Continuing CPP uproar favours Danielle Smith and UCP

Everybody’s sending open letters these days – it started last week with an exchange between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ms. Smith – so Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner sent one to Ms. Freeland, too.

“We welcome all good-faith, rigorous analysis of the CPP Act withdrawal formula in advance of that meeting,” he said. This is pretty rich considering the UCP’s mendacious and misleading campaign to persuade Albertans to go along with Smith Government’s screwball plan to get its hands on the CPP and, as the premier used to say before the idea was under so much scrutiny, use it to prop up the fossil fuel industry.

Just what the meeting can hope to accomplish, or even what will be on the agenda beyond eyerolls and headshakes at Albertans for electing this gong show, is not clear.

Perhaps they could also point out that 2019 briefing note prepared for then Alberta finance minister Travis Toews, the one that said Alberta’s share of the CPP’s assets would come to about 12 per cent of the pie.

So, they might say, if you go – and rest assured we won’t let you back in – you’ll be getting a sum small enough that all your promises about Alberta pensioners being paid as much or more as they get from the CPP now will be revealed as the deceitful fantasies they are.

Canadians in the rest of Canada are going to hate it too – especially when they learn that part of the UCP’s goal, in the words of Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary political scientist and one of the authors of the strategy that animates the UCP’s pension plans, is “to hurt the rest of the country … to inflict a little pain on Canada.”

At this rate, it seems unlikely that Ms. Smith’s promised referendum on the pension hijacking will ever happen. In the meantime, though, she has everyone paying attention to her. |Read more https://rabble.ca/politics/canadian-politics/continuing-cpp-uproar-favours-danielle-smith-and-ucp/| rabble.ca/politics/canadian-po…

#UCP #APP #CPP #pensions #BatShitCrazy #lies #misinformation #smith #abpoli #cdnpoli

Help was on the way? Looks like the goal of UCP’s $70M+ ‘Tylenot’ stunt was simply to own the Libs

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party government may look like fools for having paid $70 million up front to a Turkish drug manufacturer last December for a huge supply of children’s pain medication most of which will likely never reach Alberta.

But to reach that conclusion is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the purchase by Alberta of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen from Atabay Pharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals Inc. of Istanbul during a national shortage of those pain medications.

The goal, it was obvious then and continues to be obvious now, was not to stock the empty shelves of Alberta pharmacies with medicine worried parents were desperate get home to their sick kids during a busy respiratory disease season.

The purpose of Ms. Smith’s “Tylenot” stunt, as it came to be known, was simply a $75-million political effort to use public funds to own the Libs. That number also includes the cost of shipping less than a third of the purchase to Alberta. |Read more https://albertapolitics.ca/2023/10/help-was-on-the-way-looks-like-the-goal-of-ucps-70m-tylenot-stunt-was-simply-to-own-the-libs/| albertapolitics.ca/2023/10/hel…

#UCP #pharmaceuticals #shortage #stunt #feds #expensiveLies

Can We Trust Elections Alberta to Give Voters the Truth on Pensions?

There is much heated debate in Alberta these days over whether the United Conservative government of Premier Danielle Smith should hold a referendum on leaving the Canada Pension Plan to form its own Alberta pension plan.

Smith, during the 2023 election, categorically stated that “no one is touching anybody’s pension.” Now, she and her government are blithely ignoring that promise and seem intent on pushing ahead with a referendum, even though polls show a significant majority of Albertans want to keep the CPP.

But another critical question has yet to be asked. Can Elections Alberta be trusted to facilitate an objective, apolitical referendum, given its well-documented record of failure to provide unbiased information to voters during the 2021 municipal election and the 2023 provincial election?

Doubts about a ‘free and fair’ campaign

“We really do need a well-resourced and independent election authority in order to prevent the premier’s office from putting its finger on the scale,” University of Alberta political scientist Jared Wesley told The Tyee.

“And we have seen little evidence that Elections Alberta is well positioned to run a free and fair campaign this time around — if we have one.”

Wesley has first-hand knowledge. He was one of several academics who had tried — in some cases repeatedly — to warn Elections Alberta that information it had provided to Alberta voters for an October 2021 referendum on removing equalization from the Constitution was false and misleading.

Anyone else worried about this? We know when Kenney commissioned the The Fair Deal Panel, that people in the premiers office re-wrote some of the material submitted by Janice MacKinnon. This means the questions asked in the report, were answered in a manner to Kenney’s liking and expectations. Since Elections Alberta has delivered “false and misleading” information on one referendum in the past, can we expect this time to hear the true results? I don’t think so…. Read more https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/10/25/Can-We-Trust-Elections-Alberta/ thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/10/25…

#referendum #credibility #ucp #ElectionsAlberta #lies #misleading #abpoli

Microsoft Needs to Get Serious About Its Windows 10 Upgrade Problem

The Windows 10-pocalypse is a short two years away. On Oct. 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop issuing security updates for Windows 10 PCs, at which point most of the world’s PCs—about one billion computers—will be running a dead operating system, like Windows XP. And most of those computers can’t upgrade to Windows 11.

Microsoft Is Abandoning Most PCs on the Planet

Half of the readers of my Windows Intelligence newsletter are still using Windows 10 on their primary PC. The one billion estimate comes from two sources: Microsoft, which has said there are more than 1.4 billion Windows PCs, and Statcounter, which shows that the vast majority of PCs on the planet—more than 70%—run Windows 10.

Worse yet, this isn’t like when Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7. Those PCs could upgrade to Windows 10, but this time around, many Windows 10 PCs don’t suport Windows 11, at least not officially. If you can’t afford to buy a new PC, you’ll be left out in the cold after Oct. 14, 2025. From a security perspective, it’ll be as if you were using Windows XP or Windows 7.

Will Microsoft Extend the Deadline?

“That’s the debate of our age,” Paul Thurrott, a journalist who’s spent decades covering Microsoft and owner of Thurrott.com, told me.

Thurrott pointed out that Microsoft extended support for both Windows XP and Windows 7, although support for Windows 7 only covered businesses that paid extra every year. “Honestly, Windows 11 adoption is less than I’d have thought, especially in businesses. That could cause [Microsoft] to continue support for Windows 10,” he said.

I asked Microsoft for a comment on its plans, and a spokesperson said the company had “nothing further to share at this time” other than what’s on the lifecycle page. Read more https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/microsoft-windows-10-upgrade-problem www.pcmag.com/opinions/microso…

#commercialism #microsoft #cdnpoli #greed #computers #sales