CIVITATENSIS

Freshly gone, tossed out and and still bleeding from the knives on his back planted by members of his own party (Jim Dinning still denies all the rumours), Ralph Klein has decided to give free advise to Prime Minister Harper on how Harper can keep his own job.

"The problem Stephen has with income trusts is that he didn’t keep his word so that doesn’t sit well with the Canadian public."

Mr. Klein said Mr. Harper can clear himself by withdrawing the tax.

"He reverses himself, that’s how you get redemption," he said.

It’s nice to see the Globe so interested in what Klein has to say. It has been a while since Albertans had such interest. PMSH will no doubt be unable to contain his gratitude for the advise.

"Canada's decision to do nothing over the past decade was a mistake and we want to do better."

Harper made the comment after getting pummelled by his opponents over a 2002 letter in which he questioned the science of climate change and called the Kyoto accord a money-sucking socialist plot.

Now that the prime minister has publicly changed his mind to bend to the current wind, we’ll all pay for it.

“It feels like the right thing to do.”

That’s the crux of much of the matter. Scientists who announce an upcoming global-warming disaster of unbelievable proportions, even the Globe and Mail agrees, are more and more presenting arguments that rest on high drama, feelings and emotions. These are not quite what one would call the cornerstone of science.

The attitudes do have all the makings of revivalist religion, however.

Is there a deal on climate and environmental issues between the Tories and the NDP? Bill Curry of the Globe thinks that there may be one.

The NDP and Conservatives often agreed and both parties frequently accused the Liberals of delaying tactics.

The scene in the committee room was virtually identical to the dynamic that saw then-treasury board president John Baird pass the government’s ethics legislation with NDP support.

The Federal Accountability Act was the first priority of the Conservative government and the Prime Minister cited Mr. Baird’s success in getting that bill into law as a reason he was named this month as the new Environment Minister.

To get his ethics bill through, Mr. Baird and his senior aides held a secret meeting last year with the lone NDP MP on the committee, Pat Martin. There, Mr. Baird agreed to support more than 20 NDP amendments in exchange for Mr. Martin’s support for the bill as a whole. The deal was also contingent on the NDP keeping the pact under wraps until it made it through the committee.

Now in the Clean Air Act committee, the lone NDP MP is Nathan Cullen, but his aides clearly have a relationship with Mr. Baird’s aides - the same officials who acted as envoys to the NDP on the ethics bill.

For instance, when the Bloc Québécois suggested a timeline for the committee, one of Mr. Baird’s officials quickly met in the back of the room with an NDP aide. Moments later a joint NDP-Tory counterproposal emerged.

"Clearly they’ve cut a deal," grumbled Liberal MP David McGuinty.

There is a video on climate change that everyone should watch. But I’ll get to that in a moment after I elaborate on some of the reasons why.
This will be a big week for environmental politics. A multi-party Commons committee will resume its work on climate change, clean air, etc., and there is the awaited new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the political “spin factory,” as Lorne Gunter calls it.

Gunter correctly points out in the NP today that the IPPC’s reports is typically never read, except for the policy summary. The summary is not the work of disinterested scientists but of politicians who have interests, and dissenting scientific research does not get included. What it will say is not a mystery: one can already predict what the report will contain.

You’ve no doubt heard there is an international scientific consensus that the planet is warming, that the warming will likely be catastrophic and it is being caused by human-produced emissions. The IPCC shows how this vaunted consensus is reached, not by getting all scientists to agree, but by defaming [see example here] or ignoring those with opinions and research cast doubt on the dogma.

That’s not science, it’s shunning, the ancient religious punishment for heretics.

Gunter takes part of the Gore propaganda machine to task.

If you saw Al Gore’s propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth, you may be familiar with Naomi Oreskes, the University of California social scientist who claimed to have found 100% agreement among climate scientists. In a much-quoted article in Science magazine, Ms. Oreskes claimed that of the 928 scientific paper’s whose abstracts she reviewed, not a single one disagreed with or raised objections to the man-made warming theory.

Not reported though — because it doesn’t reinforce the climate catechism — was a review of Ms. Oreskes’ report by British scientist Benny Peiser. He found that Ms. Oreskes had failed to examine nearly 11,000 other climate reports that may or may not have supported her conclusion. And even among the 928 she carefully selected, only 2% “wholly endorsed the view that human activity is driving global warming,” while several “actually opposed that conclusion,” even though Ms. Oreskes claimed their support, too.

An inconvenient truth for sure!

There has not been enough robust deconstruction of the Kyoto dogmas to expose the propaganda that passes for science. The supposed merits of Kyoto and its political success do not rest on science. Usually common-sensical people are pressured into accepting the climate doctrines because many people do, a kind of highschoolish (even if some times well-meaning) peer-pressure that has nothing to do with science. In my previous post I pointed out Jeffrey Simpson’s most recent attempt at shunning the unbelievers. Simpson’s piece seems to be part of an effort by the propaganda machine gearing up for Friday’s report –an advance favour, as it were, to his son Tait who is part of the Liberal party communications team.

For a multi-part video of some of the dissenting voices on climate-change, so-called, you can go here. If you care about getting the wool off from over your eyes, do take the time to view it.

Jeffrey Simpson draws a strawman climate-change scoffer, only to attack the lifeless figure. The Toronto sophisticate is quick to claim victory after the attack.

It’s too bad Simpson is unable to deal with one single scientific argument or name a single scientist in his piece, other than to say that it’s a game of numbers. Science, for the award-winning writer, is relegated to being afirmed and verified by the number of believers. Not quite an enlightened view. [PS. I'd like to see, for example. Simpson deal with a single one of these data].

The piece is a rehash (of this one) in which he plays the same childish game without one single argument to defend or to attack: just strawmen. There is no need to engage substance; there is no substance to reply to.

Climate-change scoffers are now as rare as defenders of the invasion of Iraq.

The silly notion that there are people who deny that the climate changes is a bit luducrous. Most three year-old children can notice that the climate changes, the seasons change. I scoff at the yet-to-be demonstrated-beyond-any-doubt notion that people are the direct cause of climatic fluctuations. And if that means being a climate-change scoffer, please charge me. And, for the record, I also defend the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party.

Tories apparently have new ads emphasizing the weak and flip-flopping nature of the new Liberal leader, Citoyen Stephane Dion. The news broke on CTV yesterday. The Globe reports today:

The ads use footage from last fall’s Liberal leadership debates, including clips of Michael Ignatieff, now Mr. Dion’s deputy leader, and Ken Dryden admitting that the Liberals failed to meet the Kyoto targets for emission reductions.

One ad includes a clip of Mr. Dion plaintively responding to attacks on his environmental record, telling Ignatieff he doesn’t know how hard it is to set priorities.

Robert Fife of CTV interprets the ads as Tory fear of Citoyen Dion, but there is no such fear.  There seems to be an attempt to punch the Liberals in the political face right at the resumption of Parliament to take advantage of his indecisiveness. Citoyen Dion will be rattled –and it doesn’t take much to rattle him. He’ll be on the defensive and likely uncompromising toward Tory legislation and buget in the weeks ahead.

The final strategic goal may be to push Liberals into a combative situation in which they’ll make the mistake of bringing the government at a moment that might be considered too early.

The Tories are ready to go, but calling an election that the public may judge “premature” will fall on the shoulders of Citoyen Dion. He’ll be painted as eager to to try getting into power. Will he bite? I have not seen the ads, but I’m betting that he will.

Prostitution is not illegal in Canada. It is not legal either. Prostitution has the legal status of, say, scratching your cheek. It’s neither a legal or an illegal thing.

Prostitution enthusiasts in the NDP, however, are shamefully trying to use the Pickton trial and the victims in BC to advance their cause.They are trying to pave the way to make prostitution respectable by removing the legal proscription against communicating for the purposes of prostitution.

NDP House leader Libby Davies, whose Vancouver East riding includes the Downtown Eastside, issued a statement Monday saying sex-trade workers are endangered by Canada’s law prohibiting communication for the purposes of engaging in prostitution.

The move, however, would not legalise prostitution. It may make hiring a prostitute easier, but it would not legalise it. It obscures things even further. The NDP suggestion is that Pickton, or whoever is responsible for killing prostitutes in Vancouver, would not have killed the prostitutes if communication for the purposes of availing oneself of a prostitute was legal. That link is untenable. One thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other, but as long as they get to open access to prostitution, it doesn’t matter.

Making matters even worse, CanWest writers appear not to be clear on what precisely the issue is by making reference to the “legalisation” of prostitution.

In the veritable spirit of equality of opportunity, the pro-prostitution lobby elsewhere says:

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.

It’s a mixture of a natural market arguments with sexual warm-fuzzies. The issue has become improving access to markets, but you can already see the next step when the word “access” will be replaced by the expression “the right.”

The Edmonton Journal posted a piece on the Atlantic premiers’ visit here. Danny Williams seems to be stealing part of the show:

Newfoundland and Labador [sic] premier Danny Williams said while oil and gas and hydro-electric projects are helping get his economy moving, he still wants to embrace Alberta.

"A rising tide lifts all boats and Alberta is that rising tide. When we grow up we want to be just like Alberta. Our goal should be to have 13 Albertas."

Premier Williams is welcome to come to this province any time he wants. He is proving to be a most gracious guest. If he keeps talking like that the Toronto-centred media and the federal Grits are going to dislike him more than they may already dislike him, but over here people are going to want him to be Alberta’s spokesman.

This is news to me. It’s news to me not because I didn’t know it. It is news to me because it would be the first time that, to my knowledge, I will have agreed with anything that Susan Riley has ever written. There is always room for surprises, though I hardly like the tone of the piece. There is hope for her after all, or maybe there is hope for me. Writing about the Pickton trial, she says:

There is a limit to human curiosity, I guess, and I’ve reached mine. I know the outlines of the case, the scope of the alleged crimes, and that is enough.Get back to me when you have a verdict, Peter Mansbridge. Park the story inside, newspaper editors. Try to find some real news, radio shows.

Yeap. I’ve had it as well. I’ve chosen to keep away from it, and I have not read a single piece describing the daily events in court. I intent to keep it that way, so please don’t expect me to write or comment about the pig guy and his actions, unless something fundamental changes. Right now, the big challenge in relation to the Pickton coverage for me is keeping the newspapers out of the children’s reach.

Citoyen Stephane Dion may have decried the dark economic situation in Alberta and suggest that it is not good for the economy when young workers make money, but a recent report about economic performance in the country places Alberta –to no one’s surprise– in first place, and the three western provinces ahead of the pack.

“Ontario and Quebec, Canada’s most populous provinces, have fallen behind Western Canada when it comes to creating and maintaining a positive investment climate,” the Fraser Institute said in its annual Canadian Investment Climate Report.

“Ontario, which always ranked first or second between 1998 and 2004, has fallen to fourth, surpassed by Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan,” it said. “Quebec languishes in ninth, ahead of only Prince Edward Island.”

PEI will likely catch up soon.

The four Atlantic premiers have arrived in Alberta.

"I personally see Alberta as the land of opportunity," said Mr. [Danny] Williams, [the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador]. "I really, honestly think that Canada should be looking and realizing that Alberta is going to be the province that’s going to lead us into the future and we should wrap our arms around this opportunity."

Clearly, premier Williams has eyes to see. It’s refreshing for a change to hear a politician from outside of Alberta  speak, who is not consumed by envy or plunging into condescension. When Citoyen Stephane Dion came to Alberta  recently, he attacked Alberta’s prosperity. Citoyen Dion might take a lesson or two in political and social etiquette from premier Williams.

If you believe Time, Chavez in Venezuela may become another Fidel Castro because the US is pushing him to be so. Poor little Hugo. He’s not to blame for anything.
It must be nice to live in such a simple world, a world in which the United States is always  responsible for all the bad guys becoming bad guys.

The nay-sayers will no doubt have criticisms for the Stelmach plans to assist with the crunch in Fort McMurray.

Premier Ed Stelmach says a public-private partnership will be considered in order to twin the highway between Edmonton and Fort McMurray.

Incidently, I had lunch with a group of friends today, and I was amazed at the reflex among some first to criticise the development and its glitches before they would even admit to the wealth and jobs that it generates. They’ll probably find fault with the opening of the new lands for residential purposes too.

Citoyen Stephane Dion declared that he would not stand in the way of AdScammer Marc-Yvan Cote returning to the fold of the Liberal familia. That was yesterday. Now, he has backpeddled rather quickly under criticism from several camps.  Citoyen Dion is becoming a regular Canadian version of John Kerry.

Gilles Duceppe apparently said: “Mr. Dion likes clarity.”  I had to laugh

Citoyen Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, may be poised to allow AdScammers back into his party after a purge initiated by then prime minister Paul Martin –who had hoped to avert an inevitable wreck.

During the Gomery inquiry into the scandal, Mr. Cote testified he received $120,000 in $100 bills from the director general of the party’s Quebec wing. He distributed that money to 12 Liberal candidates in the 1997 federal election.

The Globe’s headline reads: “Dion may let disgraced Liberal back into party.” Saying back implies that they had all left? Joe Volpe is the Transport critic now; the disgraced have not left.

Of interest:

• Let’s make a deal
• Volpe and Apotex
• Fraudulent?
• Volpe deals with the web
• Volpe’s torpitude
• This Elephant
• Caught Again!
• Miracle Workers

The four premiers from Atlantic Canada, Shawn Graham, Danny Williams, Rodney MacDonald and Pat George Binns, will arrive in Alberta tomorrow. The smug Calgary Sun says in its headline that they are coming “to beg.” They are not. There is no reason to scorn or fear their visit. It’s not a visit by the four horseman of the apocalypse.

Atlantic Canadian premiers have come to Alberta before to try to drum business and investment for their provinces. That is in part their job. I saw Clyde Wells speak at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce some years ago, and I was struck by the level of suspicion that there was in the room.

There was a sense of zero-sum mentality. If Albertans invest their money in the maritimes, some in the audience seemed to think, there would not be much left for Alberta itself. It does not translate in that way necessarily, and certainly not now. To be fair, some of the questions from the audience addressed the issue of subsidy and shelters offered to business by the provincial states, which was thought to be inimical to competition.

The fact that the four premiers will arrive in concert is testimony to the rising economic and political clout of our province. In addition to a stop in Edmonton, the premiers are also expected to go to Fort McMurray, supposedly to persuade Atlantic Canadians to return to their home provinces.

Atlantic Canada’s premiers will venture west this week in a bid to stem the flow of their most-precious natural resource — people.

The Sun has it right about the precious resource. But the precious resource in question should not just be precious to Atlantic Canadians. People, no matter where, are the most precious resource of a community. And perhaps that is one of the lessons to learn from the visit of the four premiers.

Tens of thousands of Atlantic Canadians have come to Alberta to work, underscoring the labour crunch that we are experiencing, but it should also serve as a way to emphasise the precious value of working folks anywhere.

I’m not sure how and if the premiers will manage to convince many to return. In recent studies, the Canada West Foundation observed that newcomers to Alberta adapt or assimilate into our culture faster than into other jurisdictions in the country. Chances are that those who have been here more two years will not be easily persuaded to return. I bet that they may convince a few. The Maritimers that I have met in Alberta are often homesick. They miss the land and the sea but mostly they seem to miss their extended families and some may be willing to trade a bit of fortune for proximity to them. And that’s not a bad thing.

Still, the premiers’ visit should remind us of the value (which more than just cost) of labour and of family. Family, after all, has a crucial role in providing communities with the most precious resource.

Liberal leader Citoyen Stephane Dion is calling on Stephen Harper’s government to mimic policy ideas initiated by Liberals. His purpose is to create the impression that Conservatives are stealing ideas from the Liberals. The later argument can already be anticipated: if Canadians are having Liberal policies implemented by Conservatives, they may as well, he’ll say, re-hire the Liberals.

Liberals have often been masters of the political imitation game. They stole, as it were, social policy from the NDP in the 60s and 70s, and they stole fiscal policy from Reform and the Alliance in the 80s and 90s. But there is one crucial stolen piece in which citoyen Dion himself was a participant: the so-called Clarity Act.

After behaving like dear before headlights during the last Quebec referendum in the Fall of 1995, Chretien invited citoyen Dion to help out with the Quebec file. And he did. Dion borrowed Harper’s idea of spelling out the terms under which Quebec can legitimately leave the federation.

When citoyen Dion speaks of imitating and liberally borrowing the ideas of others, he is speaking from partisan and personal experience.

French Socialist presidential hopeful, Segolene Royale, has endorsed Quebec separatists.

“It goes with our common values, which are Quebec’s sovereignty and freedom,” she replied.

“I think that Quebec’s influence and its place in the hearts of the French people support that.”

It should hardly be a surprise. France is the same country that once sponsored its agents to help Quebec separatists.

The Green Party is having discussions about new policies. That’s good. But it wants to talk about guaranteed income in the context of new ideas.

The old is new again with the new Greens. Guaranteed income has been discredited as a social and economic policy, though recently this Tory tried to bring it back to life (The warning is that the Tory in question is now a fairly close advisor to PMSH). One can still debate the ideas that propell guaranteed income, its motivations, feasibility, etc. But to talk about it as a new idea shows that the Greens may be a little historically disoriented.

To children with no knowledge of history, most everything is new.

BTW: Elizabeth May recently talked to the Ottawa Citizen Editorial Board (audio here), but the Citizen does not buy the guaranteed income idea. Today’s editorial reads (subscriber’s wall):

But for the poorest of the poor, poverty is the symptom, not the problem itself. A guaranteed minimum income doesn’t help a person find shelter, drug treatment, or health care for chronic ailments. And a poorly administered minimum-income program might claw back money recipients made by working, which means that people would have a perverse incentive to stay unemployed.

In theory, the better idea would be to reward recipients for earning money, but in a way that doesn’t give public money to people who no longer need the help, all the while being sure not to replicate the whole baroque system of payments, subsidies and tax credits that a guaranteed-income program is supposed to replace.

Of course, this is more of a challenge than any government is ready for.

So as appealing as the principle of a guaranteed annual income might be, such a program should never be more than an interesting idea. The Greens should focus on the practical first.

In 1999, in one of his usual feigned-indignation fits, Fidel Castro declared Canada an enemy of the Cuban people. The declaration did not come out of the blue. Castro was upset that Canada accepted defecting athletes from the Cuban team at the Panamerican games held in Winnipeg. The thuggery in the dictator’s attitude was pretty clear.

Hamas now threatens to place Canada on its growing list of enemies.

Canada risks making itself an enemy of the Palestinian people and of the broader Islamist movement by boycotting Hamas and openly siding with Israel, Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar said Sunday after he was shunned by visiting Foreign Minister Peter MacKay.

Zahar made his point in language that is more indicative of thuggery that it is of statesmanship; it’s the language of hatred.

"Canadians have to change their extremist government, or else they’re going to lose their credibility as a neutral state," he warned. "You cannot create a new enemy without a price."

The irony of an Islamist terrorist organisation accusing Canada of extremism is priceless. Canadians and their government have no beef against decent Palestinians, but Gritzbullah is no longer in power. Canadians are not neutral to bomb-strapped terrorists, and that’s the way it should be.

As for the threats, suffice it to say that Castro still accepts the Canadian dollars that the curious and the naive Canadian tourists bring to his island fiefdom. We would be a less respectable people if we were to quiver over such weak threats from thugs like Zahar (though I am sure that let’s-meet-the-terrorists-half-way Layton will disagree). I suspect that Zahar is not going to be turning supposed inimical Canadian tourists and charity workers away either.

Ujjal Dosanjh must have taken too many kicks to the head when he played soccer as a kid.

The definition of statesman points to a political meaning; politics meaning the public affairs of a community, of course. In addition, a state always includes political communities in them.

One who takes a leading part in the affairs of a state or body politic; esp. one who is skilled in the management of public affairs.

In reference to a politician, the word statesman is clearly political. But Dosanjh seems to have a non-political meaning for the word:

“No one is going to accuse Mr. Harper of being a statesman in a political sense. I certainly won’t. That’s the style he has,” said Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh.

And, to keep with Dosanjh’s attempted meaning, er… shouldn’t he say that it’s the style that Harper supposedly doesn’t have?And there’s more. There may be a hint of sarcasm when the Star introduces the Dosanjh quote?:

Not surprisingly, the Liberal ranks are smarting.

Premier Ed Stelmach’s government is poised to imitate the government of Stephen Harper by introducing as its first bill a series of measures touted as a “democratic reform initiative.”

The bill will include a long-overdue registry of lobbyists and contractors, and a short six-month “cooling-off period” to be observed by ministers, political staff and senior bureaucrats before taking lucrative jobs in the private sector. The typical cooling-off period elsewhere is one year.

In case there was doubt about the political imitation of the federal cousins, the premier pointed out: “openness and transparency” is “one of our five priorities.”

Ralph Klein, whose chief of staff opened a lobbying business upon leaving his job, resisted the notion of a lobbyist registry for years. One has to wonder what if anything Stelmach did about that when he sat at the Klein cabinet table. Klein has since taken a high-profile consulting job with a law firm, three days after resigning his Legislature seat.

Stelmach’s announced reforms will be well-received. Even the leader of the Alberta Liberals has welcomed Strelmach’s expected bill.

Brian Mason of the NDP is in a huff over the projected five million expense for the next residence of the Lieutenant Governor. Five million is not nothing, to be sure, but surely Albertans wouldn’t want the provincial representative of the Crown to live in a shack.

When an NDP leader clothes himself in the garb of defender of the taxpayer, there is always something suspicious. His party doesn’t quite have the record of protecting taxpayers but the opposite.

The surprise should be that the residence is only expected to last one hundred years. A residence for the Lieutenant Governor, in addition to functionality, should be built as an expression of the institution of the Crown and its place in our constitution. It should also be built to express what is good about Alberta and Albertans; it should say something about us to future generations.

Should the Alberta Legislature have been built only to last a century? In the idea that it should last a mere 10 decades, there is a lack of foresight and a lack of historical awareness; there is a lack of understanding of the role that such symbols play in the political life of a community.

Based on the silly argument of insulting taxpayers, as Mason argues, nothing great or worth keeping for generations would have ever been built in any civilisation. Erecting public buildings purposely for a few decades only is equally foolish. By that logic, if we are to be consistent, museums, theatres, city halls and court houses would be placed in mobile trailers.

Almost reluctantly, The Economist praises Harper and the “unusual clarity of purpose” of its minority government.

Instead of falling within months, as Canada’s liberal punditocracy had predicted, Mr Harper has become an increasingly assured performer. The talk in Ottawa now is that, despite commanding just 125 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons, his government may even manage to carry on until 2008.

[...]

The prime minister has avoided making any big mistakes. Unlike his predecessor, Paul Martin, who had so many priorities he had none, Mr Harper has focused on just a few issues and concentrated on doing what he promised. He summed up his philosophy by saying, "I believe it’s better to light one candle than to promise a million light bulbs."

The rest of the piece is here.

…for a couple of days.

Ted Morton, Minister of Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, will promote Alberta’s wildlife conservation efforts and recreational opportunities at an annual international wildlife convention being held in Salt Lake City, Utah, this week.

If Cubans flee in droves when Fidel Castro dies, those intercepted at sea will likely wind up at this base where nearly 400 men captured in the war on terror are held, creating "an incredible challenge" for US forces, the base commander said.

The Supreme Court of Canada has clamped down on a funding lifeline for would-be litigants who lack the resources to mount important legal challenges.

In a 7-2 ruling, the Court refused to order advance funding to a Vancouver gay and lesbian bookstore, saying the challenge to Canada Customs is too narrow and insignificant to the broad public interest to justify such an unusual move.

"Public interest advance costs orders must be granted with caution, as a last resort, in circumstances where their necessity is clearly established," said reasons supplied by five of the majority judges.

Not on my dime, thank you very much.

After much preaching about slowing down the pace of development in the Alberta oilsands for the supposed sake of the environment, there is news that the previous Liberal government was eyeing a plan for expanding oilsands exploitation. They can criticise Alberta for supposedly being greedy, but they had been in on expansion plans since early on.
It also turns out that the former minister of the environment in the same Liberal government, citoyen Stephane Dion, claims not to have known of such plans.

Federal Liberal Leader [citoyen] Stephane Dion says he knew nothing about a plan to massively expand production in the Alberta oilsands to meet the demand in the U.S., even though discussions on speeding up the regulatory review process were launched by former prime minister Paul Martin when Dion was the environment minister.

We’ve seen this before: While people in his party walked around with brown paper bags full of money in the same city of Montreal where his riding is, he claims not to have had an idea of the what was going on. I’m not sure I can believe that. His present claim that he sat at the cabinet table in the same government that planned to engage action bearing directly on his mandate as environment minister, but he didn’t know, is definitely not believable.

Citoyen Dion is not dumb. John Baird asks the same question I’d ask:

”Either he was so out of touch, or he knew about it,” said Baird in a phone interview. ”If he played such a small role in the Liberal government that they could come to a deal with the Bush administration on something so significant that the Liberals would leave out the environment minister, it just makes you scratch your head… If he didn’t know about it, why didn’t he know about it?”

Actions speak louder than words. For all the rhetoric, whether citoyen Dion was kept in dark or is being disingenuous, it shows that the Liberals masterfully talk about the importance of the environment but are unwilling and incapable of doing much about it.

Allan Freeman wonders if the Oprah cultural phenomenon would have the power to translate into a politically influential phenomenon backing Barack Obama to the White House.

He seems to think that it won’t.  Elizabeth Nickson tilts the other way:

Let’s be crystal clear here: Hillary is toast. Oprah Winfrey is the not-so-secular goddess, who, as she says almost every week, gets her instructions directly from the Lord himself. That alone is a fearful thing. But this is far more fearsome. If Obama runs, barring mishaps, Obama will win — and Oprah will be responsible.

I hope she’s right about Billary, but Nickson is going a tad too far:

[Oprah] could be more powerful than any woman since Elizabeth I.

People have more sense than that.