National Post and Calgary Herald Sheild Conservative Lawyer in Alberta Court
August 6th, 2010
Yesterday a decision was handed down in Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench following a hearing on July 6th. In the coming days we’ll be discussing the central themes, especially the traditional separation of our news media from governing political machines, and the rights of individuals to expect strict confidentiality from their lawyers.
For now, though, this release has appeared nationally:
CALGARY, Aug. 6 - An Alberta judge has accepted arguments made by lawyers acting for Canada’s biggest newspaper chain and for a Progressive Conservative Party solicitor in dismissing a lawsuit brought by journalist Arthur Kent against the solicitor, who was legal counsel and electoral agent for Kent’s candidacy in the 2008 Alberta election.
Justice Paul Belzil ruled that Kent could not use information about Kristine Robidoux Q.C.’s communications with Don Martin which were first disclosed to Kent during the discovery process in Kent’s separate defamation litigation against Martin, the National Post, the Calgary Herald and Canwest over an article published in February, 2008 during the election.
The Court rejected Kent’s submissions that there was an over-riding public interest in holding lawyers accountable for alleged breaches of duties of confidentiality to clients and that Robidoux’ s communications with the newspaper were part and parcel of Kent’s defamation claims against the defendants.
Kent says he has instructed his lawyers to appeal the ruling. “When big media climbs into bed with big politics, all Canadians lose. We will take the facts forward and let the public decide.”
Read More...Showdown Looms As Ed Doubles Back
March 11th, 2010
It has been called the worst decision in the economic history of the province of Alberta.
The historical record will feature another glaring truth about Premier Ed Stelmach’s flawed scheme to boost oil and gas royalties: this policy disaster was totally avoidable.
Any objective review of the market and industry indicators in the months preceding the 2008 provincial election gave ample cause to rethink and revise the across-the-board, one-size-fits-all royalty framework unveiled by the premier in October 2007.
Clearly, the plan’s complex schedules would claw most greedily at Alberta’s natural gas explorers and producers, who were already coping with a low commodity price as they struggled to attract investors lured by better deals in Saskatchewan and B.C.
Read More...Brokeback Government Goes Unforgiven
March 4th, 2010
Alberta’s award-winning film and television professionals claim that Premier Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservative government is driving production out of the province with policies that force big Hollywood films, as well as home-grown projects, to shoot in competing jurisdictions like B.C., New Mexico, Ontario and Manitoba.
It’s a bitter blow for an industry that has earned 46 Academy Award nominations since 1948. Alberta’s majestic scenery and first-class filmmakers have contributed to four Oscar wins: Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” in 2005, 1994’s “Legends of the Fall,” Clint Eastwood’s 1992 classic “Unforgiven” and Terrence Malick’s 1978 masterpiece, “Days of Heaven.”
“One after the other, we’ve lost five big Westerns in just the past few months,” says John Scott, known from Hollywood to Bollywood and beyond as one of the cinema’s foremost wranglers and stunt coordinators. “Some of those pictures have budgets of $100 million or more. Just one or two of ‘em would have brought our industry back to life.”
Read More...Supreme Court Sharpens Libel Focus
December 22nd, 2009
Honest journalists and publishers will welcome today’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling on libel, based as it is on our profession’s touchstone principles of responsible journalism.
Conversely, the Court’s sharper focus on the steps taken by journalists to verify the information presented in their stories spells trouble for writers who breach the profession’s basic rules – and their employers’ own standards of policy and practice.
Read More...Alberta’s Red Blanket Leadership Crisis
December 11th, 2009
When a government goes into cardiac arrest, a clever leader applies serious CPR, and fast. But last week, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach responded to the many emergencies afflicting his flat-lining administration by downing a couple of aspirin.
The premier blamed his government’s collapse in performance and public approval on a nagging headache: Albertans just don’t understand him. The prescription was obvious. The premier’s director of communications had to go.
With that one, hapless aide excised, the patient was discharged and the province lurched towards the next crisis.
As ever, Stelmach and his advisors are dodging the hard facts, the realities that speak to a pronounced case of managerial incompetence. Little details, like the loss of Alberta’s competitive edge in a tsunami of red ink and fiscal chaos. Rising unemployment, a health care system headed for bankruptcy — and the refusal, by government, to be accountable for these and other failures.
But there’s a more basic dysfunction driving the Progressive Conservatives’ decline, one that is glaringly obvious to any of us who’ve worked within the machine.
It’s known, rather misleadingly, by a single word: patronage.
Read More...A Government Failing And Falling
October 22nd, 2009
You didn’t need to be a fortune teller to predict Ed Stelmach’s trajectory as premier of Alberta. A few months working with Ed, his staff and key cabinet colleagues heralded the direction the Stelmach government has taken: downward, to a public disapproval rating estimated at more than 60%.
One phone-in poll this week suggests that 78% of Calgarians believe the premier will lose his Progressive Conservative Party’s leadership review in just over two weeks’ time.
Confronted with all of this, Ed told CTV Calgary’s Barb Higgins that he has to do a better job communicating with Calgarians. “We have a lot of work to do, in getting the message out…”
He still doesn’t get it. In public service, the top priority is to listen.
As one of Ed’s candidates in the 2008 Alberta election, I discovered that the premier and his people view communications as a one-way street. When I had the impertinence to suggest that voters, educators and business leaders deserved a turn at the wheel, the party’s thought-police loomed large in the rear view.
Read More...