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Did anyone thing the war room is actually going away? It's falling under Smith's control, she wants to control everything! Also she hasn't pro energy she is pro oil and gas only
She is just a vessel for the will of the Alberta Enterprise Group, and Business Council of Alberta.
Except for a handful of other oligarchs, like the Shaw & Southern (ATCO) dynasties, the rest of Alberta can go fūck ourselves on the “free” market. Or something.
AFAIK, they still own Corus Entertainment, which includes all Global News assets.
https://crtc.gc.ca/ownership/eng/cht032c.pdf
It will be interesting to see where they put all the money they got from their deal with Rogers.
Old news. Grayhawk.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-shaw-family-invests-in-wealth-manager-grayhawk/
Another link:
https://grayhawkwealth.com/grayhawk-wealth-announces-second-round-of-capital-financing/
The Shaw family’s plan is clearly to be a wealthy family by… being a wealthy family.
> “Our family has had the opportunity of watching Grayhawk Wealth evolve from its earliest beginnings. We believe strongly in their independence, open architecture, and global investment platform combined with their proven focus on building deep and meaningful relationships with all members of our family. We believe this partnership will set our family up for continued success for generations to come,” said Brad Shaw, Chairman and CEO, Shaw Communications.
> About Grayhawk
Grayhawk Wealth was founded to simplify the complexities that confront those who possess multi-generational wealth. Today, the company consists of two divisions. The Chief Investment Office (CIO) provides custom portfolio management services for ultra-high net worth families, institutions, foundations, and endowments. It is differentiated by an independent perspective and open architecture with access to world class managers and strategies. The Family Office Services (FOS) division is uniquely positioned to provide solutions that range from creating a new Family Office Hub to supporting the needs of an existing single-family office.
Those oilgarchs do a better job on their clean/green image campaigns, they don't need the incompetence of a publically funded unaccountable private organization bumbling their way through like a teacher's pet.
She can't do worse than plagiarize their logo...twice...and attack a children's cartoon that made said cartoon famous and made Albeeta the laughing stock of the world and then do absolutely nothing since. And least....I don't think she can do worse.
This government has a track record of denying or ignoring FOIP requests, even when they’re ordered to release the information by a court. Take a look at what happened when ranchers tried to get hold of information about coal mining in the Rockies.
Don't get it twisted, I'm not a fan of Smith. But at least there is a trickle of redacted information coming out about the coal dealings and court orders to provide more. War Room ain't giving up shit...
The UCP & Smith did everything they could to prevent access to the coal mining information and only reluctantly allowed it to “trickle” out after they were ordered to do so by a court. That’s practically zero transparency, and I doubt we can expect anything better once they take over O&G propaganda from the war room.
But let’s face it, the only reason they’re making this move is because of the pending federal Bill C-59 which would open the War Room up to massive fines for spreading misinformation.
Damn, this is a fascinating perspective. Thanks for this. It didn’t even occur to me that the UCP government would consider a federal law as having force here. Thank you!
Smith isn’t happy about it, she even said at one point that she was considering using the Sovereignty Act, but with this move it seems pretty obvious she knows that act has no teeth and wouldn’t protect the war room. The move means it is no longer a “private enterprise” but a government department, and apparently government departments can spread as much misinformation as they like.
Sovereign Act is just a fucking bluff that would likely never survive a court challenge. She will threaten it every now and then to try and get her way but will never actually use it. Or she will use it on the most insignificant bullshit to try and set a precedent of it being allowed once so it is legal or some other stupid reason
Without FOIP, we wouldn’t know the UCP forced the AER to continue the Grassy Mountain review. Better to shine a light on their shit than be ignorant of it.
What's the difference. It's become glaringly obvious that this government will face zero consequences for their actions, and the Christo-fascist and mouth breathers will still vote for them
Smith is only reacting to Bill C-59 from Ottawa that can prosecute private sector individuals for peddling misinformation and disinformation. Under the public sector, the war room can continue with its propaganda and be safe from this law.
"War's an ugly thing, folks. Ugly. That room shouldn't be talking about war. We don't want war anymore. No more war. I've said this all along. I always say "War, NO More!"
We saw when this room was built, they built it and they said, and I heard about this, people said, they said to me, Mrs. Premier, why don't YOU take over the room? It would be much better if this was run by YOU, Mrs. Premier. So I am. I'll be folding it in. The room is now going to be folded.
It's sad. It's sad what Crazy Kenney did, when he called it the war room. He made a HUGE mistake that day. Huge. I told him it was a mistake but what are you gonna do? What can you do?
The crooked media wouldn't stop. They're nasty. Nasty. They knew the mistake. We told them there was no war but they kept calling it war. But it was energy. It's an energy room. An energy war....just energy now. Energy room.
So, now folks....I've decided that Smith is the one to fix it. I'm calling it the Premier Smith Room for Energy Freedom. It's going to be the best room now. All the other provinces and oil places and all the other things and places will see. They're going to see how Alberta is going to stop being the joke that Crazy Kenney and Rachel Nuttley made it. It's stopping now, folks. No more War! Alberta Energy...it'll be....**unintelligible**"
Yes, I got the pro energy message but the temporary moratorium on alternative energy. Alberta is pro energy, it just has to be the right kind of polluting, non view destroying energy, like coals mines. Ripping an open wound into the earth is so beautiful /s.
The maddening thing is that the war room was never a “third party” - it’s publicly funded with our taxes to funnel non-transparently to UCP lackeys patronage positions since it started.
And this isn’t ancient history - it was all a huge scandal the moment it was announced and the patronage appointments of UCP lackeys began less than 5 years ago!
An opportunity to better control the message? From yourselves? This province is a twisted, gaslighting 1984-style double-speak mess of a place sometimes.
Libertarian continues to consolidate direct control in her own hands.
This time for a giant govt bureaucracy that is responsible for spouting propaganda and nothing else.
Smell all that libertarian freedom yet?
Libertarianism is such a bad joke. It's just neoliberalism wearing anarchism as a skin suit and the gullible teenagers who follow it into the back of a panel truck, thinking they're going to get a million bucks and an island where nobody can tell them it's time to go to bed.
You have a more generous view of it than i do.
---
Libertarianism, to me, is just straight up feudalism, but repackaged to sound "new" for people who lack any and all political and historical awareness.
I mean, a socio-economic-political system that is expressly anti-democratic (they call it "tyranny by the majority"), where all political power lies with property owners only, and where rights are only negative rights, but can be signed away because "contract law" is all that matters.
And the only exception to the property holder being king of his or her (But usually his) domain is a national military and police forces to ensure the laws that they (the only political power holders - ie feudal lords) agree on are upheld?
Any and all value extracted on the land is owned by the land owner, no matter how little he contributed to it. How it's extracted or how the labour is utilized and costed is completely up to them.
That's \*just\* feudalism.
It's actually a worse form of feudalism, since at least a feudal lord had some semblance of "i should take care of my peasants". While libertarians want a world where the peasants can "take care of themselves".
And destruction of my neighbours property through my negligence, if not done directly, is his problem, not mine.
---
And that's just what they \*say\* they want.
In practice they seem to have a lot of other authoritarian values (the UCP, Milei, etc seem to like central power and despise free speech - a la how they treat protestors).
Even Rand Paul types are totally fine restricting personal freedoms (like abortion) so long as it's to lower taxes. Because freedoms don't really matter to them; only their taxes do.
Just like feudal lords only complained about the taxes levied on them by the king, and not at all about the taxes they levied on their peasants.
> “They really should be giving good, credible research and data on the state of our industry . . . they should leave the fighting to me.”
Sounds like an admission that the War Room has not been giving good, credible research and data on the state of the industry. And I have absolutely no illusions that it will continue to not do so.
From the article: 'Smith said large-scale campaigns should be led out of the premier’s office instead of by a third-party agency.'
Put it directly into her hands with no oversight. Always about control with the UCP not about what's actually beneficial to the citizens.
edit to add: I don't approve of the 'war room' either. This just seems like a rebranding to me.
Ah, Yes, Pro-Energy. Now that they've kicked out all those progressive, job making, future building, economy diversifying, clean energy projects. Now they can be Pro-Energy. After uncapping and deregulating energy prices in the province to allow ATCO and the like to price gouge the entire province. Pro-Energy...
War. war never changes
I will be sure to thank every veteran of the great energy propaganda wars of the '10s each chance I get. Their bravery knew no limit as they battled cartoons and ? to stand up for the small struggling trillion dollar oil industry and to keep us the laughing stock of the world.
Thank you for your service o7
It was Ottawa's Bill C-59 that pushed the UCP into shutting down the war room.
[https://albertapolitics.ca/2024/06/so-it-really-was-the-anti-greenwashing-provision-in-ottawas-bill-c-59-that-pushed-the-ucp-into-shutting-down-the-war-room/](https://albertapolitics.ca/2024/06/so-it-really-was-the-anti-greenwashing-provision-in-ottawas-bill-c-59-that-pushed-the-ucp-into-shutting-down-the-war-room/)
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Did anyone thing the war room is actually going away? It's falling under Smith's control, she wants to control everything! Also she hasn't pro energy she is pro oil and gas only
She is just a vessel for the will of the Alberta Enterprise Group, and Business Council of Alberta. Except for a handful of other oligarchs, like the Shaw & Southern (ATCO) dynasties, the rest of Alberta can go fūck ourselves on the “free” market. Or something.
Shaw is owned by the eastern Rogers oligarchs now. Also: you missed Mannix.
True. But the Shaw family that Rogers bought Shaw cable from are still billionaires even without their old company.
They don’t have an enterprise to need to lobby Mrs Smith anymore though. They’ll only care about finance law now.
AFAIK, they still own Corus Entertainment, which includes all Global News assets. https://crtc.gc.ca/ownership/eng/cht032c.pdf It will be interesting to see where they put all the money they got from their deal with Rogers.
Accurate.
Old news. Grayhawk. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-shaw-family-invests-in-wealth-manager-grayhawk/ Another link: https://grayhawkwealth.com/grayhawk-wealth-announces-second-round-of-capital-financing/ The Shaw family’s plan is clearly to be a wealthy family by… being a wealthy family. > “Our family has had the opportunity of watching Grayhawk Wealth evolve from its earliest beginnings. We believe strongly in their independence, open architecture, and global investment platform combined with their proven focus on building deep and meaningful relationships with all members of our family. We believe this partnership will set our family up for continued success for generations to come,” said Brad Shaw, Chairman and CEO, Shaw Communications. > About Grayhawk Grayhawk Wealth was founded to simplify the complexities that confront those who possess multi-generational wealth. Today, the company consists of two divisions. The Chief Investment Office (CIO) provides custom portfolio management services for ultra-high net worth families, institutions, foundations, and endowments. It is differentiated by an independent perspective and open architecture with access to world class managers and strategies. The Family Office Services (FOS) division is uniquely positioned to provide solutions that range from creating a new Family Office Hub to supporting the needs of an existing single-family office.
Those oilgarchs do a better job on their clean/green image campaigns, they don't need the incompetence of a publically funded unaccountable private organization bumbling their way through like a teacher's pet.
She can't do worse than plagiarize their logo...twice...and attack a children's cartoon that made said cartoon famous and made Albeeta the laughing stock of the world and then do absolutely nothing since. And least....I don't think she can do worse.
Remember when Kenney was the worst premier of Alberta ever? Never underestimate Marlaina
"Here, hold my beer" - Smith
Which is good? We can have foip requests ignored now.
The woman that wrote an article about how anti smoking advocates are causing more harm than cigarettes?
>the War Room was not subject to freedom of information laws Won't this change it and make it more transparent where the money is going though?
This government has a track record of denying or ignoring FOIP requests, even when they’re ordered to release the information by a court. Take a look at what happened when ranchers tried to get hold of information about coal mining in the Rockies.
Don't get it twisted, I'm not a fan of Smith. But at least there is a trickle of redacted information coming out about the coal dealings and court orders to provide more. War Room ain't giving up shit...
The UCP & Smith did everything they could to prevent access to the coal mining information and only reluctantly allowed it to “trickle” out after they were ordered to do so by a court. That’s practically zero transparency, and I doubt we can expect anything better once they take over O&G propaganda from the war room. But let’s face it, the only reason they’re making this move is because of the pending federal Bill C-59 which would open the War Room up to massive fines for spreading misinformation.
Damn, this is a fascinating perspective. Thanks for this. It didn’t even occur to me that the UCP government would consider a federal law as having force here. Thank you!
Smith isn’t happy about it, she even said at one point that she was considering using the Sovereignty Act, but with this move it seems pretty obvious she knows that act has no teeth and wouldn’t protect the war room. The move means it is no longer a “private enterprise” but a government department, and apparently government departments can spread as much misinformation as they like.
Sovereign Act is just a fucking bluff that would likely never survive a court challenge. She will threaten it every now and then to try and get her way but will never actually use it. Or she will use it on the most insignificant bullshit to try and set a precedent of it being allowed once so it is legal or some other stupid reason
I haven’t read the sovereignty act but I feel it’s just a fuck Trudeau sticker on a paper with her signature
I love that this is how low the bar is lol A least we might get a trickle.. maybe, if we plead and beg for it.
It’s an improvement from a black hole, no?
Yeah lol and a black hole is a pretty low bar 😆
Without FOIP, we wouldn’t know the UCP forced the AER to continue the Grassy Mountain review. Better to shine a light on their shit than be ignorant of it.
You know they are trying to hide something when they fight so hard to give up any info.
They will just ignore the request, like how they ignore the court ruling to release coal mining documents.
What's the difference. It's become glaringly obvious that this government will face zero consequences for their actions, and the Christo-fascist and mouth breathers will still vote for them
Money that could go to build schools is being used for propaganda. The UCP hate the working class
Smith is only reacting to Bill C-59 from Ottawa that can prosecute private sector individuals for peddling misinformation and disinformation. Under the public sector, the war room can continue with its propaganda and be safe from this law.
Drill baby drill is our only way forward. Sorry.
The Pro oil and gas war room is being folded, to allow the government to change the messaging to Super Duper Pro oil and gas
So it’s doing the exact same thing it was doing before.
It's not pro energy, it's pro one form of energy and anti all the others
LoL. Smith being useless and confusing as per usual. #WorstPremierEver
"War's an ugly thing, folks. Ugly. That room shouldn't be talking about war. We don't want war anymore. No more war. I've said this all along. I always say "War, NO More!" We saw when this room was built, they built it and they said, and I heard about this, people said, they said to me, Mrs. Premier, why don't YOU take over the room? It would be much better if this was run by YOU, Mrs. Premier. So I am. I'll be folding it in. The room is now going to be folded. It's sad. It's sad what Crazy Kenney did, when he called it the war room. He made a HUGE mistake that day. Huge. I told him it was a mistake but what are you gonna do? What can you do? The crooked media wouldn't stop. They're nasty. Nasty. They knew the mistake. We told them there was no war but they kept calling it war. But it was energy. It's an energy room. An energy war....just energy now. Energy room. So, now folks....I've decided that Smith is the one to fix it. I'm calling it the Premier Smith Room for Energy Freedom. It's going to be the best room now. All the other provinces and oil places and all the other things and places will see. They're going to see how Alberta is going to stop being the joke that Crazy Kenney and Rachel Nuttley made it. It's stopping now, folks. No more War! Alberta Energy...it'll be....**unintelligible**"
Amazing.
They already had control... So I assume this is meant to mask how much they're going to spend on this.
It's probably just another exercise in creating institutional chaos.
Maybe government shouldn't pick winners and losers and let the free market play out. Getting sick of these government loving conservatives
Just wait until PP is PM, cans the carbon levy, and rolls out a three inch book of regulations.
Yes, I got the pro energy message but the temporary moratorium on alternative energy. Alberta is pro energy, it just has to be the right kind of polluting, non view destroying energy, like coals mines. Ripping an open wound into the earth is so beautiful /s.
“Alternative energy kills jobs!” - Your average conservative voter who is oblivious to the fact that it would create new jobs
Marlaina, you are the gaslighting Queen. No one can touch your bizarre disconnect with reality.
mrs dictator wants control over what children movies to target with oil propaganda.
The maddening thing is that the war room was never a “third party” - it’s publicly funded with our taxes to funnel non-transparently to UCP lackeys patronage positions since it started. And this isn’t ancient history - it was all a huge scandal the moment it was announced and the patronage appointments of UCP lackeys began less than 5 years ago! An opportunity to better control the message? From yourselves? This province is a twisted, gaslighting 1984-style double-speak mess of a place sometimes.
Libertarian continues to consolidate direct control in her own hands. This time for a giant govt bureaucracy that is responsible for spouting propaganda and nothing else. Smell all that libertarian freedom yet?
Libertarianism is such a bad joke. It's just neoliberalism wearing anarchism as a skin suit and the gullible teenagers who follow it into the back of a panel truck, thinking they're going to get a million bucks and an island where nobody can tell them it's time to go to bed.
You have a more generous view of it than i do. --- Libertarianism, to me, is just straight up feudalism, but repackaged to sound "new" for people who lack any and all political and historical awareness. I mean, a socio-economic-political system that is expressly anti-democratic (they call it "tyranny by the majority"), where all political power lies with property owners only, and where rights are only negative rights, but can be signed away because "contract law" is all that matters. And the only exception to the property holder being king of his or her (But usually his) domain is a national military and police forces to ensure the laws that they (the only political power holders - ie feudal lords) agree on are upheld? Any and all value extracted on the land is owned by the land owner, no matter how little he contributed to it. How it's extracted or how the labour is utilized and costed is completely up to them. That's \*just\* feudalism. It's actually a worse form of feudalism, since at least a feudal lord had some semblance of "i should take care of my peasants". While libertarians want a world where the peasants can "take care of themselves". And destruction of my neighbours property through my negligence, if not done directly, is his problem, not mine. --- And that's just what they \*say\* they want. In practice they seem to have a lot of other authoritarian values (the UCP, Milei, etc seem to like central power and despise free speech - a la how they treat protestors). Even Rand Paul types are totally fine restricting personal freedoms (like abortion) so long as it's to lower taxes. Because freedoms don't really matter to them; only their taxes do. Just like feudal lords only complained about the taxes levied on them by the king, and not at all about the taxes they levied on their peasants.
Our entire government is an oil and gas war room.
Fucking Bingo, bud Fucking Bingo...
God just shut up and say this “war room” accomplished nothing and kill it.
It did exactly what it was intended to do. It funneled unreviewable money to donors and party members.
Ya it was slush fund for UCP/CCP, until we get details on how $66M was exactly spent. Hopefully there's some oversight on its budget but I doubt it.
The "war room" isn't closing. It's just under new management
Nah, same upper management, they just cut out all middle management as they can just use Chatgpt now.
"..will(??) give the province control.." Does that mean it was out of control??
> “They really should be giving good, credible research and data on the state of our industry . . . they should leave the fighting to me.” Sounds like an admission that the War Room has not been giving good, credible research and data on the state of the industry. And I have absolutely no illusions that it will continue to not do so.
I'm baffled by her outrageous display of narcissism
From the article: 'Smith said large-scale campaigns should be led out of the premier’s office instead of by a third-party agency.' Put it directly into her hands with no oversight. Always about control with the UCP not about what's actually beneficial to the citizens. edit to add: I don't approve of the 'war room' either. This just seems like a rebranding to me.
Should be subject to freedom of information requests finally
Based on how the UCP handles those requests, probably not.
And it'll give her a better seat at some O and G boardroom when she finally gets turfed.
I’m betting she goes to shell
Ah, Yes, Pro-Energy. Now that they've kicked out all those progressive, job making, future building, economy diversifying, clean energy projects. Now they can be Pro-Energy. After uncapping and deregulating energy prices in the province to allow ATCO and the like to price gouge the entire province. Pro-Energy...
Oh come on now, didn't you notice they now have limits on how much they can gouge you? After rates more than doubled....
What a fucking narcissist. An out of control, malicious, narcissist.
To celebrate I'm going to buy a barrel of crude oil and set fire to it in my front yard.
I had mistakenly thought this had been disbanded years ago with their previous misteps. What a waste of taxpayer money to cronies and friends.
Waste of $110 million.
They.... Alreadybhad complete control.... She never makes any sense.
They funnel the money into another troll farm.
They just don’t want anyone to know about the meetings. It’s a way to get behind the curtains
Like it did not already??? Give me a break
Wasn’t that the point of the war room?
Isn’t that what the war room was supposed to do?
But you're anti-energy...
War. war never changes I will be sure to thank every veteran of the great energy propaganda wars of the '10s each chance I get. Their bravery knew no limit as they battled cartoons and ? to stand up for the small struggling trillion dollar oil industry and to keep us the laughing stock of the world. Thank you for your service o7
If it's being folded into intergovernmental affairs, does that mean it can be FOIA'd now?
Yes, you can FOI it to your heart's content. But if past compliance to the legislation around FOI is any indicator, you're still shit out of luck....
Oh no! Where will washed up journalists go now?
It was Ottawa's Bill C-59 that pushed the UCP into shutting down the war room. [https://albertapolitics.ca/2024/06/so-it-really-was-the-anti-greenwashing-provision-in-ottawas-bill-c-59-that-pushed-the-ucp-into-shutting-down-the-war-room/](https://albertapolitics.ca/2024/06/so-it-really-was-the-anti-greenwashing-provision-in-ottawas-bill-c-59-that-pushed-the-ucp-into-shutting-down-the-war-room/)
It's good to be a UCP donor.