CIVITATENSIS

Whatever respect I could have had for Michael Ignatieff was gone in the space of reading a few lines in the newspaper this morning. Ignatieff spoke at the University of Ottawa yesterday. In a short space of time, he managed to repudiate most of his earlier views: his anti-nationalism, his pragmatic views on security, war and terrorism.

Instead, he sold his previous views as the musings of an opinionated academic disconnected with public opinion. He promises now to be more sensitive to what the public thinks.

As a Harvard professor, he said he had the luxury of voicing his personal views without worrying about public opinion or the potential impact on national unity of involving Canadian troops in a war that was particularly unpopular in Quebec.

“Now that I’m an elected politician I’m deeply aware of those responsibilities,” he told reporters, adding that public opinion would be “a significant factor” in any future decisions on deployment of the military.

The point about the academy, since Plato, is precisely to divorce a mind in search of understanding from the opinions and the demands of the many. Far from the exploration of personal opinion, the academy seeks understanding on the basis of principles, argument, going wherever the evidence might lead. The goal has never really been to bend to opinion just because many might hold a view.

But Ignatieff now has dismissed his own career work as the personal opinions and the empty musings of an egghead academician. He has not changed his mind. He is simply advancing that his earlier work is irrelevant to the world because it was not guided by the desires of the many, the voters. In essence, Ignatieff is also repudiating his former profession.

If Michael Ignatieff can so easily dismiss the work of a life time so far, so can we just as easily dismiss the words that he pronounced yesterday in loyalty of the potential Liberal voter. But that will be lost on most Liberal voters. No one will ask the real Michael Ignatieff to stand up. The public sale of Ignatieff’s intellectual integrity yesterday will go largely unnoticed.

Paul Coffin should go to prison. Two years less a day suspended sentence, and lecturing on “ethics” (Yeah, on ethics?!) at a university is not sufficient punishment. His crimes are serious crimes. We all know that. The Crown knows that.

Repentence may be a good thing, and Coffin might want to see a priest about that, perhaps. But a court of law is no place for absolutions. Let’s hope the Quebec Superior Court understands that point.

Joe Morselli, one of the main witnesses at the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal, has died in Florida of a heart attack. He was 67.

A former chief fundraiser for the Liberal party in Quebec, Morselli was referred to by many witnesses as the “godfather” of its Quebec wing, a description he swiftly rejected.

Bernard Shapiro, the Ethics Commissioner, continues to be an embarrassment to his office and to himself.

Last year Shapiro refused to investigate Tim Murphy, Paul Martin’s Chief of Staff, after Murphy was caught on tape hinting at a job in the future for Gurmant Grewal, if Grewal and his wife crossed the floor before a crucial vote. Unclear on the notion of Ministerial Responsibility, Shapiro argued that his authority only extended to Members of Parliament. Previously, he had investigated members of the staff in Judi Sgro’s office. Later, he changed his mind, and started an investigation on Murphy, only to clear him in spite of  robust evidence.

Now, after deciding that he needed to investigate Prime Minister Harper and David Emerson, Shapiro has refused to investigate Belinda Stronach for the exact same type of issue. The request comes again from the NDP, but Shapiro will not apply his atrophied judgement to Stronach in the same way that he applied it to the Emerson case.

The only decent thing left for Shapiro to do would be to resign. But his lack of shame has placed self-respect as far away from him as incompetence has placed his judgement.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has ruled that residents of states which do not accept gay marriages cannot marry in Massachusetts.

The Republican Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, had ordered state bureaucrats not to grant such licenses to non-resident homosexuals and lesbians coming to his state for the sole purpose of getting married. His decision was appealed. Romney seemed pleased with the court ruling:  “We did not want Massachusetts to become the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage.”

The Council for Quebec Sovereignty is causing some controversy regarding a “book” to instruct young Quebeckers about sovereignty and independence. It’s entitled Let’s Talk About Sovereignty at School, and it’s supposed to serve as an instructional aid to students from kindergarden all the way to university.

I could forgive the Council for thinking that Quebec schools and universities are grounds created for propagating the separatist cause. The goal of education since the 1960s in Quebec has been to indoctrinate and not to educate. And since the PQ arrived in power in 1976, the scholl curriculum in the province took a turn further down the path of propaganda.

The Canadian history that I learned in Quebec while the PQ was in power essentially became the history of the oppression of the French speaking people in “Canada.” Neatly divided in three parts, it related events of the discovery, when glorious French explorers came to the Americas, and bravely criss-crossed the continent. They managed to build an idyllic life in New France, an Acadia of sorts, until 1759 when the big bad English came and wrecked it all for them. Since then, they have lived in oppression, though the Quiet Revolution inaugurated a new era, a kind of a transition that will soon result in the final liberation –a return to the previous paradise.

It was not until I got to university, both in Quebec and later in Calgary, that I became aware of the propagandistic project that we had been fed in high school. CEGEP was only slightly better than high schools when it came to accurate historical representation.

What the Council for Quebec Sovereignty is proposing is not all that different from what exists at present. It’s more blunt, more combative and more militant. But the idea of treating provincial schools as places to create a new and elevated national consciousness is not their invention. It started with the creation of an education ministry in the Quiet Revolution, and the Parti Quebecois took it to new heights. Subsequent governments –which include Liberal governments– have continued in that proud tradition.

If nothing else, what is new in Let’s Talk About Sovereignty at School is a desire officially to move the propaganda machine openly and boldly into gear all the way to Universities.

Saddam Hussein once thought that Iraq would never be invaded by a Western coalition because China and Russia would block any Security Council resolution directly gunning for him.

Looks like the UN may be giving a similar impresion to radical Iranians.

Earlier I speculated here that Abdul Rahman would have to leave his country for a Western state if he were to live at all. He now has. He has sought asylum in Italy, and Italy has welcomed him. Good news.

The publicity around his arrival in Italy has now propelled Rahman to even greater notice. And considering that the islamist barbarians are now fully globalised, they will likely unleash bounty hunters after him.

Rahman’s departure saves his life, but it does not solve the problem that brought him to world notoriety: Afghanis still are prepared to put people to death for converting to religions other than Islam. In this case, Rahman had converted to the religion of the same people who now protect the life of the Afghani government. Without that help, Afghanistan’s present but fragile stability might not survive.

Westerners are good enough to protect the skin of those ruling the country; they are good enough to bring aid and spill their own blood to protect Afghans from the Taliban and al Qaeda. But embracing their religion will get you executed. Isn’t that nice?

The last time I read that something or someone was “the future of politics” was reading Mussolini in relation to the fascist state: fascism, Benito said, was the future of 20th century politics.

All citizens have equal rights in a liberal democracy. It is precisely because all citizens are equal in right that the PM should ignore calls from people who think they know better just  because they have appeared as a centerfold in a magazine.

If the PM started spoke to or received every soft-porn starlet with a pet cause, he’d also have to speak to every Taliban who wants to ban airing Baywatch.

Lyle Oberg re-interpreted his remarks about Tory skeletons today and says he’s still in the race. By the looks of it, his ousting has not changed much about Albertans’ preferences in his regard. Olsen writes (subscription required):

So what of Oberg’s alleged fatal faux pas last week of calling Klein out that touched off an unprecedented internecine war among Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives?

Didn’t hurt him, apparently.

Didn’t help him much, but as far as renegade action scaring backers away, forget about it. Just over 13 per cent of Tory party supporters backed Oberg before he started talking about skeletons in the Tory closet — just about the same after.

The surprises continue, including the fact Oberg is in second place with verging-on-impressive numbers.

We shall see how and if the delegates to the convention react to these news.

It would have been a surprise if Lyle Oberg’s constituency board had not backed him last night in Brooks.

It remains to be seen, in a short few days, how many Alberta Tories at the Calgary convention will find a home in Oberg’s message.

“Some government initiatives in the past few months have been hampered due to distractions caused by questions about the leadership race,” he said yesterday [Mrch 24]. “This is likely to worsen.”

Stay tuned.

Pamela Anderson seems to have shifted her political concerns from breasts to skin, from chickens to seals.

h/t: Darcey

Alberta’s population keeps growing.

Alberta’s population grew by five times the national average in the last three months of 2005 - growth unrivalled since the oil boom of the late 1970s, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.

The surge in population was made up largely of Canadians flocking to Alberta from their home provinces, triggering a corresponding drop across much of the rest of the country.

[...]

In the last three months of 2005, that province’s population jumped 0.76 per cent. Net migration from other regions accounted for about two-thirds of that growth.

By comparison, Canada’s population posted a growth rate of 0.14 per cent.

Many thinking Canadians across the country have known these things for quite a while, but it’s always nice to have a Grit confirm them:

The man the Liberals have assigned to assemble their blueprint for party renewal says the defeated government’s national daycare program was “a deathbed repentance,” the gun registry was “an administrative disaster” and the response to the sponsorship scandal was “bizarre.”

The blunt-talking Tom Axworthy, a former aide to Pierre Trudeau who teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., also says the former government’s Kyoto policy was not only difficult to understand, “it wasn’t real anyway.”

“On file after file, we haven’t had bad ideas, but the implementation process has been abysmal,” he said in an interview with CanWest News Service. “A press release is not a policy.”

Noting Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “intelligent political strategy” in Quebec, Mr. Axworthy said so much of the Liberal party’s support in the province has ebbed away that it has almost lost its raison d’etre of national unity.

“We’re in third place in Quebec,” he said. “Now, if that doesn’t occasion a rethink, I don’t know what does.”

It’s nice to see Tom reconciled to the truth all of a sudden, after all these years. More than “defeat concentrates the mind,” it sounds like defeat makes the Grits tell the truth. Canadians should help them out in their public therapy. May they’ll continue to tell the truth.

Jean Brault of Groupaction was in court today entering a plea that was rejected by the Crown. The Crown is suing for $84 million and Brault offered to pay $1.6 million. There appears to be a small discrepancy in the way that Mr Brault sees the Crown’s case.

The tears that worked so well for Brault last Spring at the Gomery Inquiry were back as well.

Choking back tears, Brault said he wanted to “apologize to my family, my employees, … my children, who regarded me as a decent businessman and now see me as a fraudster.”

Stress from the sponsorship affair caused him to have a heart attack and now he takes 21 pills a day to combat stress and heart disease, he said.

Being a crook is only stressful if one gets caught. Brault endured no such stress while he was the key middle-man for the most famous fraud in Canadian political history since the Railway scandals in the 19th century. Brault conspired along with key members of the Liberal Party of Canada and at least one civil servant to direct illegally-obtained funds from the public coffers into the pockets of a wide range of Liberal operatives in Quebec.

Observing the Brault experience, researchers will have to conclude that living high on the hog at the taxpayers expense does not produce nearly as much stress as being found out, exposed, bankrupt, tried in court, and potentially found guilty. Who would have thought it?

Considering the precedent in the Paul Coffin case, Brault should relax a little.

Simple things are sometimes too complex. Cynic claims that I am saying that “all dark-skinned foreigners“ should be abandoned. My post about Abdul Rahman in fact conveys the opposite sentiment.

I wonder to what extent the attempt at parody has become a mask for incomprehension.

Loney’s remarks, even in their omission of the US troops, provide a baldy needed expression of thanks, and offer some balance to the callous and unChristian disposition of other Peacemakers toward their liberators. I hope Loney’s omission was unintentional.

I am grateful in a way that can never be adequately expressed in words,” Mr. Loney, 41, told reporters at the airport three days after he was rescued, along with fellow hostages Harmeet Singh Sooden and Norman Kember. “It’s great to be alive.”

Mr. Loney’s praise was effusive compared to the more guarded expressions of gratitude uttered by some of his colleagues at Christian Peacemaker Teams, a pacifist aid organization that has been working in Iraq since 2002. Mr. Loney thanked both “the British soldiers who risked their lives to rescue us” and “the government of Canada, who sent a team to Baghdad to help secure our release.” He made no mention of the U.S. troops who were also involved.

The Globe and Mail calls the accusations and condemnations made by other pacifist  Peacemakers “guarded expressions,” perhaps as a means to hide their senselessness, but there was nothing guarded about them.

Lyle Oberg, the ousted member of the Klein government in Alberta, is responsible for his own actions, and for the words that he used last week. But the man who created the politically unhealthy conditions for it to happen is the premier, tells us Lorne Gunter.

There didn’t have to be cabinet ministers resigning now — 24 months before Premier Ralph Klein retires — and other ministers being expelled from the Tory caucus altogether, if Klein were fully engaged in his job.

If the premier were on top of his game, as he was during the days of austerity from 1993 to 1997, he would have known he was in no danger of losing the leadership confidence vote at next week’s Conservative convention.

The rest of the piece is here.

Some of us may rejoice that Abdul Rahman will be freed, but his captivity would become the least of his concerns as Muslim clerics in Afghanistan call for his assassination. Free or not, persecuted by the state or freed by the state, in the eyes of radical Muslims he is still an apostate. The barbarians who call for blood because of Rahman’s conversion will not stop until they see blood spilled.

Muslim extremists, who have demanded death for Mr. Rahman as an apostate for rejecting Islam, warned the decision would touch off protests across this religiously conservative country. Some clerics previously vowed to incite Afghans to kill Mr. Rahman if he was let go.

Rahman’s only chance may be to leave Afghanistan, and find a place somewhere in the West.

The ingratitude of Christian Peacemaker Teams has upset many. It shows the underbelly of an aspect of Western culture that is blinded by moral equivalences. Organisation members were kidnapped and mistreated by radical islamists in Iraq (Swords of Righteousness Brigade); one of the hostages (Tom Fox) was murdered.

When 200 British, American and Canadian soldiers risked their lives to save them, the peacemakers’ condemnations turned not against those who captured and murdered their members, but against the people who rescued them. Doug Pritchard said on Toronto:

“We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by multinational forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping, and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end.”

Dishonestly, they even claimed that the captives had been released rather than to give their brave liberators their due. The undetached CSM repeats the language of “release.”

Blaming their liberators amounts to praising the Peacemakers’ brutal captors. That outcome will not be lost on the kidnappers. They will notice that terrorists win, when they grab Peacemakers, even when they lose.

The logic of victory invites the terrorists to snatch more members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, who are already poised to send more people to Iraq. It makes of them more coveted targets, placing themselves at a disproportionately greater risk in Iraq. And maybe that is their wish.

But Peacemakers will also draw more soldiers and security forces into risking their own lives to protect them or free them. Down the line, the ingratitude of Peacemakers will cost more blood. The Peacemakers’ professed commitment to reduce violence will be “getting in the way” of peace.

I ran across the Pute Pride site from France last week when I was looking for info on the anti-war protests in French newspapers. I mentioned them in this post.

The French organisation of prostitutes has a Canadian connection. Posted on Les Putes website is a manual for “clients” of the sex trade, which was written by a Canadian organisation calling itself Stella (Latin for star). The Manual is entitled: “Manuel a l’attention des clients des travailleuses du sexe,” a rather gender-exclusive appelation given the graphic on the french website. It means “Manual for the Attention of Clients of Sex (female) Trade Workers.” It’s seems to be a feminist organisation.

The document is designed to provide future and present clients of sex traders with information about the etiquette used in contracting their services, urges potential clients to respect the dignity of the service-providers and so on. The manual has been written in both official languages, as well as in Inuktitut, the Innu language.

The Manual is funded by Health Canada (PDF), and Stella provides a disclaimer that the positions embraced on the manual are not necessarily those of Health Canada. Prostitution is not illegal in Canada –neither is it legal– so there are no reasons, one would think, to object to the funding. What is illegal in this country is the communication for the purposes of prostitution, according to s. 195.1(1)(c) of the Criminal Code of Canada.

The published manual, however, has at least one portion that is designed to improve the communication between the clients and the service providers. In that sense, it is encouraging to improve communication for the purposes of prostitution, which amounts to aiding in an activity outlawed by the Canadian Criminal Code.

Here is the passage:

Nous avons inclus des renseignements sur les types de services offerts par les travailleuses du sexe. Ces informations peuvent t'aider à   identifier précisément quels types de services sexuels tu désires. En sachant bien ce dont tu as envie, il te sera plus facile d'exprimer tes besoins et de négocier une entente avec une travailleuse du sexe.

We have included information on the types of services offered by the female sex workers. This information may be helpful to you precisely to identify what type of sexual services you desire. Knowing well what you want will make it easier for you to express your needs and to negotiate a deal with a female sex worker.

Clearly, expressinng a “need” and improving conditions for negotiation can only be based on communication, which, to repeat, is illegal at present time. In that sense, Health Canada has funded a document that helps to improve conditions under which people can transgress the Criminal Code of Canada. Witness your tax dollars at work.

The Liberal Party of Canada is partial to the full legalisation of prostitution, a push that was visible during their last party convention. But whether that is the case or not, government agencies do not get to respect the law or promote how its transgression can be improved because one party or another is in office. Tony Clement, the current Minister of Health, can be contacted through here.

__________________

BTW: The right to access prostitution is not very far away: “Everyone should have access to reasonable priced sexual relief of that normal sexual tension or sexual variety that is natural, from professional, caring, honest providers.” Once it is formulated in that way, it will not be long before “should have access” will change to “have the right to access.” Coming soon to a court near you!

Lyle Oberg’s ousting from the Alberta cabinet constitutes the first public leadership crisis that Ralph Klein has had to face in his 14 years in power. It was a crisis that could have been averted; and it has been mishandled from the start. The effects of the mishandling will haunt Klein for sometime, and his 18-month long “long goodbye” can not last as much.

The crisis begins with Klein’s selfish desires for too long of a goodbye: 4 years. And it it was announced after a lacklustre year and a half since the last provincial election, after a fundamental lack of public vision guided only by the “I wanna stay because Colleen has stuff to do” compass, following a disastrous election campaign in which Klein articulated no clear vision or policy for the party or the province. During that campaign Klein alienated Alberta voters. But most importantly, he alienated the base of the party.

Rising random spending, and en empty rhetoric about a “Third Way” have also contributed to erode Klein’s power. His unilateral decision to keep leadership runners out of cabinet, in of itself, is not a bad idea, but the expectation that it be done for such a long period has been interpreted as helping Jim Dinning’s bid. Too long a race does not help the party or the province, as Oberg has argued.
Oberg’s reaction was intemperate but understandable. Klein should have consulted with the potential candidates in his caucus, whether in cabinet or not. But Ralph has been taking the “king” moniker too seriously, and has not been consulting anyone. He has forgotten, if he ever knew, that no one has absolute power in politics.

The Oberg ousting is defensible. His comment about “skeletons” violates in some ways the principle of cabinet solidarity. And for that reason alone, not for urging people to vote their conscience, perhaps he needed to be removed. But Klein again lost an opportunity to show leadership in the matter. Rather than hiding as he did, he should have been right at the forefront making the decision and explaining how, notwithstanding Oberg’s years of service and their friendship, Oberg’s comments were unacceptable because they threatened the government.

Klein handling of the matter is indicative of his lack of skill in managing dissent in a manner other than silencing people. Sometimes, the more homogeneous the group the more difficult it is to prevent small differences to tear a group apart. The visible differences are not necessarily of policy or vision, though there are some policy conflicts. But this conflict arises from Klein’s misunderstanding of his own position. He’s not “King Ralph” anymore, whatever his own wishes. His bullish style has less commanding presence; his randomness is less endearing; his indecisiveness is now a liability. Kleinhardly possesses sufficient tools now to command loyalty. Oberg’s reply must be seen as a response Ralph’s misunderstanding.

Klein’s mishandling of the Oberg situation comes at a bad time, just days before the review vote on Klein’s leadership. Rather than exercising effective, conciliatory leadership, the mishandling will surely cost him votes. Klein’s approval rate will most likely drop.

The question that remains is whether that drop will be acceptable to the party. By now, all drops will be acceptable to Ralph. But if the drop is significant and Klein stays as I expect him to, the challenges will not end. His lame duck position will be more accentuated, and more mishandlings will follow as he reacts to more open challenges bluntly and without finesse.

Ralph will not last the 18 months that he has given himself. The Oberg mini-debacle is the firing shot toward an end that will come sooner than expected. We can expect that the long Klein goodbye will not be so long.

Michael Ignatieff is said to be gearing up for the race:

The former Harvard professor and rookie Liberal MP is expected to outline his views on national unity, the economy and his controversial support of the war in Iraq in his speech on Canada and its role in the world to University of Ottawa political-science students.

The speech will be followed, either Friday or early the next week, by a formal announcement in his Toronto riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore that he wants to succeed Paul Martin as leader of the Liberal Party.

Mr. Ignatieff, 58, is one of about 15 potential leadership candidates. But when he joins the race, he will be considered one of the front-runners.

You'd think that people would have had enough of silly protest.
But I look around me and I see it isn't so.
Some people wanna fill the world with silly protest.
There is much wrong with that!
We all know, and here they go again

I may be a whingnut, but at least I am right!

By now, everyone will have heard of the Lyle Oberg development in the Alberta Conservative party; a bizarre twist of hubris, betrayal, tyranny, and political imprudence. Some Alberta blogs are reacting to the news in different ways.

Liberal catnip wonders whether the story will mean a split in the party. Conservative Canadienne calls it a bombshell. It certainly was for Oberg. A seemingly popular Liberal blog, Daveberta, rejoices at the news, and Phendrana pocks a little fun. The Grit has understood the similarity with the previous long goodbye in Canadian politics.

Then, in the mother of all hyperbole, one finds this self-professed libertarian who reacts with the temperance of a squirrel before unearthed bulbs. I myself had not thought of things degenerating the way they did. Silly me, I imagined that Ralph meant to be forgiving when he said that he would be forgiving. I thought Ralph would be smart enough to ignore it.

The result seems to be a tremendous rumour mill. Some of the potential developments could effectively change the dynamics of the party’s upcoming convention and leadership review (I’ll write about that later). See also here.

This is a good move on Harper’s part.

Harper said the sponsorship mess, in which millions of dollars in government contracts went to advertising firms for work of little or no value, was a political scandal, not a bureaucratic one.

Addressing some of the changes that the Liberals introduced, such as hiring a small army of auditors just to make it look like the Libs were doing something to keep the bureaucracy in check, Harper said:

“You didn’t cross the line; your political masters did and these are not effective measures.”

Instead of policing themselves, the Libs were planning on unleashing more and more guards on the civil service. The implication is insulting to the bureacrats, just like the implication of the soldiers with guns” attack ads” was highly disrespectful of the military.

The earlier public release was that Premier Klein forgave Lyle Oberg for his intemperate comments. I didn’t think they would be kicking Oberg out the same day of that Klein supposedly forgave him:

“The premier said sometimes people say things they shouldn’t and they regret it and he accepts that, but he’s part of this team and they will get through it,” Marisa Etmanski told the Sun. “He’s not firing him.”

But just hours later, it was announced that Oberg had been politically executed at a special caucus meeting last night. The premier was not present at the execution.

Lyle Oberg was suspended indefinitely from caucus and stripped of his cabinet post Thursday over remarks he made about Premier Ralph Klein.

Deputy premier Shirley McClellan made the announcement after an emergency meeting at the legislature that lasted well into the evening.

Kicked out of cabinet and suspended from caucus. To humiliate him even more, it was also announced that Oberg may apply for his cabinet back in six months. Translation: they are telling him that his leadership bid is dead –if Oberg goes through with it, he can’t come back to cabinet.

It’s hard to imagine that the caucus would be ousting Oberg without Ralph’s endorsement on the decision, after Ralph pronounced him forgiven. Most likely Klein’s forgiveness is a cover. The Party is trying to insulate the premier from the decision to kick Oberg out of caucus. They probably fear that this whole thing might come to have an effect on the premier’s approval at the upcoming party convention in two weeks.

Saying that the caucus did it, that Ralph was absent from the meeting, draws the attention to the collective and not to the premier. Oberg’s threat to say where the skeletons are buried will be sold as a breach of cabinet solidarity. It had to be done, they’ll say. But the PC caucus has not so much as breathed in public without Ralph’s permission. It’s very unlikely that Ralph is not behind the whole thing.

I wonder how long it will take for Oberg to start exhuming the skeletons. Would it be before or after he tries to form a new unofficial “opposition”? This whole thing adds a whole new dimension of interest to the upcoming party convention.

h/t: dave

The Edmonton Journal asks interesting questions after very shoddy writing in this report:

Last week, he [Lyle Oberg] told Conservative party members in his Strathmore-Brooks [constituency (sic)] to “vote with your conscience” rather than support Klein in a March 31 leadership review.

Should Oberg resign from cabinet if he doesn't feel he can fully support his premier?

Or should Klein kick him out of cabinet for being disloyal?

I should say for the record that I am not supporting Lyle Oberg in the PC leadership race in Alberta, but the formulation in this report is very unclear. Did Oberg tell people to vote their conscience, period? Or, did he tell them that rather than voting to support Klein they should vote their conscience? One is not the same as the other. One suggests to people to think for themselves (a sign of respect) and the other would suggest to them not to vote for the premier.

What seems clear is that that Oberg did not openly tell people to support Ralph. But should he resign or be kicked out of cabinet because of that? Should he be expelled for encouraging people to do what they themselves think to be best? Just reading the Journal, there is no way to asnwer those questions.

Considering the lack of information, the Journal also makes a huge leap in saying that Oberg is not supporting the premier personally. That is not evident in the short report either.

Some clear reporting and writing might help the Journal’s readers understand what Oberg said. But the gravest sin for the Journal is the assumption that Oberg has been personally disloyal to the premier. Calling people to vote their conscience alone is no betrayal of the leader.

We know that encouraging people to think for themselves does not constitute disloyalty in a free society. 

A more complete version of the story would serve well. The heated part of the  controversy is clearly to be founded in the Calgary Sun:

“If I were the premier, I wouldn’t want me sitting as a backbencher,” he [Oberg] told the meeting. “I know where the skeletons are.”

Oberg said he was prepared to form an unofficial opposition to the Klein government with the support of right-wing Tories which [sic] he named. “When I take off the gloves, my gloves come off completely,” the infrastructure and transportation minister said.

Oberg has since apologised, and Ralph has forgiven him. It’s all back to normal. No one is quitting today, and no one is getting fired.