Orange Chinook: Politics in the New Alberta

Keith Brownsey teaches political science at Mount Royal College in Calgary. He has published extensively in the area of Canadian politics, specializing in provincial politics.

Roger Epp is Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta. He served as founding Dean of the University’s Augustana Campus in Camrose from 2004 to 2011. Much of his recent writing has explored what it means to live in the prairie West with a sense of memory, inheritance, and care. He is author of We are All Treaty People: Prairie Essays (2008), co-editor of Writing Off the Rural West (2001) and co-producer of the documentary “The Canadian Clearances” for CBC Radio Ideas.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week.

Kevin Taft never thought he'd be a politician. A public policy analyst and head of his own Edmonton-based consulting company, Kevin's life took a sharp turn when he returned to Alberta in 1994 after a year away studying for a business degree. "Alberta had changed," he recalls. "The government was gutting our health care system without a plan, throwing people's lives into chaos." Kevin watched in growing dismay as the government took aim at education and other public services Albertans had carefully built over many years. In 1997, Kevin wrote Shredding the Public Interest, a national bestseller which confirmed many Albertans' concerns about the PCs. Clear Answers, a second bestseller in 2000, co-authored by Gillian Steward, exploded the myths of private, for-profit health care. Kevin stepped into public life in 2001, handily winning his Edmonton Riverview seat in the provincial election. In 2004, he was elected Leader of the Alberta Liberals and of the Loyal Opposition in the Alberta Legislature. In 2007 his third book was published, Democracy Derailed, and in 2012 his fourth book, Follow the Money, which he co-authored with Mel MacMillan and Junaid Jahangir. Both books continue Kevin's critical analysis of Alberta politics and public policy. Kevin stepped down from the Legislature when he chose not to run in the 2012 election. He continues to live and write in Edmonton.

James Wilt is a freelance journalist based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He regularly contributes to The Narwhal, and has also written for VICE Canada, National Observer, CBC Calgary, Alberta Oil, Canadian Dimension and Briarpatch.

As a journalist writing for the Calgary Herald, the Globe and Mail, and the CBC, Deborah Yedlin has been a pre-eminent commentator for the better part of twenty years on the nexus of business and politics in Canada.