CIVITATENSIS

Al Gore, the man who invented the Internet but who is unable to grasp the intricacies of his own electoral system, has attacked the Harper government’s green plan.

The Conservatives’ new environmental platform is a “complete and total fraud” that is “designed to mislead the Canadian people,” former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said Saturday.

The noted environmentalist was presenting his Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth in Toronto at a consumer environmental show, with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and environmentalist David Suzuki in attendance.

On behalf of the Canadian government, Minister Baird has replied:

With respect to the comments of former United States Vice President Al Gore, the Honourable John Baird, the Minister of the Environment, made the following statement:

"Former Vice-President Al Gore deserves acknowledgement for the success of his film in highlighting the huge ecological challenge of climate change. It is regrettable, however, that the former Vice President has criticized Canada's recently released action plan to cut greenhouse gases and air pollution.

"It is difficult to accept criticism from someone who preaches about climate change, but who never submitted the Kyoto Protocol to a vote in the United States Senate, who never did as much as Canada is now doing to fight climate change during eight years in Office, and who has campaigned exclusively for hundreds of Democratic candidates who have weaker plans to fight greenhouse gases than Canada's New Government.

"It is equally regrettable that the former US Vice President decided to speak out without ever having been briefed on the contents of our plan.

“The fact is our plan is vastly tougher than any measures introduced by the Administration of which the former Vice President was a member.”

"I am ready to meet with Mr. Gore at any time to discuss the climate change threat and our Government’s tough plan to reduce Canada’s emissions".

I don’t really give a rat’s behind about what Al Gore believes, but Canadians have asked greater men to leave the country for interfering in domestic affairs. Time to revive the tradition, perhaps? After all, in Canada we believe in the separation between church and state.

Dion’s Liberals are already taking in NDP have-beens. They are also taking in Green would-have-beens. Why not take Progressive Conservative rejects too?

That Mr. Orchard may be planning to join Mr. Dion’s campaign team doesn’t surprise party strategists: The two became fast friends when Mr. Orchard delivered 175 delegates to Mr. Dion in the Liberals’ December leadership contest. Mr. Orchard has made no announcements yet, but after Mr. Dion travelled to Saskatchewan recently to meet with Mr. Orchard, who had organized a pro-Wheat Board rally in his home riding, voters in Saskatoon- Wanuskewin began taking it for granted that Mr. Orchard wants to be their next Liberal candidate.

The prospect of David Orchard as a Liberal MP does make many in the party uneasy. The Borden, Sask., organic farmer, who joined the party barely a year ago, opposes same-sex marriage and gun control and has dedicated his public life to destroying NAFTA and fighting off what he has portrayed as a Liberal strategy to “assimilate” with the United States.

One of the very few things he happens to agree with the Liberals on, in fact, is support for Kyoto. That may be enough for the environmentally obsessive Mr. Dion, but hitching Liberal party fortunes to unpredictable allies such as David Orchard and Elizabeth May has others worried about the party’s integrity.

They probably mean to say that Liberals are worried about ideological integrity since the Grits lost all the other kind some time between Chretien’s PMO and GAGliano’s Public Works ministry.

I’m guessing that Joe Clark will soon announce his new alliance with citoyen Dion. If only Belinda had waited a little longer.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has announced his strong sympathy (en francais) for Segolene Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate who has just qualified for the second round election next month.

Chavez has a record of influencing or trying to influence elections in other countries. Nicolas Sarkozy must be praying for Chavez to campaign alongside Segolene.

Update: First round results here.

An appropriate essay for earth day: George Will on the mindlessness of the Gorian religion.

In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a ” serious problem.” Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness.

For example, Democrats could demand that the president send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate so they can embrace it. In 1997, the Senate voted95 to 0 in opposition to any agreement that would, like the protocol, require significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in America and some other developed nations but that would involve no “specific scheduled commitments” for 129 “developing” countries, including the second-, fourth-, 10th-, 11th-, 13th- and 15th-largest economies (China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Indonesia). Forty-two of the senators serving in 1997 are gone. Let’s find out if the new senators disagree with the 1997 vote.

Do they also disagree with Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”? He says: Compliance with Kyoto would reduce global warming by an amount too small to measure. But the cost of compliance just to the United States would be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, which would prevent 2 million deaths (from diseases such as infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year.

The piece continues here.

I heard on the radio this afternoon that more than 500 million people celebrated earth day today. That must put the Gorian religion right in front as the fastest growing religion on Earth.

We usually recycle and compost at our household here in G-d’s country, unlike the Gore household. But most everything today was not. We are celebrating earth day by sending a few more things than usual to the landfill for mother earth’s sake. We wouldn’t want her to be too lonely on her day.

Update: Some people can’t run their own city, but they want to fix the whole world.

 Dissatisfaction with the Dion-May deal continues to play.  Patricia Robertson, a writer from Saskatchewan expresses her dismay in the Globe this morning:

After 20 years of backing the Grits, I was so disaffected with the Paul Martin government that I voted Green in the last election, wasting my ballot on a sweet young man who appeared to cut his own bangs.

Then, last October, I spent time with Ms. May on assignment for Chatelaine magazine and found her pretty impressive.

But now I don’t know what she’s thinking, because what started as an attempt to forge a stronger progressive movement may result in a widening gap between her and her core voters.

In this backroom scenario, she actually had more to lose than the dithering Mr. Dion. It’s true that, in Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system, small parties like hers just don’t stand a chance.

However, in her apparently desperate bid for a seat, she has traded away her most valuable election asset, her credibility.

The rest (behind subscriber’s wall) is here.

We’re not all rednecks in Alberta.

I might be, but not all of us are.

Liberals and liberals have now admitted that they consciously knew that the Constitution Act of 1982 transferred significant powers from Parliament to the Courts. They had no apparent objections to undermining the power of the elected (and therefore the electorate) to the benefit of the unelected.

Now the same crowd wants to appear concerned about the relationship between the Senate and the House and the Commons, if the Senate becomes elected.

Yesterday’s move was criticized by opponents, who said that appointing senators without making other changes might only enshrine inequities in the Senate. Moreover, the government must figure out the relationship between the Senate and the House of Commons before forging ahead, they said.

“We know what the Prime Minister wants to do. He wants to have an elected Senate without . . . [clarifying] in the Constitution the role of the two chambers,” Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said.

Suddenly “they” seem concerned about clarity and “inequities” in the Red Chamber. Dan Hays resignation is a reminder of how he came to be in the Senate. In the dieing days of the dilapidated Trudeau years, on his way out, Trudeau named a large wave of his supporters and political benefactors to appointed positions. Dan Hays was one of the beneficiaries.  While Albertans rejected Trudeau and long after Canadians had rejected the Trudeauvian world, Dan Hays still claimed to represent Albertans. It’s a little peculiar for Liberals suddenly to be concerned with “inequities” in the Senate.

Citoyen Dion, who was a political scientists once upon a time, seems unclear in the relationship between the upper and the lower chambers in our federal legislative construct.  He is right in that reforming the senate will change the dynamic between the two chambers, however. But just a couple of days ago he was praising the transfer of power from the Commons to the Courts in 1982.

It is quite telling that citoyen Dion has no concerns about handing over power to unelected courtisans, while he seems worried that power may shift to others who, like him, are elected.   Dion is clearly afraid of relinquishing a measure of power to those who would  choose him but he does not fear giving greater power to those almost exclusively chosen by his party without elections.

It is very clear to me that citoyen Dion prefers change driven by the unelected and fears change driven by the electorate. That’s the kind of disposition that all electors should fear.

Lyle Oberg, the man who knows where all the Ralph Klein government’s skeletons are and the who knew of corrupting practices during the leadership campaign but could not bring himself to tell, will not tolerate mistakes:

An inattentive Alberta bureaucrat who cost taxpayers $11 million in an investment bungle two years ago was fired long ago - but not for the bungle.
”He was let go for trying to cover it up,” a source told The Canadian Press.
The issue made headlines this week when Finance Minister Lyle Oberg confirmed the government staffer had erred when the government invested $170 million in timber lands on Vancouver Island in May 2005.
Oberg said the Timberland investment fund should have been hedged to protect it from the fluctuations in U.S. currency, but it wasn’t until almost four months later. That cost the government $11 million and forced it to approve $7 million in supplementary spending to cover it.
”We’re a professional government and I expect professional acts within this government,” Oberg said Wednesday. ”I was a little disappointed, but it happened and certainly things like that do happen.”
He has said changes have been made to ensure a similar mistake is not repeated, but wouldn’t release details. The Finance Department has not named or discussed the status of the staffer, saying it’s a private personnel matter.
The source said the government cannot publicly discuss the matter under terms of the staffer’s termination agreement.
Later Wednesday, Oberg told the legislature in question period despite the mistake, the fund is doing well.

Oberg has not been the image of professionalism, and he failed in hiding his own political mistakes because he himself brought them to the media. But the poor Edmonton bureaucrat failed in his bid to hide his own mistake. If only the bureaucrat in question had an boss as forgiving as Stelmach.

The consultations on climate change organised by the Alberta Government are soon coming to a close.

It is important that as many of us as possible participate. Most of the meetings across the province are done, but there are still several other ways in which we can make our voices heard. Go here and get on it! You can request the factbook and the workbook by phone, or you can do the whole process online.

If we don’t take the time to participate, we will leave the field wide open to the radical  environmentalists.

The submission deadline is April 25.

Behold, for the inebriated mariners seem to have arrived in Alberta.

Premier Ed Stelmach calls it the “price of prosperity,” but critics suggest it’s the steep cost of a government with no foresight and cockeyed priorities. The budget, the first under Stelmach since he took over as premier from Ralph Klein in December, is expected to see total spending hit a record $33 billion, along with capital spending of $18 billion, over three years.

“There are a lot of needs in Alberta and a lot of growth pressures in Alberta, and what this budget is going to be about quite simply is managing those growth pressures,” Finance Minister Lyle Oberg said Wednesday.

“We will be spending what needs to be spent.”

It would almost seem that CP cut the next part of Oberg’s last quote. It probably continued: “…in order to get elected.”

I speculated about this yesterday. Now it’s official.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he will appoint Bert Brown as his first elected senator.

Mr. Harper told the House of Commons today that he will name Alberta’s "senator in waiting" to the upper chamber.

Mr. Brown, a long time champion of Senate reform, took the most votes in Alberta’s third Senate election in 2004.

Mr. Brown, a farmer from Kathyrn, Alta., once plowed the message "Triple E Senate or Else" into his neighbour’s barley field.

Brown has now been chosen by the prime minister. When Brown will be appointed, he will be the second senator ever to arrive in the Red Chamber as an elected representative: the second ever and the second from Alberta. The trailblazer was our very own Stan Waters.

Alberta’s Dan Hays, who is stepping down, is the current leader of the opposition in the Senate, and was Speaker of the Senate for five years. He was first appointed to the Senate in 1984. Hays was born in 1939 and will turn 68 next week. He is 7 years short of his mandatory retirement. Whatever the reasons stated for his retirement, he is one more prominent Liberal to abandon the boat during the captaincy of citoyen Stephane Dion.

A couple of other things (see bold text in quote above). Bert Brown will not be the Harper’s Senator as the first line in the Canadian Press report suggests. Brown will be Alberta’s elected senator, and the first elected senator chosen by PMSH. Also, prime ministers in Canada have never appointed a single senator. According to our Constitution, Senators are appointed by the Crown, represented by the Governor General, on the advise of the prime minister. Harper does not get to appoint Brown, whatever the luminaries at the Canadian Press and the Globe and Mail say. The Government of Canada and the Alberta Government too are unclear on the finer constitutional distinction.

Update: According to CBC, it’s done: Harper has appointed Brown already!

Harper appoints Albertan senator-in-waiting

How one could be in blanket favour of partial birth abortions is beyond my comprehension. The US Supreme Court has banned the procedure, and I am pleased about that.

The GM report claims that these is a victory for conservative antiabortion groups. As views go, that would be the narrow view. There is more riding here than mere partisan political competition. But if we are going to express the outcome of the decision in terms of winners and losers, I am inclined to say that it’s a victory for decency and humanity.

The wait for Bert Brown may be over.

Alberta Senator Dan Hays announced his departure today, though hardly anyone seem to have noticed on the floor of the Red Chamber. One would expect that the prime minister will ask Senator-in-Waiting Burt Brown to take his place sometime in the next day or so.

Bert is well-known in Alberta as the man that spearheaded the struggle for a triple-E senate in the late 1980s. Most Canadians will remember him as the man who carved EEE in his farm fields. Brown has been one of Alberta’s senators-in-waiting for more than a decade.

He will add to the Senate his quick-wit and more sound Alberta common sense.

Update: I wonder what the leader of the pretend party will say.

Helene Buzetti at Le Devoir writes about the 25th anniversary of 1982 Canadian Constitution. She calls attention to the transformative aspect of the Charter, though many of the charter provisions to which she calls attention did not come into effect until 1985. But no matter.

Her point is that the Charter is seen either as damned or blessed political instrument (”un instrument maudit pour les uns, béni pour les autre”). Most of the piece recounts well-known arguments and quotes from the usual suspects in the on-going debates, including former Justice Claire L’Hereux-Dube, Justice John McClung of Alberta, Patrick Monaham, and Calgary School scholar Ian Brodie (currently PMSH’s Chief of Staff).

Of particular interest is a quote assigned to the leader of the defunct Progressive Conservatives and once care-taking prime minister Joe Clark. Clark admits having willfully undermined the powers that tradition have entrusted to the House of Commons.

Il [Joe Clark] se rappelle du débat sur l’adoption de la Charte en 1981-82 puisqu’il dirigeait l’opposition à   la Chambre des communes. «C’était entendu que ces arbitrages seraient jugés par des juges. Ce fut un choix délibéré et conscient du Parlement, alors cette idée que d’une certaine manià ¨re quelqu’un usurpe les droits du Parlement est tout simplement fausse», dit-il.

He remembers the debate over the adoption of the Charter in 1981-82 when he lead the [official] opposition in the House of Commons [ed. Buzetti is mistaken: The NDP was also part of the opposition at the time but Joe Clark never led the Ed Broadbent and the NDP. Clark could not even lead a simply count of his own voting MPs,: he did not lead the House opposition as Buzetti claims]. “It was understood that these [crucial] arbitrations would be made by the judges. It was a deliberate and conscious choice of Parliament, but this idea that in some form someone usurped the rights of Parliament is simply false,” he [Joe] said.

In other words, Clark admits that with his own consent, Parliament transferred law-making powers to the Courts, relinquishing a portion of Parliament’s traditional rights to protect its constituents; the same constituents whose consent indirectly placed Clark in the position that he then occupied. It was a political betrayal of voters’ power disguised by legal moves. Clark is correct in sugesting that no extraneous group usurped Parliament’s power; instead Parliament, in part under Clark’s own leadership, cheated itself and by extension the public by purposely leaving a key law-making power in unaccountable judicial hands to exercise.

In Latin America, there is a good expression for precisely such actions: the legal undermining or demise of an assembly with sometimes the consent of the same assembly is called an “auto-golpe,” a self-coup. In a self coup such transfers of power are carried without popular consent but are presented as a popular good. In Canada’s case, the coup is a gift that keeps on giving for as long as the courts refuse to restrain themselves and for as long as Parliament refuses to restrain the courts (Do you remember prime minister Dithers announcing that he would never use the Notwithstanding Clause to protect Canadians?).

The unsuspecting victims are those whose power the assembly actually represents. The House of Commons in our constitution represents (and is said to protect) the rights and powers of the common citizen. In his cavalier attitude of handlng some of the House’s power to the Courts, Joe Clark aided and abetted, consciously and deliberately as he himself admits, in what amounts to an ongoing coup against all of us.

One more of the responsibilities that Joe Clark abandoned while he was an elected MP.

Let the record reflect that, for the first time, I am in agreement with Jack Layton.

Layton, adding his party was also approached by Ms. May, but turned her down. " We're going to make sure that we offer a choice to vote for a New Democrat candidate in every riding, because we think that's Canadians' right. Why should people in some ridings be denied the choice that other Canadians have in other ridings? You don't predetermine those things through back- room wheeling and dealing, That's what Canadians don't like about politics."

Layton is correct to point out that the Green-Red deal reduces the political choices of some voters. Since one of the markers of democratic politics is to offer choice, citoyen Dion and Elizabeth May are depriving voters of democratic choices and empoverishing Canadian democracy as a result.

If I were a Green supporter in St. Laurent-Cartierville (Dion’s riding), unhappy with the fact that citoyen Dion is unable to arrange his priorities, unhappy with Liberal involvement in one of the most corrupt schemes in Canadian politics, I would have just been robbed of my choice to vote for a Green candidate.

If I were a Liberal in Central Nova I would be concerned that my leader has to be propped up by the leader of a minor left-wing, single-issue party; I’d be concerned that my party has abandoned its historic position to run candidates in all of the country’s ridings.

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaà «lle Jean, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D., Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada

Her predecessor once called herself the new Head of State. This Governor General believes that Rideau Hall is HER house and she is in command of Canada.

Michaelle Jean is hell-bent on changing not just the look but the texture and flavour of Rideau Hall as though it were her own private residence. In the process she wants to change Canadians. She is achieving that task in the name of Canada and Canadian art, though the motivation seems to fashion the Queen’s residence in her own image. Mostly, she is in the business of erecting a monument to herself.

The changes have continued, as a tour this week revealed, and are part of a deliberate effort by Ms. Jean to make the home more relevant, contemporary and a showcase for Canadian work that reflects stories about Canada. But as a result, Ms. Jean, who is an avid art lover, is highlighting paintings that draw less and less on the office's British traditions.

While the governor-general represents the Queen in this country, the increased emphasis on Canada means less on the royal family past or present. The Lemieux portrait is the only one of the Queen on display. "That's it as far as Her Majesty is concerned," said Fabienne Fusade, interpretation and exhibition planner at Rideau Hall. "We really want to create a Canadian interior. So some of the old furniture pieces, part of our history, they are very important, we don't want to get rid of them but … it is all about Canada."

The changes include a gradual shift to modernize the art that predates Ms. Jean's time in office. No longer in the residence: a more traditional portrait of the Queen, as well as images of the Queen's father, King George VI, and the Queen Mother that once graced the entrance. They are now in the Senate.

Where is the dignity of Jeanne Sauve, our fist woman governor general? Sauve showed that female governor-generals do not have to be consumed by personal preoccupations with fashion and interior decor. As usually, souls of significant depth do not concern themselves so highly with the world of appearance. Mostly, Sauve showed that a female GG does not have to be absorbed with oneself when one understand the purpose of the position.

Since Romeo Leblanc (who succeeded Mme Sauve), two consecutive Liberal prime minister have bequeathed to Rideau Hall, to the country, larger egos than our whole 10 million square kilometres of geography. Worse, these giant egos are closet republicans. Their republican souls render the last two GGs incapable of understanding the role of the Crown and Her Majesty’s position. They think of the Queen as arrogance, and arrogance is what they offer to represent her, so unschooled they are on what it means to serve, and how this Queen has lived her life.

Michaelle Jean the latest example: she is a half-breed born in Haiti. Today Haiti is the poorest and more backward country in the hemisphere, and it was no different then. She was born to privilege in a country where less black heritage usually implies better social status. There, her whiteness was emphasized, alongside a pretentious concern for the darker peasants. Now she is in Canada where more black is politically advantageous, unless one is driving a taxi in Montreal.

Jean was a separatist not all that long ago, but now she is Paul Martin’s legacy to represent our Queen. Jean is a chameleon with no recognisable publicly established image; she will change into whatever she needs to change in order to advance herself. As a separatist, she worked for the national broadcaster. As a republican, she represents the Crown in Canada. She now pretends to be concerned with the whiter Canadian peasant’s identity.

Jean thinks that by stripping Rideau Hall of British iconography and symbols she is going to make Canadians more Canadian. It presupposes that Jean knows what being Canadian means, of course, which she does not. Hers exhibits a republican attitude most typically found among Quebec dilettantes. It’s not distinctly Canadian. Being Canadian, for better or for worse, includes our historical ties to Britain as much as it does imperial France.

Being Canadian is in part being British; our very constitution is based on that premise. Not just the written one, but the one that accumulates our traditions and dispositions in our memories and actions. Jean’s project is a project that warps our collective civic memory, though there is a tradition of doing such things among Liberals since Pearson (fittingly we mostly name airports in central Canada after them). Her Canadian history probably goes that far. She ignores that a denial of our British heritage is a denial of our own selves.

Michaelle Jean’s understanding of being Canadian is not in keeping with the whole of Canada and is not in keeping with the political traditions upon which most of this country was based. The British Monarchy has been around for a millennium; Jean is a arrived in Canada in the late 1960s. Her arrogance toward Her Majesty and things monarchical is an arrogance against all Canadians who value our political traditions and historical roots. Jean’s souls is fundamentally trudeauvian: she would minimize the great institution of the Monarchy and the Queen herself in order to aggrandize her own self.

In the typical Canadian Liberal tradition, Michaelle Jean is a woman without tradition; she is a woman without a past; she is a woman without identity in search of making one up. In the absence of all these, much of what fills her soul is a concern for power. She suffers from what most condescending liberal politicians of this age are afflicted with: the assumption that they know better than the common Canadian peasant, a desire to improve us whether we want it or not, and a will to transform us or our country as a means to leave us “a legacy” –that “legacy” is a way to erect a monument to themselves in our warped civic memory.

More Michaelle and less Elizabeth amounts to less Canada. Monarchist and republican Canadians, we are all poorer for having self-importance incarnate presently dwelling Rideau Hall. It stands to reason that the man guided by nothing other than the single-minded aspiration of becoming prime minister would be the one who chose her to be our governor general. The void of substance recognized itself.

——————-

And now for some political gossip.

This anecdote has been circulating Ottawa for months: When Alex Himmelfarb, Paul Martin’s Clerk of the Privy Council, had finished briefing the Harper Conservative transition team on the Hill, he said his goodbyes and well wishes, grabbed his coat and his hat and headed toward the door. As he had crossed the threshold, he turned around retracing a few of his steps into the room and said something like: “Good luck with that woman. She is the most difficult person to deal with in this whole operation.” Stunned, people in the room asked “Who?” The one in Rideau Hall, he said, and off he went. A pearl of wisdom! That was the Clerk for the very liberal prime minister who chose her. One can only imagine what stories Kevin Lynch and others will have to tell.

Belinda Stronach to exit the political stage to which her presence never quite added much substance.

Lysiane Gagnon examines with some care the Tory prospects in Quebec, where she reckons the party’s positioning has improved significantly with the rise of the ADQ, the diminishing of the PQ and the rather poor performance of citoyen Dion.

The Conservatives could even start eroding the traditional Liberal stronghold in Montreal. Mr. Harper’s strong stand in favour of Israel, during the Lebanon war, has won him the hearts of many Jewish voters who used to be unconditional Liberal supporters.

Much can still happen between now and the next election writ, but in her opinion the blue stars (subscription required) seem to be aligning pretty well.

Ontario remains a question mark.

If you ever wanted to know how to ressurrect a 16-year old story for absolutely no reason, here is one.

When Liberal Bharat Agnihrotri got turfed from the Alberta legislature this week, it brought back old memories for the last person to get the heave-ho.

Former Liberal Nick Taylor was tossed out the legislature in 1991 when he called the speaker “the crappiest speaker I have ever seen.”

“He called the sergeant of arms to escort me out and I told him to buzz off,” recalled Taylor. “It wasn’t a particularly proud moment of mine.”

But the feisty Grit couldn’t believe the reaction he got from Albertans.

“As I was walking to work the next day, my God, cars were stopping and people were waving and jumping out to shake paws. I was absolutely amazed.”

Bharat Agnihrotri gets booted from the Legislature floor, and a few days later with apparently nothing to do, Henton retells the story about Taylor. To boot, Taylor gets a platform once again to justify his boorish behavior on the basis of a supposed positive public reaction. Even if there was such congratulatory outpouring, Nick Taylor’s message is that one’s poor and abusive behaviour toward one’s colleagues is okay as long it pleases the public. If some folks liked it, it must be good.

At Vimy, the Canadian Corps had captured more ground, more prisoners and more guns than any previous British offensive in two-and-a-half years of war. It was one of the most complete and decisive engagements of the Great War and the greatest Allied victory up to that time. The Canadians had demonstrated they were one of the outstanding formations on the Western Front and masters of offensive warfare.

Though the victory at Vimy came swiftly, it did not come without cost. There were 3,598 dead out of 10,602 Canadian casualties. Battalions in the first waves of the assault suffered grievously. No level of casualties could ever be called acceptable, but those at Vimy were lower than the terrible norm of many major assaults on the Western Front. They were also far lighter than those of any previous offensive at the Ridge. Earlier French, British and German struggles there had cost at least 200,000 casualties. Care in planning by the Corps Commander, Sir Julian Byng, and his right-hand man, Arthur Currie, kept Canadian casualties down.

Vimy stories and coverage at GM and NP. If you are in Calgary visit here. Canada’s War Museum here.

Happy Easter
Joyeuses Paques
Feliz Pascua Florida

We may not always be able to write French properly, but we helped save their cowardly behinds a couple of times in the last century.

Still, DND should be embarrassed. French is not a foreign language in this country.

We’ve all heard of instances in which passengers get pulled out of a commercial airplane because of their behaviour or language. I can’t remember ever hearing about a pilot getting pulled out of his own aircraft for being in a foul mood and using colourful language. There is always a first time for every thing.

Northwest Airlines canceled a flight with 180 passengers aboard after the pilot began cursing at passengers while the plane was being prepared for takeoff in Las Vegas on Friday, airline officials and witnesses said.

The cancellation disrupted Easter travel plans for many of the passengers.

From the moment the captain stepped aboard Flight 1190 to Detroit, passengers reported hearing him use “animated” language while talking on his cell phone, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor told CNN.

“He was having a fit, swearing up a storm,” a passenger on the flight said. “He was saying ‘F this’ and ‘F that.’”

When confronted about it by passengers, the pilot became “obscene” and began cursing at the customers, she said. “He made a big disturbance.”

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and the local FAA flight standards office were notified, Gregor said. Police arrived on the scene, pulled the pilot aside and interviewed him.

CNN

I have not yet read the newest IPCC report, but I so far I have caught a couple of wonderful statements in relation to it. This one, from the Alberta home front, is worth sharing:

And the weather will stay unpredictable. “We’ll still have seasons — we might have more pronounced seasons,” Edmonton Arctic ecologist Marianne Douglas said as Albertans woke up Good Friday to a bone-chilling early-spring blend of brisk winds and frigid temperatures.

Gordon Jaremko of The Journal seems amazed that the weather  (more sophisticates would have probably said the climate) in future will remain unpredictable.  It never ceases to amaze the broad comedy that underlies the assumptions with which these people live. The weather will remain unpredictable and water will remain wet! No kidding.

There still will be seasons! Wow. But more pronounced: Sea-Sons. Let’s enunciate well, please.  Douglas is from Edmonton, where there are only two seasons so I fail to see what she might mean by more pronounced. Jaremko milks it for what he can: he makes hay of the fact that there is snow on the ground in much of Alberta in April. That’s unpredictable, it’s the suggestion. It must be true. Not really. It’s not usually like this this time of year , but it’s not uncommon either.

These folks sound remarkably like palm readers. You know the type of statements: “In future,  you will encounter people but sometimes not. You’ll meet a partner but maybe not. Someone will die. It will rain hard one day, but other days will be dry; it will snow in winter and will be hot in the summers. There will be drought and there will be floods, hopefully not at the same time.”

There is a difference: the tea leaf readers and fortune-tellers of climate typically have PhD attached to their names. All in the name of science.

“Now Albertans will be able to logon to our website between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. any afternoon that the House is sitting and see what issues are being debated,” said Speaker Kowalski.

“The ACCESS broadcast, including Oral Question Period, will continue to be televised from 1 p.m. to approximately 2:30 p.m. each sitting day,” he added.

Albertans can go to www.assembly.ab.ca to view the webcast of House proceedings. A schedule of when the House is sitting is also available online.

Krauthammer reflects on Euro-impotence in light of Iranian piracy.

Where then was the European Union? These 15 hostages, after all, are not just British citizens but, under the laws of Europe, citizens of Europe. Yet the European Union lifted not a finger on their behalf.

Europeans talk all the time about their preference for “soft power” over the brute military force those Neanderthal Americans resort to all the time. What was the soft power available here? Iran’s shaky economy is highly dependent on European credits, trade and technology. Britain asked the European Union to threaten to freeze exports, $18 billion a year of commerce. Iran would have lost its No. 1 trading partner. The European Union refused.

Why was nothing done? The reason is simple. Europe functions quite well as a free-trade zone, but as a political entity it is a farce. It remains a collection of sovereign countries with divergent interests. A freeze of economic relations with Europe would have shaken the Iranian economy to the core. “The Dutch,” reported the Times of London, “said it was important not to risk a breakdown in dialogue.” So much for European solidarity.

A council [in Britain] has apologised for banning “lunatics, idiots, deaf and dumb” people from standing for election.

An election pack issued by Bournemouth Borough Council stated that “lunatics and idiots” and “deaf and dumb persons” were disqualified from standing.

Matt Pitcher, electoral services officer, said it was a mistake and that the terms were taken directly from election law dating back to 1766.

“Of course such language is certainly not acceptable today,” he added.

Apologies to the hard of hearing, perhaps, but lunatics, and idiots, should remain banned.

Alberta Green leader George Read seems to be itching to go. He is excited about bringing the climate gospel to Albertans.

He has announced his candidacy in the not-yet-called by-election in Elbow, the former seat of Ralph Klein. Read has a blog here.

While rare, breast cancer can occur in men. When it does, mortality is three times higher among black men than white men, according to a new study.