CIVITATENSIS

At a time when more and more Canadians think that political parties have far too much power over elected representatives, Jack Layton promises to increase his own power over them, should he form a government. For the sake of scoring political points with the locals, Layton announced inVancouver that he would make floor-crossing illegal.

Later in Vancouver, Layton told an audience in Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson’s riding that he would outlaw floor-crossing in the Commons.

The result of such idea has draconian implications. It would increase the power of party leaders like Layton and undermine the power of electors as well as the ability of MPs to act according to what they believe to be right. In essence, Taliban Jack would rob MPs their ability to make decisions based on their own convictions. It would force them to tow party lines and shut up, or forced them quit triggering frequent and expensive by-elections.

I know that there is a populist appetite to tie MPs to the nebulous will of their constituents. But in situations when a party heads into political territory loathed by those who voted a member in (think AdScam, for example), an MP would not be able to abandon his party’s corrupt ways to respect his constituents’ views. This is not Recall Layton is proposing, but the shakling of MPs to party bosses.

There is a greater chance for Joseph Stalin to rise from the dead and return to power in Russia than there is for Taliban Jack to form a government in Canada. We all now that. But it’s good to see that Layton truly understands how voters, Parliament, and its rules can work to increase the power of political elites.

If we don’t trust those who represent the public, effectively we don’t trust the public.

What kind of a Crown minister forgets secret government documents at the girlfriend’s house? Not a very bright one.
What kind of a Deputy Minister doesn’t notice that such documents are missing for five whole weeks? Ditto.

Chantal Hebert comments on the high stakes game being played at Elections Canada:

But if it should turn out that Elections Canada overplayed its hand, the cost to its institutional reputation could be prohibitive. A failure to make a persuasive case against the Conservatives would bolster allegations that vindictiveness played a part in its approach. It might never totally recover from the loss of confidence that would ensue.

Over the past decade, Elections Canada has gone from election watchdog to arbiter of Canada’s democratic life, taking on a more central role in every aspect of federal electoral politics, including the leadership campaigns of the various parties. It has never been easier for a politician to run afoul of its regulations.

It gets more interesting as her argument unfolds…

John A. Macdonald used to describe himself as a cabinet-maker, a formula that a recent Liberal prime minister repeated without ever giving Sir John A. credit. Cabinet-maker is not a reference that one can apply to Ed Stelmach, the Alberta premier. Cabinet-making is significance because in the parliamentary system we do not elect governments. Governments are formed, and the government is the cabinet, chosen by the head of the government. Those choices make a government. Stelmach’s first cabinet last December was a textbook case on how to ignore the tradition of forming cabinets in this country.

Some commentators have attacked Stelmach for not being acquainted with the most basic rules about cabinets. I disagree. Stelmach knows the rules. He himself was a cabinet member for more than a decade. He knows the rules well, but he chose to ignore the tradition.

Traditions may not mean much in the hyper-changing society in which we live. But in government, they are often the one thing standing between good government and government by whim. Parliamentary traditions, in other words, exist in order to limit the power of those in office. When politicians ignore tradition is almost always at our peril.

Stelmach ignored tradition, not out of ignorance but from defiant will. He simply did not seem to  believe that he had to follow them.  He may think he is above them, which betrays a certain amount of hubris in a man who has made a virtue of portraying a self-effacing public image. The saving grace may be that it does not seem to be hubris for its own sake. His innovative spirit may be misguided, but he now has admitted to have been wrong.

There is nothing wrong with rewarding proven loyalty, but it should not be the defining consideration, and that’s where Stelmach erred.

Stelmach has pledged to have learned the cabinet-making lesson, but I am not sure what lessons he means. He hinted that he will give more real cabinet seats to Calgary (instead of the junior junior stools that he created), so there is a hint that he has learned something about geographic representation. But insofar as he mentioned the number four, he seems not to have learned about proportionality. Given that he now has more MLAs in total and more urban MLAs, including an increased number from Edmonton, the demands have increased and so will have the pressures to get it right. It’ll be interesting to see what he does with that.

Stelmach has the added advantage –which is also a problem, of having had all his ministers re-elected. He probably hoped that Iris Evans would lose her seat. But he will have to do more juggling than just keeping previous ministers. The need for greater representation from the southern end of the province, where Stelmach does not have too many die-hard loyalists, will force him to do some re-arranging. Redford and Ady in Calgary have a good chance.

We should expect a more carefully balanced cabinet on the geography front but I remain sceptical about its proportions. Stelmach’s natural reflex to reward those who have expressed in deeds their loyalty to him will not disappear. However, he is trying to do better. When we fail, there always remains the danger of over-compensating. Eddie is just the guy to overcompensate. If he does, rural Albertans will be unhappy.

And one more thing: keep an eye on Lloyd Snelgrove and see where he goes.

The so-called human rights commissions in Alberta are not the only arm of the Leviathan that is intimidating and terrorising Albertans. A new report shows how Alberta’s former Social Services (SS), are taking children away from their parents and from their homes in record numbers.

Alberta children are being plucked from their homes and placed in government care at one of the highest rates in the industrialized world, reveals a new study out of England.

And native leaders are condemning the system - which they say targets aboriginal families - as the next generation of Indian residential schools, where for a century native children were taken from their homes and raised in boarding schools.

The study, by June Thoburn of East Anglia University in Norwich, analyzed child welfare data from 24 jurisdictions, including Australia, Japan, Wales and several U.S. States. In 2004, just over 8,500 Alberta kids were in care, or 111 out of every 10,000 children under 18 in the province.

Ontario’s rate was nearly half, at 64 per 10,000. Washington State’s rate was 58, the same as New South Wales, Australia. Japan’s was the lowest at 17.

An army of social workers has been unleashed on communities in Alberta, threatening and intimidating parents and often taking the children away. Last year in my neighborhood alone, the SS visited three families in the space of two weeks with nothing but false accusations and innuendo. At least one of the teams of social engineers coerced its way into one household and proceeded to interrogate a pregnant mother and their young children under false pretences (I have names, dates and all the evidence).

The new study seems to show that last year’s operation was part of a much larger attempt by social workers to impose their ways onto parents and their children. I am not suggesting that the state has no business in caring for abused children, but the numbers clearly show that there is something afoot in Alberta.

Alberta’s Minister of Children’s Services has either been asleep at the wheel, or the rising  social workers’ raids are being conducted with her approval.

If you have been a victim of Alberta’s SS, you should contact their elected commander:

Heather Forsyth, Constituency Office
Deer Valley Shopping Centre
#13, 1221 Canyon Meadows Drive SE
Calgary, AB
Canada T2J 6G2
Phone: (403) 278-4444
Fax: (403) 278-7875
calgary.fishcreek@assembly.ab.ca

It’s nobody’s fault: Some of us are simply not as quick on the uptake as others…

Syed Soharwardy, who withdrew his HRC complaint against Ezra Levant, has made some interesting confessions today. Levant is the former publisher of the now defunct Western Standard, which reproduced some of the Mohammed (peace be upon him) cartoons from Denmark (see one of the horribly offensive images below). Here is some of what the Imam had to say:

“Over the two years that we have gone through the process, I understand that most Canadians see this as an issue of freedom of speech, that that principle is sacred and holy in our society,” said Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.

“I believe Canadian society is mature enough not to absorb the messages that the cartoons sent. Only a very small fraction of Canadian media decided to publish those cartoons.”

Can Soharwardy be so thick that it took him two whole years to figure out the free speech angle? I can not know, but the important thing is that he has. But he has veered so far the other way now as to declare free speech to have religious characteristics. In the same amount of time, he reflections have led him to figure out that free speech is “holy”!! Free speech as holiness is not even a western belief, let alone a Muslim one. To Soharwardy, it seems clear, nothing that could be historically held in such high regard could possible be secular. I wonder if Soharwardy will now recommend such holy a thing to those who attend his Mosque.

Soharwardy still sees the mere cartoons as evil that would be absorbed by Canadians, were they to see them (so don’t look). Except that he has kindly changed his mind about the maturity of all of us. Two years ago and until yesterday Soharwardy seemed to have believed us all to be immature. His apparent desire to impose his superstitious views about depictions of the prophet (peace be upon him) was nothing but an attempt to save Canadians from our own immaturity. In the last two years though, he figured out that we are not as immature as he imagined. So he has now decided that it’s okay because we are okay.

Indeed it’s not easy for the immature to identify maturity, but Soharwardy has now turned the corner after two years. It takes some a life time to do so; so two years is not so bad. Congratulations Syed! Well done!

Note: Soharwardy is also spelled as Suhrawardi, Suhrawardy, Soharwardi, Sohrawardy, Soharvardy, Suhravardy, Sohravardi, Sohrawardi, sohravardi, etc:

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In Calgary alone there may be as many as 1 in 10 people who don’t have or can’t find a family doctor. Ed Stelmach’s announcement this week that he will have more doctors and nurses produced in the next few years may therefore hit a receptive chord with the public at large. Why could not any one have thought of such a simply solution before?: there is a demand for doctors, so produce more doctors.

But one does not get to produce more doctors at will by waving a wand or by pressing a button in an assembly line. The effects of the premiers’ plan might will not become visible until more than a decade from now. Doctors are highly skilled individuals, and it takes long to train them. Before one can train them one must have adequate facilities and the premier has recognised that issue in his announcement. He’s pledged monies for expansion of medical training facilities. Yet, facilities alone do not train doctors. The same number of teaching doctors cannot properly train the greater number of medschool graduates that Stelmach wants. There is need to find more doctor-producing doctors, on other words. That’s not an easy task for it takes even longer to produce doctor-producing doctors.

Stelmach’s announcement presupposes that the shortage of doctors in Alberta is a problem of supply. But the problem cannot be cured by supply alone. Canadian doctors have been leaving Canada for decades. In order to make up for the shortfall we’ve opted for drawing doctors from other countries –the ethics of which a self-righteous country like Canada does not wish to discuss. Foreign doctors don’t always come here permanently to say, moreover, and even when they do some of them also opt for going elsewhere.

Unless policy-makers seriously look at the factors that influence the exodus of doctors, the increased output of doctors might simply mean a potential increase in exports of doctors in the near future. Producing more of them does not solve the causes of their departing.

One doctor who wrote to the Calgary Herald seems to suggest that it is a market problem, though being a doctor, he figures that the government has to provide for the solutions:

Because doctors can’t increase their prices to address increasing business costs, they are unfairly disadvantaged in this economy. I have watched many colleagues close their doors forever over the past year.

Each of the promised new 225 doctors will be intelligent enough to realize he or she will never earn enough money with the status quo to pay off million-dollar debts and still have enough someday for retirement. They will have no choice but to join their colleagues in the growing evacuation of our medical talent.

In essence, many of Stelmach’s new doctors will end up elsewhere just like graduants who preceded them. In the meantime, the interventionist state gets to pad itself in the back for a short little while while people’s hearts get filled with fools’ hope.

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.

Craig Chandler, the Ontario newcomer, said that left-leaning newcomers are not welcome in Alberta. Ed Stelmach, the Alberta-born provincial premier, says that we welcome everyone in the province. In order to make his point clear, Premier Stelmach will not let Chandler become the next candidate for his Conservatives in Calgary-Egmont. Chandler is not welcome.

Stelmach has mishandled the situation by not acting much sooner. He could have avoided the whole deal by approaching Chandler at the start, before the nomination vote actually took place, to let him now that Stelmach would not sign his papers if he won, even by three thousand votes. Chandler will look at his legal options, no doubt, unless Stelmach has promised to pick up the tab for Chandler’s now wasted money in the nomination. It could also be that Stelmach had told Chandler not to run and Chandler went ahead any way. If that were the case, Stelmach’s communications chief would not have leaked it since it might also be communicating that his boss had failed to contain Chandler –further enhancing the image of a weakling.

Now Stelmach seems more indecisive, vulnerable on the right where there are already two fairly decent electoral alternatives waiting to collect on his mishaps, the Alberta Alliance and Wild Rose. On most flanks and in the media, Stelmach will be roasted for the “anti-democratic” move. There will be questions about how to proceed and with good reason: Denis, the runner up to Chandler had half the votes that Chandler received; Chandler received many more votes than the two immediate runner ups combined.

The Tory constitutions gives the premier and the Party’s Executive the authority to reject a nominee. In SS 14.b vi, it reads:

A candidate who has been duly nominated shall be approved by the Leader and the Executive Committee and officially endorsed as a candidate of the Association if such approval is in the best interests of the Association.

There is no reference to appeal that decision, and none of what is to follow is spelled out, which might fuel the media further. Paul Jackson at the Calgary Sun, who backed Chandler publicly will probably have a thing or two to say. But a week from now it all be forgotten.

See the story here.

h/t: ST

Update: Calgary’s own unrepentant lefty deals with some of the fall out in this column.

Former Chief Justice of Canada’s Supreme Court Antonio Lamer has died. No one understood the power that judges were receiving in 1982 better than Lamer, who referred to it as “a revolution.” Lamer sometimes bragged about his newly found ability to change the country through his power on the bench. He was once the most prominent face of the Court Party, always willing to exercise power wherever he felt the politicians had left a vacuum.

“It’s not for me to criticize legislators but if they choose not to legislate, that’s their doing,” he once told Southam News. “If they prefer to leave it up to the court, that’s their choice. But a problem is not going to go away because legislators aren’t dealing with it. People say we’re activist, but we’re doing our job.”

In the world I live in, Lamer shall be remembered as a modern example of hubris; as a man who (ab)used the power entrusted to him as a personal tool to reshape this country in his own image and in the image of those who revered him.

I expect that the Court Party will be in mourning for some time. I expect that the Court Party will soon be calling for the erection of monuments in his name with utmost piety. There will be schools in Ontario named after him and perhaps even an airport.

The Stelmach government says it will introduce amendments next week to soften the much disliked provision of Bill 46, which critics charge would limit the public’s ability to take on energy industry when there are (real or perceived) problems.

Anglin acknowledged that some troubling provisions in Bill 46 were also in past legislation for the AEUB, but some reworked provisions appear harsher and would make a regulator he doesn’t trust even stronger.

“It looks like they’re taking one dysfunctional board and turning it into two dysfunctional boards,” said Anglin, a Green party candidate in Lacombe-Ponoka.

I am not personally convinced that the Stelmach government is in trouble because it plans to stop industry subsidies to interveners in hearings before the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board. That’s what this writer, Graham Thomson,  argues in the Edmonton Journal. In particular, he claims that rural Tories will be mad enough to withdraw their support from the government.

Stelmach has already angered a significant portion of his urban support with the royalty reviews. Since the party depends so much on the urban-rural coalition that has been in place since Peter Lougheed, a significant spike in rural discontent, added to the troubles with the oil patch, might well spell trouble for him in the not too distant future …if Graham Thomson were right.

Just to add more confusion to the Stelmach government, an election was announced on a government website yesterday:

Several MLAs and political organizers were in a brief panic as the normally colourful “Who is my MLA?” page on the Alberta legislature’s website was mostly blank, and read, “Writ has been dropped.” That’s parliamentary lingo for “an election is underway.”

It turned out to be a hoax of some sort but for about an hour, there was panic among the Tory troops. To assuage the panic, they sent the ever so clueless government spokesman, Tom Olsen.

“When the premier drops the writ, he’ll do it proudly and publicly,” Olsen said.

Er… Actually, the premier doesn’t drop the writ. That’s a job reserved for the Lieutenant Governor, but how would Olsen know about the constitution?

Almost half a million dollars to run a second rate university. Not a bank, but a public institution. Must be nice for Harvey.

While the University of Calgary’s deferred maintenance budget balloons and student tuition continues to increase, president Harvey Weingarten and the rest of the institution’s executive team are taking home sizable raises again this year.

The president, who recently had his contract extended to 2011, is now compensated to the tune of $482,000 a year — up from $449,000 last year.

As the Museum Just Pour Rire (Just for Laughs) shows, comedy is a component of our culture. Comedy and satire have been imprinted in Western culture all the way back to the Greeks. But Elections Canada will have none of it in today’s Quebec by-elections.

This [electoral] provision allows women who wear veils for religious reasons to vote without revealing their faces. However, Elections Canada advises those obviously mocking the law by wearing Halloween masks or the like will be turned away.

Can’t mock bureaucrats any more, eh?! Is Rick Mercer about to have his right to vote revoked? Not likely, but the humourless mandarins will need to decide who is funny and who is not: they’ll  probably lobby for a new mandatory federal license to practice comedy.

According to Elections Canada, there is nothing in the current law requiring Canadian voters to show their face when they exercise their right to vote. Right in public view, Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand has killed common sense by choosing to interpret the legislation in the narrowest possible sense.

“It can be observed, therefore, that there are various methods provided for by this legislation allowing people to vote and that some of these measures do not require visual identification of the voter and it’s the voter that has the choice of which method to use,” Mr. Mayrand said.

I am thinking of wearing one of these come the next election. I am choosing this particular one because it’s called the Baffin Balaclava, furthering the Canadian theme.

There is an old Soviet-era joke about voting that came to mind when I read the recent news about Elections Canada. It goes like this:

An old lady showed up at a polling station in Soviet Russia and was given a folded ballot. As she walked toward the voting booth, she started to unfold the ballot. At that moment, a Soviet official walked up to her and in a threatening tone he said:

- What are you doing?

- I’m trying to figure out the person for whom I am going to vote, the old woman said with an intimidated voice.

- Sorry, the official barked, but you can’t do that! Do you not know that it’s secret ballot?

The joke underscores the obvious lack of liberty in the USSR, but it also points out that secrecy can be abused. To a classical liberal like John Stuart Mill, voting was a public duty and a public duty should be exercised publicly. Mill was no friend of voting by secret ballot because of the inherent public nature of the activity.

The secret ballot was introduced, in part, to prevent abuses at a time when men voted publicly because voters could be monitored by those who offered them money and liquor in exchange for votes. The secrecy behind a screen made it difficult –if not impossible– for the payers to know who the payee had voted for.

Concealing the identity of voters, however, is not at all what was contemplated by Canadian lawmakers when they switched to secret ballot in the late 19th century. Identity concealment is in effect what Elections Canada is recommending that we do. With the decision to allow Muslim women to vote without having to confirm their identity by showing their face, Elections Canada opens multiple doors for corrupting the electoral process, which is antithetical to the agency’s existence, and creates a second category of voters not contemplated by the law.

The very purpose of Elections Canada, in addition, is to safeguard the integrity of voting and to insure that Canadians trust and respect the process. Elections Canada is corrupting both its own mandate and the electoral process. The agency has set out to promote a practice that will undermine trust and respect for voting. The short sighted decision will in fact achieve the opposite of what one suspects its intention to be: to make the process more attractive to voters.

Elections Canada is also violating the will of Parliament, as the PM points out. The decision amounts to a veiled coup. Unelected bureaucrats do not have the authority to violate the legislative will of Parliament. Let Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand know your displeasure with the new directives, if it the case. Click here and send him a word or two.

Liberal-appointed Senator Romeo Dallaire and the Glob are riding a tempest in a teapot over the decision to fly the Red Ensign at the Vimy memorial. Dallaire is upset that it violates protocol.

Mr. Dallaire said Ottawa’s decison suggests the country does not know how to properly [sic] mark its history.

“You sort of wonder sometimes at the maturity of our nation in things of this nature.”

Dallaire may be sort of correct. The inhabitants of this country do not know their history. Taking advantage of that collective ignorance in 1965, a Liberal prime minister decided to ditch our flag, the Red Ensign, and adopt a new  designer flag.  Surely, maturity is an issue as well. Mature countries don’t need to change their flags at the whim of one party leader.

Furthermore, Senator Dallaire is not quite clear on the latest political and sociological developments in this country regarding the proprieties of the use of the word “nation.” Canada is not a nation, as he naively contends, but a country with at least four tacitly recognised national identities. On repeated occasions, the Quebec National Assembly and the federal Parliament have said as much. If the former general were not so preoccupied with protocol, he might have heard about that.

Lastly, not knowing history is one thing. In its quest to reveal  protocol propriety to its readers, the “national” newspaper is unable properly to conjugate verbs. Grammatical maturity too has been ditched.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach implied in a recent statement that Dalton McGuinty, the Ontario premier, is full of hot air. McGuinty wants to start a government-directed carbon market across provinces, but Stelmach is not interested in sending more money out of the province for free.

Mr. Stelmach said he likes the Harper government’s climate change abatement plan, which to some extent prevents interregional transfers of reduction credits.

"If we’re committed to reducing emissions, then let’s not just trade hot air credits - even within a country," Mr. Stelmach told The Globe and Mail in an interview.

McGuinty has been whining about the Harper Green plan. It’s not sufficient, he says, but he has not made a single move to take the Baird challenge. Federal Environment minister Baird directly invited McGuinty to launch his own plan to cap carbon emissions, if he does not like the federal one. So far, not a peep from McGuinty about the challenge.

Wouldn’t it be fun to see Dalton McGuinty shut down tourism, the automile industry and his coal-operated electricity plants in Ontario to stop carbon emissions? History does repeat itself, but one can only hope that Ontarians learned from it. Ontario already had a premier who ruined its economy for nearly a decade. In fact, he’s now a Liberal, just like McGuinty. Some things appear never to change.

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.

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.

 If Calgary MLA Art Johnson had his simplistic way, the use of hand-held cellular phones while driving would be illegal in Alberta.

Calgary-Hays Tory MLA Art Johnston, a Calgary police officer for 25 years prior to entering politics, is leading the charge on the proposed ban.

He’s urging the government to immediately install hands-free mobile communication devices in all government vehicles, and hopes to mandate it provincewide with legislation this fall.

“I just don’t understand how we’ve allowed it to get to this,” Johnston said. “It’s unsafe. It’s a danger to people out there.”

It may be true that people with cell phones might be distracted and drive erratically sometimes. But so are people who talk, eat, shave, drink coffee or tea, discipline their children, put on make-up or read a map while they drive. Why don’t we make all these things illegal while driving too. How much of our social behaviour should a government regulate?

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has banned the sale of alcohol in his country for the Easter Weekend.

The decree prohibits alcohol sales on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday next week. A more limited ban restricting sales to between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., including at restaurants and bars went into effect Friday and will last through April 9.

The sudden, unprecedented measure confused many Venezuelans who raced to stash up before Friday, thinking that would be their last chance to buy for more than a week.

Chances are the move will increase sale and consumption of alcohol.

One of the principals Liberal AdScam profiteers, Jean Lafleur, has been formally charged with fraud.  His Lafleur Communication and Marketing folded in September of 2005, unable to handle a 40k-plus debt.

The company is said to have moved about 30 million in contracts from AdScam, of which about 12 million may have gone to the Lafleur family.

Jean Lafleur is apparently no longer in the country to face the fraud charges for the puny sum of $1.58 million.

Here is proof, as if needed, that one can never please everyone. Governments know it implicitly.

When people complained that there is not enough labour in Alberta, particularly in the hospitality industry, the Alberta government planned to let children under age work in kitchen restaurants and in areas where no alcohol was being sold or consummed.

But in puritanical North America, that’s taboo to the mobs. So the government was forced to withdraw its plans and revise its rules.  In the revision of the rules, young musicians who played at licensed establishments were found to be in contravention of the new public mood.

Now, these people are screaming that the application of the policy will deny opportunities to young musicians. How about denying opportunity to future chefs or future sommeliers?  Surely, these two restaurant subcultures tend to be much less populated by promiscuity, drugs, profanity and violence than the music scene traditionally has been.

Some Alberta musicians said the province is being unnecessarily heavy-handed with the ruling. Many professional musicians have cut their teeth and mentored under music masters in such settings, including Calgary blues guitarist Johnny V, who played in bars and lounges when he was young and now jams with underage musicians, including his 15-year-old son.

“It just exposes them to a wide range of music and players. You can’t have that kind of interaction at a school, not anywhere. That’s where you get your training.” Mills has organized a petition and sent letters to the musical community to try to get the commission to change its ruling.

I’m not taking sides on this thing. I’m just raising the question: what would entitle young musicians to an exemption under the present rules that would not entitle  young culinary artists the same consideration?

The Alberta Agriculture Department says it is investigating a derogatory e-mail to Canadian Wheat Board supporters that may have come from a government computer.

Department spokesman David Hennig says he can’t say when the review may be complete.

The department is looking into an e-mail sent and posted on a website that supports the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly on grain sales.

The e-mail calls wheat board supporters communists, who can’t deal with the fact their industry is dying.

It’s apparently not enough that we get bombarded by foreign propaganda about global warming. Now, our own Alberta government may be spreading the same ecogospel –paid by our own money no less.

Albertans are being warned that global warming will cause future water shortages, insect invasions, crop failures and more frequent forest fires.

A new handbook from the province also says Alberta"s greenhouse gas emissions are the highest in Canada and caused mainly by the energy sector.

Has any one seen the handbook?

It also seems that the government will take its propaganda on tour under the name of consultations. Or perhaps, the strategy is a decoy and do with “warming” what the previous government did with health care: generate tonnes of paper after several studies, conferences and consultations but no single plan of action.

Either way, it’s public money down the tubes.

Alberta’s government wants to make it easier to opt out of medicare with legislation that will allow people to opt out of the public health-care system for up to three years at a time.

There is only a small number of Albertans who take the opt-out option. The collectivists are unable to understand how a government might want to make  making choices easier for some of its citizens so they have to insinuate that making things easier for a small group of Albertans is not worth it.

Liberal health critic Laurie Blakeman calls it odd that Alberta Health has so few legislative ideas that cutting paperwork for 255 people is a top government priority.

Blakeman has difficulty grasping the notion that we’re all freer when one of us is freer.