AB Today – Daily Report January 21, 2019

Quotation of the day

“While some might mock, I make no apologies for helping my parents. I am not embarrassed to say that my home was in the same dwelling, even if in a separate suite. I owe everything to them.”

UCP Leader Jason Kenney denies allegations that he falsely claimed his mother’s assisted living facility as his primary Calgary residence while working as an MP in Ottawa.

Today in AB

On the schedule

The Legislature will reconvene on March 18 for the government’s final throne speech before the spring election.

Today’s events

January 18 at 9 a.m. – St. Albert

Education Minister David Eggen will be in St. Albert as he continues his tour of Alberta schools. Eggen will visit Bellerose Composite High School at 9 a.m. before a visit to Muriel Martin Elementary School at 10:30 a.m. The visits mark the seventh and eighth photo ops at schools this month.

January 18 at 1 p.m. – Edmonton

NDP cabinet ministers will meet in the cabinet room at the Alberta Legislature.

Election commissioner fines Rebel Media for breaking political advertising laws

Election Commissioner Lorne Gibson issued a “notice of adverse finding and proposed penalty” to Rebel Media for buying a political billboard ad without first registering as a third-party advertiser.

The billboard along Highway 2 near Innisfail displayed the message “40% of Grade 9 students failed provincial exams — Alberta can do better than [Education Minister] David Eggen” and advertised the Rebel-owned website www.FireEggen.ca.

Gibson’s letter to the outlet says the billboard violated the Elections Financing and Contributions Disclosures Act because the anti-MLA message constitutes political advertising. Under Alberta’s fundraising laws, any person or organization that spends $1,000 or more on election or political advertising must register with the Election Commissioner.

Per Gibson’s investigation, Rebel Media spent $2,730 on the billboard, which was up for a week last November. The commissioner stuck the outlet with a $5,500 penalty, but fines can range as high as $100,000 for this type of infraction.

The Rebel is using the fine as a fundraising opportunity.

“A $5,500 fine in itself won’t bankrupt us. But of course, we’re not going to stop our journalism. And the penalties for companies can be $100,000 a pop. $5,500 is just their first sucker-punch,” Rebel captain Ezra Levant wrote in a blog post entitled “HELP: Rachel Notley is coming to kill The Rebel!”

The outlet contends the billboard qualifies as a journalistic medium.

Levant took aim at the Election Commissioner, calling Gibson a “kook” and “extremely partisan,” noting that he has not gone after left-wing groups, like Press Progress.

On January 8, the Election Commissioner also issued a $6,000 administrative penalty against the Canadian Taxpayers Federation for failing to apply for third-party registration.

Jason Kenney registered Calgary seniors home as primary residence while MP, prompting fraud allegations

Ottawa-based lawyer and ex-Alberta Liberal Party candidate Kyle Morrow accused UCP Leader Jason Kenney of fraud on social media this weekend, tweeting out federal regulatory filings related to Kenney’s housing expenses while he was an MP in Ottawa.

The documents show Kenney listed his primary Alberta address as Lake Bonavista Retirement Village from April 2013 to June 2015 — a seniors facility where his mother lived — despite spending almost all of his time in Ottawa and collecting $900 monthly for his capital city housing expenses.

Morrow also released parliamentary flight records that show Kenny only billed the government for four flights to Calgary between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015 — prompting questions about how much time Kenney spent in Alberta.

Kenney took to Facebook to rebuff Morrow’s fraud accusations and prove all of his accomodation claims were above board.

“These allegations are false … I have been a proud resident of Alberta for nearly 3 decades,” he wrote. “During that time, I have always owned, co-owned, or rented my principal residence in Alberta, first in Edmonton in the early 1990s, then Calgary. I paid my taxes in Alberta. My driver’s license and health card were from Alberta. My doctor and dentist were in Alberta.”

The UCP leader said he rented the basement of his elderly mother’s bungalow, which was part of a seniors residential complex, so he could help her out when he was in the province, and has since purchased a condo in Calgary.

However, a staff member of the retirement village told CBC the bungalows do not have basements.

Morrow called the expenses “Duffy 2.0” in reference to Senator Mike Duffy, who was cleared of criminal charges related to claims that Prince Edward Island was his primary residence.

On Twitter, Kenney’s office called Morrow’s accusations a “sleazy partisan smear” from “a failed Liberal candidate.”

Kenney concluded his Facebook post with a plea for partisan sanity. “I find this new politics of personal destruction disturbing, with this lawyer going so far as to research my mother’s property records and publish floor-plans of her then-home,” he wrote. “Sadly, I suspect it will only get worse as both the provincial and federal elections approach.”

Topics of conversation

● Premier Rachel Notley’s new election website launched Saturday. RachelNotley.ca bills itself as “a new resource to help Albertans understand the choice they have in the next election — and who is fighting for what matters to them.” ○ The website has information on accomplishments from Notley’s time in office and has headshots of all of the NDP’s nominated candidates.

● The UCP’s investigation into its Calgary—East nomination race found no evidence to substantiate fraud and bribery allegations, the Calgary Herald reports. ○ Four challengers to successful candidate Peter Singh asked for an investigation after people claimed door knockers for his campaign offered gift cards in exchange for votes.

● Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Steven Mandziuk has delayed his decision on the constitutionality of a premier calling an election outside its fixed election date legislation, the Edmonton Sun reports. ○ The court case follows a court injunction by defence lawyer Tom Engel and then-Wildrose hopeful Donald Rigney, who argue former premier Jim Prentice’s early election call in 2015 didn’t abide the province’s fixed-election legislation — and blew Rigney’s chance at running for a seat. ○ Their case was presented in an Edmonton courtroom last Thursday.

● Oil company CEOs told CBC they support a proposal by the Indigenous Resource Council to own a stake in the Trans Mountain pipeline project. ○ "If First Nations, let's say, invest in Trans Mountain and took a stake, it sends a strong signal across Canada that there is another side to the story," Brian Schmidt, president of Tamarack Valley Energy, told the public broadcaster.

● According to its fourth quarter financial report, the Alberta Party raised $432,958.92 in the last three months of 2018. ○ “With the election just around the corner, this is a big development for our party and another sign of the momentum that our candidates and volunteers are creating across Alberta,” said Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel in a news release. ○ The party plans to run candidates in every riding for the first time in the 2019 election.

News briefs - Non-governmental

UCP accuses Environment and Parks Minister of “over-the-top rhetoric”

The United Conservative Party issued a news release Friday calling comments Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips made before the Southern Alberta Council of Public Affairs last week “unbecoming of a minister of the crown.”

In a mostly generic stump speech in Lethbridge last Thursday, Phillips said the UCP combines the entitlement of the PC party with the extremism of the Wildrose and slammed the party’s record on social and economic issues.

But the phrase that struck a nerve with the UCP brass was her claim that within their party “white supremacists make great campaigners, and racists make good candidates.”

Kaycee Madu, the UCP’s Nigerian-born candidate for Edmonton—South West, was quoted in the UCP’s response.

“The minister has painted a party of over 150,000 members, which has consistently polled over 50 per cent, as racist and white supremacists,” Madu said. “This is beyond the pale.”

Madu says he is running for Kenney’s team because “people are judged not by the colour of their skin, religion or ethnicity, but on how hard they work."

The news release was the latest in a series slamming Phillips since the Bighorn Country fiasco heated up — a trend Phillips noted in her speech.

“They attack me personally, constantly,” Phillips said of the UCP. “They run ads online, they stoke fear, they misrepresent what I say, they twist my words.”

Funding announcements

● The province announced twinning on Highway 60 between Highway 16 and Highway 16A will begin later this year. ○ The twinning project is part of the previously announced $1.6 billion High Load Corridor plan to upgrade provincial highways. ○ The Highway 60 project is expected to take two to three years to construct and will include an overpass for Canadian National rail tracks.

● Alberta Education Minister David Eggen announced the government is buying a copy of Canadian Geographic’s Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada for every junior high and high school in the province. The purchase cost is $88,147.50.

● Indigenous Relations Minister Richard Feehan spoke at the opening of the Bi-Giwen: Coming Home – Truth Telling from the Sixties Scoop exhibit at the Edmonton Aboriginal Seniors Centre on Sunday. The exhibit received a $200,000 grant from the province.

AB Today is written by Catherine Griwkowsky, reporting from Alberta's legislative press gallery.

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