Newsletter Samples

Available by subscription only, Insight Into Government is Alberta's independent, weekly newsletter on policy and politics. Below, we have provided several free samples of the newsletter available in PDF format.

  • Week ending October 6th, 2018 Vol 33, No 01 Download PDF
    "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. "
    –George Orwell
    GRANDE CACHE FROM THE AIR
    Top Story

    One of Alberta’s drabber towns in one of its most scenic settings, Grande Cache was legislated into being by the provincial gov’t in 1966, under the Alberta New Towns Act (1956), to house the fam...

    Talk in the Corridors

    Whoever is crafting the Premier’s speeches these days­—and we’re thinking it’s Corey Hogan, head of Communications & Public Engagement (formerly the Public Affairs Bureau)—has been doin...

  • Week ending June 23rd, 2018 Vol 32, No 34 Download PDF
    "Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more. "
    –WW II General George Patton.
    DIPPER ATTACK AD
    Top Story

    At some point during the pipeline squabble with BC, it must have occurred to the Dippers that if they ever hoped to drag their polling numbers out of the slough of despond in which they’d been mired...

    Talk in the Corridors

    With the Legislature out for summer and the general election less than 11 months away (theoretically), the serious business of politicking can now begin in earnest. And in the past week, Premier Rache...

  • Week ending April 7th, 2018 Vol 32, No 25 Download PDF
    " If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason "
    –Jack Handey (American humorist, 1949- )
    TAP TURN OFF TIME
    Top Story

    Last month Premier Rachel Notley invoked the blessed memory of Peter Lougheed in announcing a relatively modest program using gov’t funds to encourage the manufacture of more refined petroleum produ...

    Talk in the Corridors

    It’s no secret that UCP Leader Jason Kenney (Calgary-Lougheed) fancies himself as an orator, and with some justification. His ability to speak extemporaneously and to mix anecdote with statistic-bac...

  • Week ending March 24th, 2018 Vol 32, No 24 Download PDF
    "One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation"
    –Thomas Reed (1839-1902), speaker of the US House of Representatives
    THE MERRY BAND OF DEBTORS
    Top Story

    In what must be described as a budget based on hopes and prayers, Finance Minister Joe Ceci laid out his “path to recovery” Thursday, and was greeted with much scepticism from reporters, pans fro...

    Talk in the Corridors

    Calgary-Hawkwood NDP MLA Michael Connolly, the bratty young LGBT activist who was particularly vociferous in his criticism of the absent Jason Kenney during last fall’s debate on the govt’s GSA bi...

  • Week ending February 17th, 2018 Vol 32, No 19 Download PDF
    "Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects. "
    –Lester B. Pearson
    RACHEL THE ROUGHNECK
    Top Story

    Alberta was first province out of the gate Friday in announcing regulations governing the distribution and retail sale of cannabis. Potential pot purveyors with puckish names immediately rushed to the...

    Political Pulse

    While most of the country moved its attention to other matters, Premier Rachel Notley did her best this week to keep herself and the pipeline fight with BC alive in the minds of Albertans, ever mindfu...

  • Week ending October 28th, 2017 Vol 32, No 07 Download PDF
    "Well, it's another miracle on the prairies!"
    –Jason Kenney, wishfully channelling Ralph Klein during his UCP victory speech
    BALOONERY
    Talk in the Corridors

    Last Monday’s two federal byelections held both good and bad news for the Conservative Party of Canada. Predictably, the good news came from Sturgeon River-Parkland, the exurban riding west of Edm...

    Top Story

    Jason Kenney, rotund and orotund, steamrollered to victory Saturday evening in front of almost two thousand conservatives at Calgary’s BMO Centre. And at least two-thirds of them were ecstatic, mobb...

  • Week ending September 23rd, 2017 Vol 32, No 02 Download PDF
    "And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going."
    –Bruce Catton (1899-1978), American historian
    MARINE TERMINAL, VALDEZ, AK
    Top Story

    Matt Vickers describes the gathering in High Level two weeks ago as a “coming out party” for a railway project to which he and his partners have devoted much of the past decade—and it doesn’t ...

    Political Pulse

    Who won the United Conservative Party’s leadership debate in Calgary Wednesday? Well, according to press releases fired off by three of the four candidates­—Jason Kenney, Brian Jean, and Jeff Cal...

  • Week ending September 16th, 2017 Vol 32, No 01 Download PDF
    "Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status."
    –Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990) Canadian author of The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (1969).
    THE FOUR GENTLEMEN
    Talk in the Corridors

    It is the wise male politician who observes the following dictum: when hiring a female assistant or constituency manager, pick a matronly grandmother type and reject at all costs the young and pulchri...

    Political Pulse

    We finally figured out why Jason Kenney looked teary and crestfallen while Wildrose Leader Brian Jean appeared cocky when the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose leader ssigned their historic merger...

  • Week ending May 19th, 2017 Vol 31, No 31 Download PDF
    "If Parliament is to be preserved as a living institution, the Loyal Opposition must fearlessly perform its functions. When it properly discharges them the preservation of our freedom is assured. It must be vigilant against oppression & unjust invasions by the Cabinet of the rights of the people. It finds fault; it suggests amendments; it asks questions & elicits information; it arouses, educates & molds public opinion by voice & vote. It must scrutinize every action by the gov't and in doing so"
    –Former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, as quoted by federal Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose in the House of Commons Tuesday following the announcement of her upcoming departure as Opposition leader and MP for Sturgeon River-Parkland
    TENTATIVE
    Top Story

    One might have expected streamers and champagne Thursday afternoon when PC leader Jason Kenney and his Wildrose counterpart Brian Jean finally took to their podiums to announce their merger deal (­ha...

    Political Pulse

    When interim Conservative Party of Canada Leader Rona Ambrose, 48, announced on Tuesday that she would be quitting her Sturgeon River-Parkland seat, the timing seemed synchronistic, auspicious even. F...

  • Week ending May 12th, 2017 Vol 31, No 30 Download PDF
    "If Parliament is to be preserved as a living institution, the Loyal Opposition must fearlessly perform its functions. When it properly discharges them the preservation of our freedom is assured. It must be vigilant against oppression & unjust invasions by the Cabinet of the rights of the people. It finds fault; it suggests amendments; it asks questions & elicits information; it arouses, educates & molds public opinion by voice & vote. It must scrutinize every action by the gov't and in doing so"
    –Former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, as quoted by federal Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose in the House of Commons Tuesday following the announcement of her upcoming departure as Opposition leader and MP for Sturgeon River-Parkland
    TENTATIVE
    Top Story

    One might have expected streamers and champagne Thursday afternoon when PC leader Jason Kenney and his Wildrose counterpart Brian Jean finally took to their podiums to announce their merger deal (­ha...

    Political Pulse

    When interim Conservative Party of Canada Leader Rona Ambrose, 48, announced on Tuesday that she would be quitting her Sturgeon River-Parkland seat, the timing seemed synchronistic, auspicious even. F...

  • Week ending April 28th, 2017 Vol 31, No 28 Download PDF
    "Neither will it be, that a people overlaid with taxes should ever become valiant and martial."
    –Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
    GOOFIN' AROUND
    Top Story

    Undoubtedly, one of the quirkiest sights in nature is the gangly retreat of an Australian frilled lizard. When this unique creature feels threatened, it rises on its hind legs, opens its yellow-colore...

    Political Pulse

    We’d almost forgotten about the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race until, on Wednesday, the Dragon/Shark created a flurry of excitement among the national punditry by announcing he wa...

  • Week ending March 10th, 2017 Vol 31, No 23 Download PDF
    " Until conditions of equality exist, no one can possibly assess the natural differences between women and men, distorted as they have been. What is natural to the two sexes can only be found out by allowing both to develop and use their faculties freely"
    –English philosopher and first-wave feminist John Stuart Mill in his essay "The Subjugation of Women" (1869)
    SNUGGLES AHOY?
    Top Story

    Like a dog with a bone, Liberal Leader Dr. David Swann (Calgary-Mountain View) has grabbed onto the issue of opioid addiction and, for more than a year, has been hounding the gov’t to declare a stat...

    Political Pulse

    This was the week of International Women’s Day, which provided much opportunity for the NDP feminocracy to indulge itself in a chorus of self-congratulation, to fill the galleries with various “st...

  • Week ending November 11th, 2016 Vol 31, No 09 Download PDF
    "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few"
    –Geore Bernard Shaw, "Democracy"
    Cartoonist David Rowe in the Financial Review (Australia)
    Top Story

    The official response in Edmonton and Ottawa to the election of President Donald Trump reminded us of the junior and subservient position of Canada on the North American continent. For although we kno...

    Political Pulse

    It was a good week in the Legislature for Brian Jean and his Wildrosers, in large part because of the gifts from the south. For what seems like forever, Jeanie and the Prickles—to use the vernacular...

  • Week ending October 7th, 2016 Vol 31, No 05 Download PDF
    "In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap."
    –Napoleon Bonaparte
    PIPELINE PUSHERS
    Top Story

    Two stunts, two weeks apart, and both in support of oil pipelines to the sea, brought similar reactions, albeit from different sides of the political divide: to sum them up: who are you trying to kid!...

    Political Pulse

    Chief gov’t flack Mark Wells, lured from his job as communications chief at the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees barely a year ago, is being replaced. The new Managing Director of the Public ...

  • Week ending September 23rd, 2016 Vol 31, No 03 Download PDF
    "They say that these pipelines are nation building, and they’re right.” said Berman to a group of hursute protesters. “They’re building a nation of resistance, and from Northern Quebec where thousands of people are joining town halls against Energy East, from northern Ontario, in Alberta, across British Columbia we are seeing people standing up, people taking a stand for the future to ensure that we can build a Canada that we are proud of again"
    –Tzeporah Berman, environmental activists and a Shannon Phillips appointee to the Oilsands Advisory Council, speaking to those protesting the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, Burnaby Mountain, 2014
    LEG. BABY 2
    Political Pulse

    For one or other of those competing Calgary groups that have sprung up in the last year to bring the right together—Get Alberta Working, or Alberta Prosperity, or Annihilate the Orange Bastards… o...

    Talk in the Corridors

    We can’t help it: the name excites visions of pagan stuff: witches, goblins, dark forests, and, well, wild-eyed eco hippies from British Columbia. For that of course is what Tzeporah Berman, whom En...

  • Week ending June 10th, 2016 Vol 30, No 37 Download PDF
    "No prosecution will be commenced or continued against a physician (or a member of the health care team) that provides information regarding physician-assisted death, dispenses a drug, provides physician assisted death, or otherwise participates in a physician assisted death that falls within the parameters described by the Supreme Court of Canada in Carter 2015."
    –Directive issued by Alberta Justice to police chiefs and Crown prosecutors on June 7. The directive remains in force until the federal gov't proclaims assisted dying legislation.
    NO LONGER JUST GERIATRIC SEALS
    Political Pulse

    The first spring session of the 29th Legislature ended Tuesday afternoon, with members still bleary-eyed from the marathon session the night before that had gone to 4:27 a.m. The Opposition members ha...

    Talk in the Corridors

    How do you solve a problem like Gregor? Especially if you’re a western Canadian leader for whom oil is the mother’s milk of politics, and pipelines to tidewater are the nipple? (Too much of a...

  • Week ending June 3rd, 2016 Vol 30, No 36 Download PDF
    "Now Stephen Harper told me not to do it. And if I did do it, to tell all of you to go to hell"
    –Rona Ambrose delivers the best standup routine of the three leaders at Saturday's Press Gallery Dinner
    NO LOSS OF SWAGGER
    Top Story

    The Nazis practiced what is referred to in the literature as “involuntary euthanasia,” meaning consent of the victim was not necessary. Hundreds of thousands of mentally and physically handicapped...

    Talk in the Corridors

    The Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, still experiencing periodic frissons of pleasure when recalling the surprising number of delegates (1,000+) who attended its AGM last month (we’d...

  • Week ending February 5th, 2016 Vol 30, No 20 Download PDF
    "Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."
    –Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional? 1993
    THE NEWBIES
    Top Story

    There seemed to be real pathos in the presentation by Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan at his Edmonton press conference Monday morning: the cri de couer of a spurned lover, perhaps, ...

    Political Pulse

    On Wednesday afternoon a flotilla of armoured Suburbans and Town Cars arrived in front of the Legislature, a platoon of RCMP and security staff positioned themselves around the grounds. The former Dau...

  • Week ending November 20th, 2015 Vol 30, No 12 Download PDF
    " A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money."
    –US Senator Everett Dirksen, (1896-1969)
    My Man Brian
    Top Story

    Avid readers of this sheet may remember a conversation we had in the spring with former Manitoba Premier Ed Schreyer, 79, one of the Dipper emeriti attending Rachel Notley’s outdoor swearing-in cere...

    Talk in the Corridors

    Ric McIver was riffing on the by-now familiar point that the NDP gov’t was not actually creating jobs but killing them with its new taxes and the threat of royalty rate increases and a carbon tax, e...

  • Week ending May 15th, 2015 Vol 29, No 10 Download PDF
    "Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good."
    –Thomas Sowell, "Is Reality Optional?," 1993
    THE NOTLEY CREW
    Top Story

    Premier-Designate Rachel Notely remained in Mouseland for a while longer this week as the Legislative cogs turned slowly and the power that will—surprisingly, thrillingly!—soon be within her hot g...

    Political Pulse

    Using that marvellous optical tool called hindsight, we are able to view last year’s Calgary PC Leaders’ Dinner as a soaring peak of the Prentice era, even before it had actually begun. Eighte...

  • Week ending May 1st, 2015 Vol 29, No 08 Download PDF
    "There’s an old saying in Alberta political circles that the 13th consecutive majority is the hardest majority to win."
    –Dan Arnold, blogger. (calgarygrit.ca)
    CIRCA 1971
    Top Story

    "Oh why oh why oh why did I do it?" one imagines Jim Prentice wailing in those ugly early hours when all the nasties — doubt, regret, fatigue, self-recrimination — swoop through the bedroom windo...

    Political Pulse

    Love gone wrong. Where would art be without it. And politics? Well, politics is an art form, n’est-ce pas? And the last couple of weeks of misadventures in the Tory atelier have been energized by lo...

  • Week ending April 17th, 2015 Vol 29, No 06 Download PDF
    "That’s the trouble with a politician’s life—somebody is always interrupting it with an election."
    –Will Rogers
    JIMBO IN THE ROUND
    Top Story

    We ran into a middle-aged social worker, a 300-pound, ex-pat Newfoundlander, at the gym the other day who asked us if there might be some hope of an NDP sweep in Edmonton on Cinco de Mayo (a.k.a. elec...

    Talk in the Corridors

    The vehicular choices of leaders in this campaign to an extent reflect the cash support available, but also carry some political baggage. While once incumbent premiers­—and the odd opposition leade...