CIVITATENSIS

Miro Cernetig of the Vancouver Sun thinks that the writing may already be on the wall. Some people are going to be gunning (again) for Alberta.

Wishing to outdo Citoyen Stephane Dion, perharps, Jean Charest has already declared that he wishes to become Canada’s new Captain Environment.

None of Canada’s premiers wants to say it. But here it is: We’re probably seeing the beginnings of another national showdown with Alberta, not unlike the battle over the National Energy Program, when Albertans complained the rest of the country was trying to steal their birthright: oil.

[...]

But make no mistake about it, there’s a battle brewing. If three out of four of Canada’s biggest provinces are going to be putting in steep reduction targets in carbon dioxide emissions, measures that will cost their taxpayers and economies dearly, the question will inevitably arise of why Alberta should be an exception.

[...]

But a showdown would be a distinct possibility if a Liberal government — now with a Quebec leader who has named his dog Kyoto (after the climate change accord) — comes to power. Leader Stephane Dion, thanks to Trudeau’s NEP, doesn’t have to worry about losing seats in Alberta. He doesn’t have any. So a national climate change plan that zeroes in on the oilpatch is a pretty good bet if Canadian voters continue to see climate change as a top issue.

Quebec’s premier is certainly getting ready for the green new world. On Tuesday, Charest outflanked all the other premiers by declaring Canada’s future carbon-trading exchange will be in Montreal.

Alberta must make sure that the only wall on which central Canada can write is a firewall!

CAUTION: If you are from Alberta, reading the following may cause arrhythmia, hyperventilation and potential stomach ulcers.

The following is a Toronto’s Glob raw data comparison between two oil producing jurisdictions: Norway and Alberta. It’s the Glob from Toronto and publishing the comparison on what is essentially the eve of an election in Alberta clearly seeks to influence voters. But nonetheless. Pay close attention to the oil funds and related figures, to say nothing of profits saved. Yet more evidence that we are being robbed and then bribed with our money simultaneously.

AREA

Alberta: 661,848 km²

Norway: 385,155 km²

POPULATION

Alberta: 3,500,000

Norway: 4,700,000

GDP per person

Alberta: $69,789

Norway: $72,305

TOP INCOME TAX RATE

Alberta: 39 per cent

Norway: 47.8 per cent

CORPORATE TAX RATE

Alberta: 32.1 per cent

Norway: 28 per cent

LITRE OF GASOLINE

Alberta: $1.03

Norway: $2.30

OIL PROFITS SAVED (2007):

Alberta: 11.9 per cent

Norway: 96 per cent

SIZE OF OIL FUND

Alberta: $16.1-billion

Norway: $368.2-billion

PROPORTION SAVED ABROAD

Alberta: 30 per cent

Norway: 100 per cent

OIL FUND PER CITIZEN

Alberta: $4,588

Norway: $78,351

OIL FUND ESTABLISHED

Alberta: 1976

Norway: 1990

INFLATION RATE (2007)

Alberta: 5.0 per cent

Norway: 0.8 per cent

PRODUCTIVITY RATE: (dollars of GDP per hour worked)

Alberta: 40.63

Norway: 63.19

Sources: Canadian Encyclopedia, Albertagasprices.com, Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, NorgesBank, OECD Factbook, Statistics Canada, Statistics Norway, Alberta Budget 2007 Second Quarter Fiscal Update

Still, the premiers of Ontario and Quebec would very much like for Alberta to squander an even a greater share of its revenues by sending greater and greater amounts of money to them. What the comparative chart above does not say either is that Norway is a sovereign state, and that a sizeable share of its citizens’ income does not have to go elsewhere (e.g. Sweden or Denmark) to pay for stuff for people in other jurisdictions.

Manitoba and B.C. joined Quebec and Ontario yesterday in trying to figure out a way to milk money out of Alberta through a so-called “cap-and-trade emissions system.” It is being done under the guises of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions lest the world comes to an end in the immediate future, a central Canadian version of the failed Kyoto Accord. “Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Charest began talking privately about working together on a plan three weeks ago, according to an Ontario government source.”

The targets of the two central Canadian Liberal politicians are a pair of Albertans:

The premiers of Canada’s two largest provinces said they have grown impatient waiting for other provinces, notably Alberta, to overcome their sharp differences, and for the federal government to take a leadership role in developing a cap-and-trade emissions system.

Watching the oil prices go up and coveting Alberta’s wealth from afar has indeed become a thing to foster impatience among those who will stop at little and justify their coveting in the name of whatever to get to Alberta’s prosperity. Under their plan, Alberta’s oil and gas companies would have to buy credits from central Canadian companies, all of which amounts to massive transfers of cash from here to there while they continue to run their vehicles and heat their homes with oil that we produce. They need our oil, and we’ll have to pay them to produce it for them! Does that sound market-based?

“We want this to happen,” Mr. Charest said. “We’re going to work to make this happen.”

If what central Canadians truly want is clean production of carbon fuels done on a market basis, they should pay for their ideological proclivities. One may have to start thinking about ways to get Ontario and Quebec to pay for such market preferences. Instituting a special Alberta tax for all crude and refined petrol and all natural gas exported to carbon trading provinces in order to offset the wealth funnelled out of Alberta sounds pretty good to me. We’ll even use some of the money to transform the tar sands into a natural paradise.

It has not been a secret that there is an election coming in Alberta. With all the announcements that the Alberta Tories have been making, $120 billion worth, one would have to be comatose not to understand the winds. There was suspense about the date, of course, and yesterday the buzz was that Stelmach would call the election that afternoon. But now, even those outside the circle and at the bottom of the totem pole say they already know. The NDP leader claims to know exactly when the call will come.

Even NDP Leader Brian Mason says he’s been given the word from someone involved in the Tory campaign that the election call will come on Monday.

That’s pretty funny.

Premier Ed Stelmach represents Alberta and Albertans at the “Council of the Federation,” but he is not Alberta.

While Stelmach will not be at the discussions held today in Vancouver, Alberta’s Environment Minister will be. Alberta is at the table, whatever spin the Toronto Glob wishes to give to the story in this headline: “Alberta to miss climate talks”

CBC makes it a point to emphasise that the premiers in Vancouver were not ganging up on Alberta’s premier Ed Stelmach. The Montreal Gazette also draws attention to the same issue. The Gazette even quotes the Yukon leader as saying: “This is a climate change conference, not a beat up on Alberta conference.” Where is all the talk of ganging up coming from? They do protest too much.

As the Glob reports it, the protesters surely wanted the premiers’ conference to unfold that way:

Climate-change activists had their hopes dashed yesterday that premiers and territorial leaders at this week’s Council of the Federation would gang up on Ed Stelmach to urge him to take stronger action.

None of the leaders openly confronted the Alberta Premier on the issue.

Dalton McGuinty and Gary Doerr have never been shy about their pretensions that they know better than Albertans what Alberta should do with its money and its resources. In Vancouver Doer made it a point to give Alberta’s premier a backhanded compliment, mocking Alberta: “I recall at some point in the not too distant past that Alberta wouldn’t acknowledge there was a problem with climate change and greenhouse-gas emissions.” Translation: The hicks from Alberta have opened their eyes and are coming around; we’re making progress.

Good for Stelmach from not acknowledging the silly comment. If there was an attempt at beating on Stelmach and Alberta’s energy policy as a means to play for the local crowds in their home provinces, Stelmach did well for not staying. Stelmach was there to represent Alberta and Albertans. If he subjects himself to mockery and ridicule by the likes of Gary Doer, he would be subjecting Albertans to the same sneers by extension.

Ralph Klein would not have left the conference, of course. He would have given better than he received. Gary Doer would have walked away with his tail between his legs as he often did when he tried to confront or ridicule Klein. But Stelmach is a more sedate man. He did not have have to drop to Doer’s level and get into an unseemly situation. He’s a more dignified type of man than that. Good for him for not subjecting himself to the renewed yelping of an economic chihuahua.

Good news for Ed Stelmach and not so good for Kevin Taft.

A former Alberta Liberal leader will serve the Conservative government as chairman of its new advisory group dedicated to recommending ways the farm and forestry sectors can improve their environmental practices, the province announced Monday.

Ken Nicol, who led the Official Opposition from 2001 to 2004, said he let his provincial Liberal membership lapse more than a year ago, and doesn’t belong to any party now.

But his new part-time post with the Alberta Institute for Agriculture, Forestry and the Environment has nothing to do with partisan loyalties, he said.

He let his party membership lapse!  How does that happen?

“They kind of stopped calling me, and I stopped calling them,” he said. “I don’t know where it was or when it was, you know, we just kind of went our ways.”

They lost interest in him and he lost interest in them. He’s a former party leader for goodness sake, not some sort of an electronic gameboy that you lose interest in after a few weeks. Yikes!

It is not entirely abnormal to see people leave and new people come in when a political party changes leader. The same is true for the public service in situations when the party in question is in power. But it has been more than a year and there are people still leaving the side of the Alberta Tories.

Lyle Oberg announced his departure a few weeks ago. Last week, David Gillies baled from the premier’s office. Today, MLA Hung Pham has announced his departure. To boot, Pham’s accuses the party of misappropriation of funds and accuses the party of callously leaving members of his constituency association holding the bag in a legal dispute. Not what one would term an amicable departure.

MLA Hung Pham won’t seek a fifth term as the Progressive Conservative candidate in Calgary-Montrose, blasting his own party on the eve of an election for lying, making “poor decisions” and taking “dishonourable” actions.

In a letter to his constituency board last weekend, the Tory backbencher scolded the party for doing nothing to help local volunteers with their huge legal bills — and accuses the party of having “lied” about its role in constituency politics.

There was buzz on the radio this morning that Ed Stelmach would be jumping ahead to call an election today. The rumour sounded improbable to me then, though such announcement would steal serious thunder from Pham’s accusations. Likely, circulating the rumour about dropping the writ today was the point. The radio programme said nothing about Pham. Mission accomplished.

Board Members of PC Alberta Constituency associations, beware. In the meantime, with an election on the horizon, there is a vacancy in Calgary-Montrose. Any takers?!

Premier Ed Stelmach’s office was hit this week with the abrupt resignation of a veteran senior official some dubbed the “legislature’s brain.”

David Gillies had the pivotal task of organizing and scheduling the legislative agenda for the Conservatives, as executive assistant to the government house leader.

He resigned Monday over serious disagreement over delivery of a special program that taught Grade 6 Calgary students about the legislature.

Something is missing in this story but the Journal writer does not ask the crucial questions. There is more here than meets the eye. That such a senior and respected man would leave the public service after so many years because of a disagreement over a kiddies programme at the Legislature, as alleged, seems less than believable. The programme has existed only since last September.

Even if that is the reason, it can only mean that the Stelmach folks are losing it.

Gillies had worked for the government and legislative assembly more than 20 years. He was one of the most senior political staff to have stayed during the transition from Ralph Klein to Ed Stelmach.

Canada has withdrawn its support for a UN anti-racism conference slated to take place in South Africa next year, the federal government announced Wednesday.

The so-called Durban II conference "has gone completely off the rails" and Canada wants no part of it, said Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity.

Canada does have a tradition of standing against racists in South Africa. May the tradition continue.

Citoyen Stephane Dion, the Leader of the Official Opposition, may have figured out a way to prolong his precarious position as leader of the Liberal party, laying the ground to prolong the life of the minority Conservative government by averting an election in the Spring –thus postponing his likely political demise. Dion claims that the government will have to satisfy him and his party that the new budget will take measures to protect the economy (This is the same man who wants to institute a higher GST and impose carbon taxes on everyone and their grandmother).

Dion knows that the Conservative government will deal with economic issues well, so his words are tantamount to saying that he will support the government for as long as they remain Conservative. That should warm the heart of everyone at the PMO.

On the issue that does separate Dion from the government, the environment, the Liberal critic David McGuinty has flipped his discourse to back his boss’ concerns. While their alarmist Liberal message used to be that everyday that the Conservatives were in power was a day that irreversibly damaged the environment, McGuinty now claims that the longer the Conservatives rule, the better it is for the Liberal Party.

Talk about hot air. The chicken-littles who thought the sky would fall unless they were in power to protect us all from the impending environmental disaster, now want the evil Conservatives in power longer –for their own benefit as McGuinty unabashedly says. Liberals used to be careful to dress their partisan interests with the garb of the common good. But they don’t seem to have much inhibition about that these days. They’re in such a bad way that they are even willing to give up their environmental religion, at least for now. What’s good for Citoyen Dion is good for the Liberals, and what is good for the Liberals is good for the Liberals. It’s like AdScam but without the paper bags.

David McGuinty, porte-parole de l’opposition officielle en matià ¨re d’environnement, se disait persuadé que le Parti libéral gagnait en laissant le Parti conservateur au pouvoir [Trans. David McGuinty, the environment critic says he is persuaded that the Liberal Party gains by leaving the Conservative party in power].

There it is, then. That should be the next election campaign slogan for the Grits. That’s one heck of a strategy.

That didn’t take very long.

Republican Fred Thompson dropped out as a presidential candidate on Tuesday, ending a short-lived campaign that got off to a late start and never gathered much steam.

Pam Barrett, the feisty New Democrat who spent 10 years in the Alberta legislature, died late Monday at the age of 54, of esophageal cancer party officials confirmed Tuesday.

Ms. Barrett was Alberta NDP leader between 1996 and 2000. She left politics then after having  “Near Death Experience” (NDE) at her dentist’s office.

I saw one of the TV ads attacking Premier Ed Stelmach for the first time last night. The same ad was played twice, back to back. The drive-by smearing is claimed by a group calling itself “Albertans for Change,” which masks the real source of the attacks, a coalition of labour unions.

Two things struck me about them other than the content. One is that the Left has always taken the position that dirty attack ads is an American thing. Second, as the Calgary Herald editorialists point out, the Left has often argued against third-party campaign advertising and has pushed for gag legislation. Typical left ideologues accuse third-party advertisement as the peddling of individual interests to the detriment of the public good. Have Alberta unions abandoned their adherence to the “general will”?

The ads take aim at Stelmach, calling into question his leadership abilities (is the jury still out on that?)

What was encouraging about the ad campaign and the subsequent coverage was the fact that there seemed to be no reaction at all to the existence of such ads — no concern about those dastardly “third party” groups hijacking the electoral process with their deep pockets and brainwashing us all with their fancy advertising.

I suppose those who sneer at the National Citizens Coalition and warmly embrace the federal gag laws have conceded their partisanship — it’s bad when right-wing groups run ads that could harm a left-wing government, but it’s good for democracy when a left-wing union group runs ads that could harm a right-wing government (right wing in their minds, anyway).

We don’t have to look at it as a double-standard, but as a change of heart. We seem to have turned the ideological corner here and unions may have come to see the light. Lefties in Alberta are slowly becoming cultural individualists. It’s Craig Chandler’s dream come true.

A new Strategic Counsel poll on Alberta voters is out. It was conducted January 10-13. It places the governing party at 58% –that’s 10 points higher than they received in the last general election. The Liberals clocked at 19%, almost two thirds behind. That’s gotta please Stelmach.

Pundits agree that the Stelmach rebound may be largely the result of the royalty hike scheduled for next year. But I just heard on the radio that the government is about to change its mind and back down on the royalties. If the royalties are responsible for Stelmach’s new-found support, a reversal in policy may signal a reversal in support. Still, there are only a few weeks before the election, and there may not be enough time for opposition to turn the public around on what seems to be a Stelmach flip-flop.

The Alberta Alliance was clocked at 5% behind the NDP and the Greens, both of which registered at 9%. If things keep more or less as they are, the new party will be lucky to do as well as they did in the last election. The royalties flip-flop has changed things a little, though. Voter support is already fluid. Forty-one percent have said they are likely to change their voting preference.

The most interesting result in the recent poll was the result regarding the question “Thirty-seven years is too long for one party to be in power. Agree or Disagree?” Forty-eight percent are in some form of agreement with the statement. And yet, the governing party’s support seems to get stronger. The Alberta electorate seems to be getting as unstable as the snows packing on its mountain slopes. To my mind, that result says more about the opposition than it does about the government. It indirectly says that a significant number of people are not happy with the existing alternatives, however unhappy they are with an almost four-decade dynasty.

Under those circumstances, a new alternative could turn things fast. But is the Wildrose Alliance that new alternative? The Wildrose Alliance is not likely to break major ground in this coming election. There is not enough time to get ready as a new party, fetch 83 candidates, raise money to get out of the Alliance’s debt and build a war chest, consolidate policy and build support.

But in the long run, the level of discontent with the ruling party’s hold on power and with the present opposing alternatives can only increase, and a newer party may have a greater chance. If Wildrose Alliance can find a leader who can ignite the voters’ imagination, fight and shed the rural hick image imposed on them and present a sound plan for managing the province, they might draw the greater benefit from a radical swing in the electoral mood than do the existing parties.

But that’s not for this up-coming election. Voters seems to be conceding to the present for now. They’ll wait for the future.

In a heated and emotional debate yesterday about the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, the former chief of staff of Jean Chrétien, Eddie Goldenberg, accused former Quebec premier Bernard Landry of comparing Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.

In his speech delivered to law students in Quebec City, Mr. Landry quoted the late Liberal prime minister and driving force behind the patriation of the Constitution as saying at the time: “This Constitution will last 1,000 years.”

The pious Trudeauvian hordes can throw their arms up in the air and cry foul all they want. Goldenberg, it is evident, objects to the comparison to Hitler, but does not dispute the fact that the then prime minister used those exact words in that exact context. They just happen to be the same words that Adolf Hitler often used in reference to his Third Reich, the new regime and its constitution.

Goldenberg downplays Trudeau’s words in the same way that they did decades ago: “The media reported that this sentence had already been used (by Hitler) and that it was a bad choice. That’s it,” he said. None of it addresses the crucial question as to how Trudeau found himself repeating Hitler’s words. Was it a coincidence?

It’s more than just about Hitler and it’s no mere coincidence. The use of that formulation is part of a long tradition of prophets and messiahs which places Pierre Trudeau in good company. St. John the Evangelist uses the same formulation about 1,000 years in the Book of Revelations, chapter 20. This is what John has to say:

¹ Then I saw an angel come down from heaven with the key of the Abyss in his hand and an enormous chain.

² He overpowered the dragon, that primeval serpent which is the devil and Satan, and chained him up for a thousand years.

³ He hurled him into the Abyss and shut the entrance and sealed it over him, to make sure he would not lead the nations astray again until the thousand years had passed. At the end of that time he must be released, but only for a short while.

⁴ Then I saw thrones, where they took their seats, and on them was conferred the power to give judgement. I saw the souls of all who had been beheaded for having witnessed for Jesus and for having preached God’s word, and those who refused to worship the beast or his statue and would not accept the brand-mark on their foreheads or hands; they came to life, and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

⁵ The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were over; this is the first resurrection.

⁶ Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection; the second death has no power over them but they will be priests of God and of Christ and reign with him for a thousand years.

⁷ When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison

St. John was writing about the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgment. The image of a thousand years in St. John conveys the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God and the perfection of human existence upon the final defeat of Evil. At least since then, there have been hundreds of political leaders of this type who have borrowed John’s language in reference to their own rule.

Bernard Landry is more correct than he knows it in comparing Pierre Trudeau to Adolf Hitler. They were both millenarian leaders, though they used different means. They were both charismatic prophets in the technical sense of the term. They believed themselves to be the chosen tools of History for the transformation of their world. They both believed they were engaged in a project that would bring about the final perfection of human society.

Bernard Landry can sometimes be a despicable character, and he himself has said lots of really stupid things. But when it comes to this, there is nothing for which Bernard Landry needs to apologise. When Pierre Trudeau used those words, he made himself the object of the comparison with Hitler, and with many similar transformative political and religious leaders (Ayatollah Khomeini, Louis Riel, Pol Pot, Augusto Sandino, Louis Farrakhan, Osama bin Landen, David Koresh, and many others).

Ralph Klein is finally coming around to admitting that he failed on health care. He blames Jean Chretien and the Canada Health Act, but there is really no one to blame but him. When will he admit that he simply didn’t have the chutzpah to fight because he had no idea what to do —though he likely generated the greatest amount of paper about health care in any  jurisdiction in the country.

Klein did move one foot forward once with Bill 11. But he was so obsessed with being liked that he quickly cried uncle as soon as he met energetic opposition: he was afraid of protesters and afraid of the negative portrayals in the media, a disease that he communicated in cabinet to his successor.

Ralph, you didn’t get it done!

Members of the Alberta Alliance have agreed this morning to merge with the Wildrose Party, giving birth to the Wildrose Alliance.

Is citoyen Stephane Dion saying that NATO will have to intervene in Pakistan? Is this not also the same fellow who wants our troops to pull out of Afghanistan?

The only way for Dion to make this blunder even greater would be to suggest that Indian troops should enter Pakistan on behalf of NATO.

ST has the scoop here.

“We’re a culture that still has a very rigid notion of sexual categories: If you’re not totally gay you must be totally straight,” Dr. Diamond said. “Bisexuality throws that right out the window. So it’s easier to dismiss bisexuality as not being real.”

Of the women who identified as bisexual in 1995, 92 per cent identified as bisexual or unlabelled in 2005. Of the women who identified as lesbian in 1995, 66 per cent identified as lesbian 10 years later, 19 per cent had switched to bisexual and 16 per cent to “unlabelled.” None of the women who identified as lesbians in 1995 switched to the heterosexual label.

But Dr. Diamond found that her subjects’ definition of their own sexuality was quite fluid.

So fluid it is, it might constitute a wave of its own.

Looks like it’s blame Eddy week.

Getting beat up over silly threats made to a cybersquatter has now been topped by a poll, blaming Stelmach for the drop in support for the Prime Minister’s party in the province of Alberta.  Eddy is not just responsible for his own woes. He is now driving the federal misfortunes in popularity in this province.

Darrell Bricker, president of Ipsos-Reid, said it appears that most of the Grits’ jump in support, and the subsequent slump for the Tories, is a result of the Conservatives declining a remarkable 23 points in Alberta.

“It’s the Stelmach effect. We assume people differentiate between the federal and provincial parties even if they have the same name. I think what we see in Alberta is a branding effect because there is no great incentive to be against the Harper government in that province,” said Bricker.

But the troubles Premier Ed Stelmach faces in Alberta due to his government’s decision to charge higher royalties and taxes in the oil and gas sector are hurting the federal Tories polling numbers in that province. Meanwhile, the Liberals have jumped 20 points to 30 per cent in the federal poll.

Stay tuned. Eddy migt be blamed for the dry warm weather next week.

The Globe reports that Citoyen Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, and his current sidekick, Michael Ignatieff, are in Afghanistan. They are there to consider pulling the Canadian presence out of combat roles in the near future and stay exclusively to help with organisation and development projects.

Liberals say that the present mission is unbalanced. If it is, that’s an acknowledgment that they sent Canadian soldiers to a lopsided mission when the were in government and accepted to move our soldiers from Kabul to Kandahar. But no matter, the Liberal change of heart would have Canadians build schools and clinics and then wait for the Taliban to come destroy them, placing more people at risk, including more Canadians. Better to have Canadians killed while they hold no weapons in their hands!

"We must be realistic about our ability to continue such a mission. The [Canadian Forces ] simply cannot continue to engage in an extremely dangerous combat campaign of this scale for an indefinite period of time."

Instead of a counterinsurgency combat role, Liberals suggest Canada could re-focus on development work, diplomatic efforts, building a justice system, and alleviating water shortages in Afghanistan.

By this rationale, we should send social workers and boy scouts instead of soldiers to deal with the suicidal islamists who want to kill  little girls to stop them from being educated.  By the same rationale, we should have never sacrificed our soldiers on the beaches and fields of Europe last century. We should have just sent social workers to deal with the Nazi killing camps.

The Grits are in dire need of picking a leader who can talk to his dog and to his dead mother these days.  In the past, such Grit leaders have had more sense in international affairs than the whole lot of latte-sipping central Canadians they  presented to themselves in the last leadership contest.

The Economist has picked up on the Mark Steyn/Maclean’s as Islamophobes story:

Maclean’s published 27 letters, many of complaint. That was not enough for some offended Muslims. Last spring a group of Toronto law students marched into the magazine’s offices demanding equal space for a rebuttal by an author of their choosing. Ken Whyte, the editor and publisher, told the group he would rather see Maclean’s go bankrupt.

That story here.

An Alberta Liberal cybersquatter is making media waves and gaining greater notoriety for his own blog, courtesy of the province’s premier. Ed is nothing if he doesn’t help his opponents. Most of the coverage on this will be at the political expense of Premier Stelmach, whose people decided to hit with nothing short of a sledge hammer a political mosquito buzzing by the premier’s ear.

The cybersquatting blogger is talking tough and the real Ed Stelmach will likely back down –as usual. But a squatter is a squatter and the law does not seem to be on the side of the youngster. Nonetheless, Stelmach has been goaded into a fight that though he can legally win, he will lose in the public eye, particularly among the young. At the very least, the premier looks like a heavy-handed politician beating up on a little student, albeit a partisan Liberal one getting a pay cheque from the Grits until very recently.

What is worse, the premier has been rather helpful in being politically outsmarted and somewhat humiliated by a twenty-something student. That’s the one Stelmach will have difficulty living down. In a world where snooty youngsters in cyber space try daily to gain notoriety by nipping at the ankles of the powerful (or apparently powerful), Stelmach has just painted a sign on his forehead. It reads: “pick on me!”

Stelmach should have paid the Grit squatter off, right at the start. A stuffed brown paper bag might have quickly done the job. (;

Mark Steyn comments on the silliness of Human Rights complaint against him. That there are people offended by some of what he writes should not be a surprise, but Steyn is livid about the Human Rights Commission accepting and thereby legitimising political idiocy.

If you examine Dr. Mohamed Elmasry’s formal complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission about my article, Grievance #16 objects to the following assertion:

“The number of Muslims in Europe is expanding like ‘mosquitoes.’ ”

That claim certainly appears in my piece. But they’re the words not of a notorious right-wing Islamophobic columnist but of a big­­shot Scandinavian Muslim:
” ‘We’re the ones who will change you,’ the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. ‘Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.’ ”

Given that the “mosquitoes” line is part of the basis on which the HRC accepted Dr. Elmasry’s complaint of “Islamophobia,” I’m interested to know what precisely is the of­­fence? Are Mullah Krekar’s words themselves Islamophobic? Or do they only become so when I quote them?

A third grade child would know what the appropriate answer to the last question is. As Steyn sees it, the Commission has demonstrated an efficiency rivalled only, perhaps, by the Soviet Show Trials in the 1930s.

Nonetheless, even in this craven environment, Canada’s “human rights commissions” are uniquely inimical to the marketplace of ideas. In its 30 years of existence, no complaint brought to the federal HRC under Section XIII has been settled in favour of the defendant. A court where the rulings only go one way is the very definition of a show trial. These institutions should be a source of shame to Canadians.

The whole piece is here.

There are apparently no bounds to the ways in which Canadian media feed this country’s self importance.

A new poll suggests Canadians so massively favour the U.S. Democratic party that they’d back any of its leading candidates in a presidential race against a Republican.

A similar poll in the United States would simply not work because they just don’t care. If Americans started to express wide opinions about our elections, chances are Canadians would feel threatened.  We’re so pathetic.

The need for trampling democratic principles in order to serve democratic principles has often been the basis for argument in Banana republics. The federal Liberals are using it now to promote the image of a strong leader for citoyen Stephane Dion. He’s the man who calls the shots and who finds it easier to make priorities in the painful cause of defenceless women.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has made it a priority to get more women involved in politics, and Joan Beatty - the first aboriginal woman to be elected to the Saskatchewan Legislature - is exactly the type of candidate the Liberals need, Senator David Smith said.

“Sometimes politics and leadership are all about making tough decisions, and Stéphane decided that this was the right decision, so he made it,” Mr. Smith said in a telephone interview from Toronto.

“We’re prepared to bite the bullet to demonstrate that our commitment to increasing our number of women candidates - particularly well-qualified ones - is very real.”

The woman is also aboriginal, so that helps, but Joan Beatty does not appear to be the sharpest knife in the Saskatchewan political drawer.

Ms. Beatty said she was approached last summer to run federally, but kept her name on the provincial ballot because she was hopeful the NDP would return to office.

When it didn’t, she said, she decided to pursue a seat in Ottawa because the Liberals have a shot at forming government.

She thought that the NDP was going to form the Saskachewan government after the last election! And she now thinks that the Liberals have a shot at forming the next government in Ottawa. A shot?! That’s just another way of saying that she only is interested in serving the public from a cabinet post.

It’s so much easier to bite into bullets when you got no teeth!