

“They (opponents) claim that the CEC doesn’t work. But next they highlight that the CEC had the ability to take obscure movies created to present misinformation about the energy sector and boost these obscure movies to the top of the charts,” said Guthrie.

“I think that’s pretty awesome if they have that kind of ability.”

A few of the comments:

PHILCO3:

This is what Kenney and his ministers have been reduced to? Watching kids’ movies for an errant word that might be construed as maligning the oil industry?

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Darryl Williams:

No – don’t be silly,  Kenney and his ministers have not been watching kids movies.

They pay some high-priced lawyers and “reporters” from the War Room to watch the kids movies, 

Then they pay the high-priced lawyers and “reporters” from the War Room to go to war with the cartoons.

FUNNY! Jason Kenney’s Government Denounces the Bigfoot Family, Alberta’s War Room trains its guns on a Netflix cartoon movie by Andrew Nikiforuk, March 16, 2021, TheTyee.ca

BigfootKenney.jpg
Bigfoot is the one on the left. Not real. Photos: Netflix; Adrian Wyld, Canadian Press.

Jason Kenney’s spin shop the Canadian Energy Centre (otherwise known as the War Room) has stuck another foot in its oily mouth.

This time it is a really big foot.

The $30-million CEC, created to sell Canada as a supplier of choice “for responsibly produced energy,” is attacking a cartoon called Bigfoot Family.

To be clear, it’s not real. It’s a cartoon. Specifically, it’s a new and popular Netflix cartoon in which a family befriended by talking animals includes a Dad who just happens to be a Bigfoot and who goes to Alaska. Not a nature program. Not an investigative report. Not even one of those tracking-Sasquatch pseudo-documentaries. Just a cartoon. A cartoon not even about Canada.

In Alaska, Bigfoot encounters a company called Xtract, which falsely bills itself as a source of clean oil and wants to trash a wilderness area.

Well, in Calgary, that quickly rose to the top of the War Room’s priority list.

Kenney’s government, which tirelessly promotes fossil fuels as well as open-pit coal mining in the Canadian Rockies by foreign extractors, has accused the cartoon’s makers of “spreading misinformation about the oil and gas industry.”

Because the oilsands, as every Canadian knows, have never trashed anything.  

Summoning every drop of its righteous vehemence, Kenney’s War Room wants TV viewers to sign a petition denouncing the evil children’s fare.

“Brainwashing our kids with anti-oil and gas propaganda is just wrong — and Netflix needs to know that!” thundered the Canadian Energy Centre. “Our children are the key to the future — but they can’t succeed if they’re filled with misinformation.”

Another day’s work for the team of Tom Olsen, the former UCP candidate now head of the War Room — who has noted that what exactly he does all day is not easily grasped. As he proclaimed in December, “There’s not a huge knowledge of what we do and how we do it and how we benefit the world.”

No there is not.

But Olsen explained it: “We are about disproving true facts.”

For the record, the Canadian Energy Centre, a reliable source of misinformation, has a long and consistent history of sticking feet of various sizes in its mouth.

It ripped off a logo from another company without their permission.

It took aim at the ramparts of power by attacking a Medicine Hat reporter for offering the opinion that the War Room was a propaganda factory in a democracy.

It aimed even a bit higher, chastising the New York Times as a “very dodgy” organization for reporting what CEC doesn’t: that international investment in the oilsands is drying up.  

Its website offers a fairytale version of a petro state so gauzy and glowing it is worthy of Disney. The site claims, for example, that industry is pumping “hundreds of billions of dollars into Canadian coffers.”

But that’s not the real picture. Despite 47 per cent growth in Canada’s oil and gas production since 2000 — largely from the tarsands — royalty payments to government have declined 59 per cent, notes respected energy analyst David Hughes.

So, too, has the industry’s proportional contribution to GDP.

According to data from Natural Resources Canada, taxes paid by the oil and gas industry since 2006 have dropped from $12 billion to $6 billion.

In Alberta, oil and gas companies now owe rural municipalities more than $245 million in back taxes.

CEC portrays Alberta’s oil regulators as ethical heroes. Yet in 2019, three separate Alberta government investigations slammed the controversial Alberta Energy Regulator for mismanagement, the misuse of millions of public dollars and conflict of interest.

And not to draw any parallels with the themes of Bigfoot Family, but Alberta under Kenney seeks unfettered growth of a polluting oil and gas industry whose unfunded abandoned wells and clean up liabilities are by highly credible estimates $260 billion.

“True facts,” as Olsen might say. Though his War Room is AWOL when it comes to disproving them. (There was that one time the War Roomers did try to trash an expert’s facts. They had their asses handed back to them.)

By any measure, Kenney’s “War Room” is what the great writer Kurt Vonnegut would call a “granfalloon… a proud and meaningless collection of human beings.”

As Jason Kenney’s government now girds for its latest cartoonish war, the premier himself is increasingly embattled. In fact, his show is in danger of being cancelled.

Latest polls say that if an election were held today, Kenney’s United Conservative Party would be trounced by voters. The citizenry apparently is less interested in Bigfoot than an old-fashioned big boot.

Tell the truth Netflix! by UCP’s War Room (Canadian Energy Centre)

Tell Netflix that their attack on Canada’s energy industry is just plain wrong.

Support Canadian Energy

Netflix recently added a kids movie that is spreading misinformation about the oil and gas industry.

The movie – called Bigfoot Family – was number one in Canada and the U.S. when it debuted on the streaming service earlier this year – and peddles lies about the energy sector.  Roaring laughter! They have it backwards. It’s Kenney, the UCP and their idiotic, waste of money, big ego, huff ‘n puff, loaded with toxic masculinity War Room & cousin Witch Hunt that peddles lies and worse, steals Millions from Alberta tax payers to tell those lies for mega billion dollar profiting, mostly foreign oil and gas companies. It even shows oil being extracted by blowing up a valley using glowing red bombs that look like something out of an action movie. That’s not a lie. In the past, the Alberta government considered nuking the tar sands and even gave it a name, “Project Cauldron” and again currently – calling it small modular reactors (SMR). And, there are ultra insane plans to frac with nuclear waste.

Tell Netflix this is unacceptable – send a letter to Lindsey Scully, Netflix Canada’s Head of Communications! I suggest writing Ms. Scully your own letter applauding Netflix for their courage and fun educational show. Or, give the show a thumbs up on Netflix if you are a member or do both. Perhaps suggest to Ms. Scully that Netflix do an investigative documentary on Alberta’s horrific abusive big oil pollution problem that is harming the world and the many harms and ripoffs done to landowners, communities and municipalities with no help from regulators, courts or gov’t.

Canada’s world-class oil and gas industry is one of the top in the world Roaring laughter! Why not add one more, like “Best in Class” too? Can’t be too extreme these days. when it comes to environmental, social and governance standards. It spends billions of dollars every year to protect the environment.Verify the War Room’s lie here. Alberta is a bigger than Texas big oil pollution shit show. Alberta does not protect the environment or her people, wildlife and fish; Alberta just spews a lot of hot air, promising protections. Alberta in reality deregulates more and more every year, intentionally lets companies walk from clean up by selling to bit players with zero or insufficient assets to pay to clean up to the current tune of $300 Billion in liabilities, engages in fraud to cover-up for oil and gas companies: routinely breaking the law; polluting air, land, and water; regular spills, blow outs and frac hits; exploding water wells and community water towers by way of massive amounts of industry’s leaking methane and other gases contaminating groundwater; sour gas killing livestock, wildlife and people; illegal aquifer fracs; spewing bitumen rising through the ground and contaminating groundwater 10 km away; ever worsening leaking methane from all parts of the industry’s processes, worsening the already horrific out of control emissions problems across the province, etc.

The industry is constantly innovating to reduce the impact it has and is playing a key role in the transition to a lower-carbon future. No it is not. Industry is constantly innovating to dump workers in exchange for more money-making automation, threatens to leave if appropriate emissions controls are legislated and tries to kill /discredit any attempts by anyone trying to make Alberta more than a one trick polluting big oil pony.

Brainwashing our kids with anti-oil and gas propaganda is just wrong – and Netflix needs to know that! 

Our children are the key to the future – but they can’t succeed if they’re filled with misinformation.

Stand up for our kids – tell Netflix this is just plain wrong!

OMG! I just watched the trailer, it’s fabulous fun!

Some fantastic tweets:

Emma Deady@emmadeady

Wanna piss off the War Room aka @CDNEnergyCentre?

Head over to Netflix & give the movie “Bigfoot Family” a thumbs up. *Extra points: Hit “Share” & select “Copy link”. This will signal the Netflix algorithm to recommend it to a broader audience. Pls RT/share

#ablegDarkus Farkus @CasbahDrock Replying to @jody_macpherson@emmadeady and @CDNEnergyCentre

Can we project the movie on the Edmonton legislature building?

Our FI-Nest@nest_fi Replying to @emmadeady and @CDNEnergyCentre

Guess I know what we’ll be watching this weekend.

Emily Denooij@EmilyDenooij Replying to @emmadeady@TiredMamaG and @CDNEnergyCentre

This is hilarious. I literally watched this movie with my kid this week and thought “oh man, the UCP would HATE this”

Alan Faas@A1R2 Replying to @emmadeady and @CDNEnergyCentre

Done! Bigfoot Family! Some Albertans don’t like the truth!!

Michelle Postlewaite @canuckmum Replying to @emmadeady and @CDNEnergyCentre

Brilliant idea. Heading over to Netflix now!

In my day, when you put both feet in the same leg of your coveralls, you damn well worked the whole day like that!

J Powers@tentaclenews Replying to @emmadeady and @CDNEnergyCentre

I wasn’t interested in this movie until now. Whether we are home or not. This film is gonna be playing on repeat. Ha ha ha ha, so funny.

@RobertVinet Replying to @emmadeady and @CDNEnergyCentre

Bigfoot Family just got a bunch of free publicity. Well done Alberta”s @CDNEnergyCentre

A few other tweets:

Rob@robgilgan Replying to @coreyhogan and @Mitchell_AB

It’s part of the money laundering operation. Get names on petitions, hound them for donations for the corrupt UCP. #ResignKenney

Grant Neufeld@grant

Now we know why Kenney and the UCP have been so eager to get rid of Alberta parks and literally tear down the mountains: “Bigfoot” lives there Man facepalming. #AbPoli #ResignKenney

Miguel Ratty @miguel_ratty Replying to @JanisIrwin

This gives me the sense that the War Room folks are spending their day chillin’ and watching Netflix. And if they’re streaming the cartoons, I bet there’s weed involved. Sweet gig. I wonder if they’re hiring?

Janis Irwin@JanisIrwin

Imagine being a government grappling with a pandemic, unprecedented economic and social challenges, and then deliberately choosing to spend your time and resources on……….Bigfoot. #ableg

Idealistic Pragmatist@IPEdmonton

I thought conservatives were supposed to be standing firm against “cancel culture”?

Cathleen no vacation for me@Gymnastmom2014 Replying to @IPEdmonton and @JanisIrwin

They like it if it cancels what they want canceled otherwise it’s wrong Like my ex lead lawyer Murray Klippenstein quitting my lawsuit with no warning, contrary to the rules of his profession, to enable racism and defend his right to freedom of expression while trying to cancel mine.

Hedyann23@hedyann23

Can’t wait to watch this movie!!!

Christopher “Fiss” Brummet@SwordOfStories Replying to @JanisIrwin

Finally, an opponent worthy of Jason Kenney’s skill as a leader: Bigfoot! It’s going to be a close battle as both are imaginary, but my money’s on Bigfoot for much better brand recognition.

Giancarlo A. Zenari@GiancarloZenari Replying to @JanisIrwin

Real effective use of tax payers dollars, fighting talking raccoons and Bigfoot in a movie for kids. This is what 30 million gets us from the UCP… absolutely ridiculous.

mieka west@miekamonster Replying to @JanisIrwin

Now that’s how to promote a movie on Netflix in Alberta

myisland @opinionated75 Replying to @JanisIrwin

It’s a fantastic movie. One my kids have watched over and over.

Kyle_Itzy @Kyle_Itzy Replying to @JanisIrwin

This is straight out of the Rebel “Media” playbook. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised given Matt Wolf’s links to that libelist, Ezra Levant.

Darlene Grant@westmm4028 Replying to @JanisIrwin

They dug up my bloody mountain!

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Al Zylstra@alzylstra1960

SERIOUSLY???? Jason Kenny has become a joke. I miss the halcyon days of Ralph Klein who only got drunk and yelled at homeless people in downtown Edmonton….

Gerry Smith@gopherachers Replying to @alzylstra1960 and @JanisIrwin

@jkenney was always a joke, you just were not paying attention. #ResignKenney

Joy Gregory@JoyGreg05141264 Replying to @JanisIrwin

I am absolutely going to watch this film. Thank you @CDNEnergyCentre @jkenney @prasadpandayyc @UCPCaucus You can add this fiasco to my bill. The line item can go right underneath the $1.3 Billion pipe dream. #ABLeg#abpoli

Emily Brinco @emilybrinco Replying to @JanisIrwin

I will be watching this movie bc it makes Jason Kenney mad 🙂

I also don’t understand why they’re trying to silence a perspective that’s different from there’s. Isn’t it his job as a person in power to listen to multiple perspectives ?

Vickie Anderson@saywhatIwantto

Guess what movie I’m watching with my kids this weekend. Just when I think the UCP couldn’t surprise me any more… #FireKenney

UCP UGLINESS:

Janis Irwin@JanisIrwin · Mar 11

Jason Kenney drastically slashed funds needed for housing and homelessness, yet he kept millions for his wasteful war room. A war room won’t house folks. A war room won’t lift them out of poverty. Why does this government refuse, at every opportunity, to put people first? #ableg

#AbLegCW McDonald@CW_McDonald

It’s actually extra funny cause I thought the movies overall theme is that you shouldn’t lie and try to trick people through propaganda. (My kids made me watch it a couple of weeks ago)?

Thor Dis@ArlTHed Replying to @CW_McDonald@emmadeady and @CDNEnergyCentre

The movie fits too close to the UCP evil ways.

#AbLegJody MacPherson emphatically@jody_macpherson

A watch party would be awesome as a fundraiser for the #MountainNotMines campaign.

UCP’s ‘war room’ takes on Netflix, claims anti-oil Bigfoot is ‘brainwashing’ kids, The Canadian Energy Centre is criticizing Netflix Canada for airing a cartoon which it says demonizes Alberta’s petroleum sector by Bill Kaufmann, Mar 12, 2021, Calgary sun

To Alberta’s Canadian Energy Centre “war room,” it’s a big hairy deal warping the minds of children.

But for others, the centre’s attacks on the Netflix Canada movie Bigfoot Family for alleged slurs against the oil and gas industry are another oversized stride deeper into embarrassment.

The energy centre has launched a campaign inviting the public to censure Netflix Canada for airing the animated family film it says unfairly demonizes the province’s petroleum sector by featuring a scheme to blow up a valley to extract oil.

“Clean oil? You’ve got to be kidding me,” says one character in the movie first released last summer that features Sasquatch as a family’s father.

“So much for no environmental impact.”

The family’s members then heroically resist an oil company’s destructive operations in Alaska.

The energy centre said the film’s message is dangerously directed at younger, impressionable audiences.

“Our children are the key to the future — but they can’t succeed if they’re filled with misinformation … brainwashing our kids with anti-oil and gas propaganda is just wrong — and Netflix needs to know that,” states a page on the centre’s website, which invites the public to express disapproval to the streaming service by email.

The web page said that by noon Friday, more than 1,200 people had done just that, adding the Canadian petroleum industry’s record of environmental sustainability is among the world’s best.

… Overcoming the challenge of attracting investment for the industry isn’t helped by targeting a kids’ movie, said NDP energy critic Kathleen Ganley.

“It’s a bit of an idiotic use of taxpayer money,” she said. “Decisions are made by adult investors and I don’t think this movie does much for them.

(The war room) has never gotten away from being a maximum embarrassment.”

The energy centre — which produces content to defend Canada’s energy industry and correct what it calls misinformation — had already drawn mockery for its repeated faux pas in creating a logo, its own inaccuracies and attacks on journalists.

The operation’s been budgeted for $4.7 million this fiscal year and $12 million for the next, enough to draw the ire of critics who condemn it as wasteful and counterproductive.

The provincial corporation launched in late 2019 was also taken to task last November by the province’s auditor general for awarding $1.3 million in sole-sourced contracts without justification or documentation.

In a statement, energy centre CEO Tom Olsen said a parent CAPP? AER? Harper? had alerted them to the film and defended confronting Netflix Canada by calling the Bigfoot Family an outrageous and dishonest attack on the oilpatch.

“It villainizes energy workers and disparages the industry’s record on and commitment to environmental protection,” said Olsen.

“We have promoted Indigenous opportunity provided by the energy sector, environmental gains by industry, and consistently release peer-reviewed research pieces on the reality of fossil fuels in Canada and around the world.

“We intend to continue this important work.”

Ganley said it’s impossible to measure what impact the centre is having on swaying public opinion and attacking a Netflix film doesn’t look promising.

Netflix Canada didn’t return a request for comment.

Critics have also taken aim at the UCP-launched public inquiry into foreign-funded enemies of Alberta’s oilpatch whose deadline has been extended three times — now to May 31 — and its budget hiked to $3.5 million from $2.5 million.

Both UCP fight-back strategies have become political millstones that are nonetheless difficult to escape, said Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt.

“It’s almost as if the war room is trying to embarrass themselves,” he said. “This whole strategy has no wins … there comes a time when they have to fish or cut bait.”

Bell: Kenney and the UCP, the rebellion is on by Rick Bell, Mar 12, 2021, Calgary Sun

Six.

That’s how many United Conservative constituency associations want a review of Premier Jason Kenney’s leadership of their party.

One is from Central Peace-Notley. Another is Cypress-Medicine Hat. That’s where pull-no-punches member of the legislature Drew Barnes hangs his hat.

Another is Lacombe-Ponoka. Yet another is Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock.

Two others will be revealed later and one of them is a whopper.

As many as eight other local UCP groups could get on board next week.

These early numbers could build and those pushing for a leadership review only need to get to 22.

The number to remember is 22. Alberta has 87 constituencies and the United Conservative Party has 87 local constituency associations.

If a quarter, 22 of those UCP associations, vote to request the party hold a review of Kenney’s leadership those in the UCP ranks will have a chance to give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to Kenney at the helm.

The UCP provincial board is said to be holding a meeting Friday. They will no doubt jaw over the situation.

A bunch of local party groups across the province are reportedly chinwagging over whether to push for a review.

A few faint-of-heart types think just sending a letter to Kenney may turn things around. Insert eye-roll here.

Others quite obviously point out that’s quite the long-shot bet. The alarm on that clock would almost certainly not be anywhere loud enough.

As mentioned above, one UCP association asking for a review comes from Central-Peace Notley.

The area is represented by Todd Loewen, who chairs the meetings when UCP members of the legislature to-and-fro behind closed doors.

Samantha Steinke is the president of the UCP group in that area.

Steinke says people in her neck of the woods have been asking the local UCP to mull over a leadership review.

The local UCP board is frustrated. COVID is a big item on the laundry list of discontent.

But there is more. Kenney not going after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his crew.

The ever-elusive fair deal Alberta is supposed to be getting.

A pro-oilpatch war room that’s seen as a complete flop.

The Keystone XL pipeline where a billion dollars-plus in taxpayer dough went to a project that’s a non-starter.

There’s a budget where the non-COVID spending could not in any way be called conservative.

There are UCP members of the legislature being told to watch what they say. Some call that a gag order but talk anyway.

And then there’s a gripe you hear all the time.

Kenney is not listening.

Steinke says some UCPers want Kenney gone but others hope the leadership review move will get the premier’s attention and he will get his act together.

“We haven’t said we want a leadership review to kick him out. Maybe it’s just a wake-up call he needs. Something needs to be done. The time has to be now or never because once we get into 2022 it’s too late.

“Either he needs to wake up and say: OK, I realize there’s some problems. Let’s work them out and let’s get through them together.

“Or he’s got to say: Nah, I don’t care if you’re upset. You’re the minority and that’s the end.”

The next Alberta election is in the spring of 2023. Two years from now.

Steinke says there’s a real possibility they could get to the 22 number triggering a leadership review.

The message to the premier is clear. The grassroots of the party are not happy. They put Kenney where he is and the premier has to change course.

The UCP constituency president from the Peace Country says Kenney has spoken to her board and had “no great answers.”

Through the grapevine, we hear Kenney wants those in the UCP trenches to hold their fire. Give him 10 weeks.

In 10 weeks, the COVID picture will be brighter and the economy will be on its way to getting better. Optimism will be in the air.

In other words, he’s not part of the problem.

So Kenney sits at 39% approval and gets bashed by the NDP Wednesday for the flying circus over the Christmas lockdown where his right-hand man, a member of his inner circle and others got out of Dodge, with the premier apparently knowing little about the exit plans being hatched.

At home, Steinke says a possible leadership review is no joke.

“If he’s not going to take it seriously, people are going to leave. They are just going to find somewhere else to go. Then I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens in the next election for him.”

****

Unfortunately, Alberta elections are controlled by the rural vote, which is largely misogynistic, bigoted, racist, socially ignorant, and extremely religious which the UCP (Harper and CCP) feed to great success (as evidenced by the UCP’s 2019 massive majority win even though most citizens knew/know what a cruel heinous hateful politician Kenney is).

In my experience, Albertans complain about what they vote for, then vote for what they complain about.

Rural Albertans will go to the curb, bring back their beloved trash – after lots of complaining, and spread it around house and farm for familiar comfort.

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