CIVITATENSIS

When I say CLIMATE, you say LOSERS!

CLIMATE!…

Finance and math has never been the strength of socialists, which is why Jack Layton is excited about how the coalition he engineered with the Quebec separatists will trade Alberta’s five ministers, including one PM, for one Edmonton NDP MP.

In addition, Alberta’s lone Layton MP plans to follow through with her party’s desire to shut down the tar sands, which is an indirect way to say that they mean to shut down Alberta’s economic engine.

The woman who might soon be Alberta’s only federal cabinet minister says no new oilsands projects should be approved until Ottawa develops full environmental and health effects policies.

“We don’t want any new approvals until we get a handle on the environmental impacts,” says NDP MP Linda Duncan, who surprised even Edmonton by winning the Strathcona riding on Oct. 14.

“That was NDP policy in the election and I support it.”

We’re too dumb to get excited about that prospect, I guess.

Though nearly two thirds of voters rejected citoyen Dion’s Green vision cum social engineering project, he launched the most disrespectful interpretation of an electoral vote since Jacques Parizeau’s comments on the heals of the 1995 referendum.

The good Liberals were defeated, Dion said, because the evil Conservatives were awash with money and were able to distort (lie about) his message of deliverance before the impending global environmental collapse. Twice, he mentioned their “money” not ever asking himself (this was clearly not the place to engage in meditations anyway) why the Tories and even the NDP had more money to spend than his party did.

But the crux of disrespect is to the electorate, especially to those that parked their vote elsequere.  Dion’s argument implies that voters have been dupped by a devellish advertising campaigm. He further implies that Canadian voters are too stupid to make up their own mind, too stupid to accept him as a leader and too dumb to make the difference between Grits and Tories on their own. The condescencion toward the voter is a clear indication that Dion has learned nothing. Even the worst defeat in his party’s history has not compelled him to re-examine his messianic complex and his bullheadedness about always being right.

Finally, refusing still to acknowledge that he took the party to his left, his blame on someone else’s money fits well with the New Left sociological view that he learned in France –another source for his messianic complex. Dion implies that the moneyed classes are dirty and the poor (whom he leads) are the pure. The poor (Liberals) are the good guys and the rich (Conservatives and New Democrats) are the bad guys. His messianic complex is once again validated in that formula.  And yet, his conclusion is that the Liberals need money. Citoyen Dion has clearly not understood the nature of party financing under the rules that his former boss bequeathed Paul Martin, the Liberal party and the rest of the country.

It is voters who are the major source of money now, the same people who Dion just finished insulting in his effort to exonerate himself and avoid responsibility for his pigheaded inflexibility.

Dion is not the man that will take the party out of its financial mess. What will Dion do now to retire his personal and the party’s debt in the next seven months that he was not able to do in the last two years? Just like in the money markets, it is also true in politics: winners attract money!

Saying climate change may result in his two sons never seeing polar bears in the wild, a star NDP candidate from British Columbia called Thursday for the shutdown of Alberta's tarsands [Newflash: if a kid actually got to see a polar bear in the wild, he'd probably end up being the bear's meal]. "We have to do something to address the climate change crisis, we need to do so now," said Michael Byers, the New Democrat hopeful in the key battleground riding of Vancouver Centre [Oh, yes, the Crisis!].

"We need to go after the big polluters, we need to shut the [Alberta] tarsands down."

Byers is not advocating that oil production be shut down anywhere else in the country –in Atlantic Canada, for example. His reference to the tar sands is a not so hidden code calling for the destruction of Alberta’s economy.

Liberals figure they can tax the Alberta economy into destruction. The Dippers are after the same goal, but they want to take a shortcut. That’s NDP efficiency.

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe wants to reduce Quebec’s dependence on oil by half within 10 years.

Mr. Duceppe has been saying since the beginning of the [election] campaign that oil impoverishes Quebec while making Alberta rich [Apparently we are the only people in the world --let alone the country-- who sell oil!!!].

“It’s a real drain on the province’s economy,” Mr. Duceppe said Saturday during a news conference in Montreal.

Once again, Quebec separatists are promoting greater animosity toward Alberta and Albertans in order to get votes. Oil makes Alberta rich on the backs of Quebeckers, don’t you know.

Duceppe is welcome to buy his oil exclusively from Hugo Chavez if he wants. But let’s be fair: if wants nothing Albertan, he should also petition the feds to stop sending Alberta’s money to Quebec?

I just finished watching a short report with Anderson Cooper on CNN (Certainly Not News) about the shrinking northern polar ice cap. They are sounding the bell about the end of the ice cap as we know it, and predicted that the northern ice cap will be gone in five years. Cooper just nodded: “That would be extraordinary.” Not a single word was said challenging the outrageous claim.

I really wish I were a betting man. I’d take that bet gladly. Something tells me that in five years, not remembering what they just said today, the same folks will be arguing that the expanding polar cap is killing the cute polar bears.

When science ceases to allow the possibility of doubt and dogmatically shuts down questions or other points of view, it has ceased to be science.

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail

September 20, 2008 at 12:37 AM EDT

At least Galileo was afforded the benefit of a trial by the Inquisition. No such process was observed by Britain’s prestigious Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific body, when it summarily dismissed its director of education for saying that creationism should be treated as a "world view" and not simply a misconception.

The culprit, Professor Michael Reiss, who is also a priest in the Church of England, made some remarks that are sensible enough, except to those who adhere, dare we say, religiously, to scientific dogma. Prof. Reiss was not preaching creationism from his Royal Society pulpit; he strongly defended evolution. Indeed, his main point was that children from religious upbringings should be engaged in science lessons, rather than dismissed out of hand as cranks: "There is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts that they have – hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching – and doing one’s best to have a genuine discussion." This is a perfectly lucid argument, one to which you would think the Royal Society would gladly adhere. When children raise questions based on what they have learned at home or in church, synagogue or mosque, they should be respectfully engaged. Their minds will not be changed by outright dismissal or ridicule, but possibly by respectful and dispassionate debate.

Some of the eminences who serve as Fellows of the Royal Society, however, mounted their lecterns to enthusiastically condemn Prof. Reiss. His enlightened views were then adamantly rejected by the Royal Society, which claimed they had "damaged its reputation." Its dismissal of Prof. Reiss makes it clear that, when opinions diverge even slightly from accepted scientific wisdom, they will be met with ruthless suppression. This says something sorry about the state of scientific enquiry as practised by that august body. Prof. Reiss has not been forced to recant or placed under house arrest. He has only been packed off to his old job at the Institute of Education. But the loss of a job over such a minor heresy suggests a new inquisition has been convened, absent a certain due process of the old.

Most Albertans are convinced that Stephan Dion wants to rip them off with his Green Shift, or the Green Shaft as it is better known in this end of the country.

Liberal politicians like David McGuinty (there is a name that Albertans truly trust)

argue that the tax could help Alberta solve many of its environmental and image problems related to the oilsands, while still treating Albertans in a fair manner.

Did you read that correctly? Liberals are going to help Alberta!

As they relieve us of our money, they will help Alberta to solve its environmental problems. That would be largely the problem about which CBC, the Red Star, David Suzuki and Jack Layton have convinced the simple minded elsewhere: oil companies are turning Alberta into a wasteland (twice the size of New Brunswick!!!). We have gone from a province in which these same dumb people believed that we paved our streets with gold to one whose natural settings have now been devastated. The reality is even if Alberta’s environment looked like the surface of the moon, the last person Albertans would trust to fix any thing for them would be a liberal, let alone an Ontario liberal. Most Albertans are aware of what Ontario and Quebec fixers can do.

The second is that they will help with our image. That may as well be an open threat. The same people who bad mouth our province now claim that they want to help with our image. The translation in simple: give us your wealth and we will stop bad mouthing you. That’s their version of help. These are the same people who have been unable to dispel the image of their own leader as an incompetent university egghead! And they want to help us with our image? In truth, not even Alberta Liberals would want to receive public relations advise from Stephane Dion’s “dream team.”

Last but not least, they claim that Liberals are going to treat Albertans fearly. Out here, we can all trust that it will be the opposite. Thanks, but no thanks. It was not all that long ago that Ken Boschcoff made clear who their plan was aimed at and said precisely what the Liberals mean to do with the Green Shaft:

Ontario Liberal MP Ken Boschcoff has plainly stated that the Green Shift is a way to transfer money out of Alberta into the rest of Canada, with roughly $9 billion of the $15.3 billion collected each year returned to Canadians with annual incomes of less than $40,000.

Boschcoff called it “the most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years. The shift will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oil patch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians.”

The McGuinties, Dions, Ignatieffs and Raes have momentarily confused us with Ontario voters.

Pundits and pollsters have been remarking that the Canadian campaign is yet to gel around issues, one or a couple of issues. Pollsters notice that many things are grabbing the public’s attention at once.  The current developments in the American and world financial markets, however, are now focusing attention toward the economy.

If that is so, Harper has the advantage. No one expects Jack Layton to preside over much other than his rump, let alone the national economy. Gilles Duceppe is a former communist. His economic platform is informed by his former beliefs. The people who make the money should give it to those who want it. Citoyen Dion has also demostrated his lack of economic competence: he already demonstrated that his Green Shaft will cost us all dearly. That Green issues will consume his attention, that a Dion government is interested in playing the shell game with our money instead of allowing us to keep it, and that his plan, as he has laid it out, would pump carbon dioxide into the economy’s engines forcing them to stall.

That leaves Harper as the guy with the graduate degree in economics, the one with the most credible economic knowledge and experience. If the minds of voters are directed to the economy, most reasonable voters (not members of the League of the Perpetually Scared) can see the difference.

The recently dubbed Liberal campaign aircraft, Profess-Air, may be a fitting metaphore for what a Liberal government headed by Citoyen Dion might be like:

Along with crew costs, the on-board mechanics and catering and its age, it costs between $18,000 and $20,000 an hour to fly. It is about 35 per cent less efficient than the Conservative and NDP planes.

Mr. Dion had expressed concern in a recent interview that the plane is more polluting than he had hoped. But the Liberals are buying credits to offset carbon emissions.

It’d make unscheduled stops for lack of energy! It promises to land even on rocky ground even though it will likely not get to any. While there may be savings in cheaper operating prices flying Profess-Air, it is still more than one third less efficient. Offsetting the guzzling by the purchase of “green” credits does not remove the fact that it’s still polluting. The balance is an appearance of savings cum green posturing, less efficiency, more time wasting, more pollution, higher costs and frequent groundings for lack of power.

Lysiane Gagnon’s commentary on the inclusion of Green Party’s Elizabeth May to the televised leaders’ debate is well worth reading.

Participation in a leaders debate should not be decided by emotions. It should rest on objective factors. Until last week, the rules set up by the television broadcasters were clear and perfectly fair: The party had to have proven popular support, which should ideally be measured by the percentage of the vote won in the previous election; a threshold of 5 per cent - which the Greens didn’t meet in 2006 - seems reasonable. These days, Green support is much higher (9 per cent in a poll released on Friday), but this is a fleeting criteria since surveys are not a sure way to measure a party’s real level of popularity. Only the actual vote, on election day, can do this.

The other rule was that the party had to be represented in the House of Commons. Yet, the Greens have no MP elected under the party’s banner. Blair Wilson, who recently became the first Green MP, was elected as a Liberal. So what’s Ms. May doing in the leaders debates?

It’s a disgrace that the broadcasters and the leaders of the Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois caved in to popular pressure and to Ms. May’s complaint that she had been discriminated against. Her supporters’ worst argument was to claim that she was a victim of sexism and that the presence of a woman was needed in a debate among “men in suits.” This is not a healthy way to promote the cause of women in politics.

What political party Gagnon does not mention? Citoyen Dion’s. Implied in her comments is the clear notion that Dion is wrong in having supported May’s participation.

See the whole here.

 It would appear that at least one of Citoyen Dion’s supporters is not content enough with just slamming Alberta in the media on a daily basis.

Kick Alberta Out Of Canada And Nuke It Until It Glows Says:
September 11th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

It’s not Canadians that are stupid, it’s Albertans. Who are really Americans who don’t understand that in the US the federal government controls all the natural resources, so if Alberta became a state, it’s [sic] loser officials and so-called business leaders would be out of a job and dipping transfat in high fructose corn syrup at Timmy’s. Dion should change his slogan to “Crush Alberta.” He’d get millions of votes from decent Canadians who hate genocidal duck-oiling rednecks.

There is a new earth-shaking environmental policy for the Green-Red pair to proclaim! Jack Layton too would be prrrroud!

In the fantastic mind of the “stupid Canadian” (May’s words, not mine) who left the comment at TAC, the untimely and unfortunate death of a few ducks constitutes genocide (technically meaning the killing of mass numbers of human beings); all Albertans are guilty of it and should now be nuked. Anthropomorphising ducks! This youngster has been watching too much Disney.

The story began as to whether Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader, called Canadians “stupid” during an interview. It has now migrated to Green political muzzling. Kevin Libin has the story here.

SDA also has the scoop here.

Four former Canadian prime minister have joined in a call to arrest climate change or face the end of the world.

These political characters instilled so much fear into Canadian while they were in power that the public tossed out as soon as they a chance. As I heard Dave Ruterford say this morning, collectively (Clark, Turner, Campbell and Martin), the advising four have less time at the PMO than Prime Minister Harper. That’s almost true, but it does drive the point. Not exactly paragons of leadership, they are. When we think of Canadian prime ministers, their names do not readily come to come to mind as examples of sound political judgment.

Does any one really care about what these folks believe?

Ed Stelmach and Rona Ambrose address the Alberta bashing coming from central Canadian politicians like Taliban Jack and Citoyen Dion.

Stephen Harper’s lady in northern Alberta, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Rona Ambrose, picked up where Stelmach left off.

“Political leaders like Jack Layton and Stephane Dion are going to use the good things coming out of Alberta and twist and distort them, and use them against us,” Ambrose spat.

“We cannot forsake the jobs of regular people across this country for a risky experiment like the Green Shift,” she continued.

And she concluded that Dion wants to “punish” Alberta.

Grandinite finely addresses the stupidity of the media (the Toronto Star) from the same region on the same issue:

I pity da fool who depends on the Toronto Star for balanced coverage of anything Alberta.

It may be a shock to Elizabeth May to hear that she is just another Liberal, as Stephen Harper claimed in opposing her participation in the 2008 leaders’ debate. Harper was not the only one. All other party leaders represented in the House opposed her participation, but Liberal Stephane Dion is the only leader that struck an alliance with the Green Party when May ran against Conservative Peter MacKay in Central Nova. One might say that Citoyen Dion has now betrayed his Green ally.

Back then, Dion wanted to appear gentlemanly and open to the Green cause. Privately, he expected to woe Green support to his party. But that did not happen. Opposing May’s presence in the debate now is not hypocritical, however. It makes sense from the political survival point of view. Citoyen Dion has realised that his little gamble backfired at least on one front. He may have appeared more gentlemanly because of his alliance with May (and it may not be just appearances. I am sure the professor is a gentleman) but no Green support bled to the Reds. In fact, the opposite has happened.

Disillisioned Liberals, there is now polling evidence, are now more and more likely to park their vote with the Greens. Presumably, they do so as they expect the professorial gentleman to loose the next election and as they wait for Justin Trudeau to descend from the Outremont political Heavens to rescue the beleaguered natural governing party. May it be so!

Citoyen Dion has no choice but to oppose May and her party. There will be no alliances, the Grits will field a candidate against her and hers, and there will be no more electoral nice guy.

Prime Minister Harper quite obviously has got the direction of the Red-Green influence very wrong. Elizabeth May is not just another Liberal. The way the Liberal support is moving, it is Citoyen Dion who is just another Green.

Update: Turns out that I got this wrong and that Citoyen Dion has not opposed May’s participation in the debates but he should. He is still the one with the most to lose to the Greens.

Jack Layton flew over northern Alberta today hoping “to make inroads in Quebec by appealing to their environmental conscience.” The strategy betrays a tried and true method among most federal politicians in the last few elections: attract votes somewhere else in the country by using Albertans, their wealth and prosperity as their whipping boy. There is no likelihod that a Dipper will be elected in Alberta to the federal House after all.

Taliban Jack wants to stop development of the Tar Sands by claiming, with the help of the Red Star and other complicitous central Canadian media, that Alberta’s natural setting is becoming “completely contaminated.”

But Jack does not have the courage to come to Fort McMurray to tell workers from all over the country, many from Quebec and the Maritimes, that he plans to get rid of their jobs. Nor does he stand in front of Quebeckers to tell them that reducing or stopping the supply of oil from Alberta into the markets will surely send the price of gasoline and other petrol derivatives soaring, short and long term. Do Quebeckers want to pay $3 for a litre of gasoline? Do Torontonians?

Instead, Taliban Jack grand stands before the media muses suspended by a polluting jet at 5,000 feet in the Alberta skies.  Jack does not have the intestinal fortitude to land at Fort Mc to give them news of his economy-busting, job-arresting plan. Would Citoyen Dion?

The cowardly gesture will nonetheless win him attention and esteem in Quebec, I’m sure.

Lorne Gunter looks at citoyen Dion’s “Green Shift” and finds it to be a “Green Shaft” for western Canadians: it taxes the base of energy production and gives money based on consumption, which will benefit the place where more people live and consume in the country.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Dion intimated that while Alberta and Saskatchewan have just 13% of the national population between them, their economies could — should — pay up to 40% of the cost of his carbon tax because they produce 40% of Canada’s carbon emissions.

At about $16-billion a year in new carbon levies, the Green Shift would cost each Canadian about $500 a year — just under $2,000 for a family of four. Mr. Dion has promised to return that amount in the form of income tax cuts and subsidies. His proposal would “shift” part of Canadians’ tax burden from income to energy consumption.

But if [sic] won’t shift it evenly across the country. By aiming his taxes at producers, rather than consumers, Mr. Dion clearly means to extract more of his new revenues from some provinces than others — not coincidentally the provinces that seldom elect Liberal MPs. [ed. That must be a coincidence!!]

The share of the green taxes he wishes to impose on Alberta and Saskatchewan would work out to nearly $1,500 per capita, or $6,000 per family. In the rest of the country, the load would be just $325 per person or $1,300 a family. [ed. Why would hick farmers need so much money when slick, latter-sipping Central Canadians can do so much more with it?]
And it’s not as though Albertans, in particular, aren’t making a disproportionate contribution to federal finances already.

In addition to fuelling the federal budget surplus, Albertans contribute about $4,000 more per person to federal finances than they receive back in federal program spending. By comparison, the fiscal deficit Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty frequently speaks of for his province is just over $1,500 per person per year, and Green Shift wouldn’t raise that to $2,000.

Add together what Albertans are already contributing to Confederation with the green surcharge Mr. Dion is proposing, and Alberta families would be kicking in more than $20,000 extra per family if the Liberals are ever returned to power.

Mr. Dion spent four days in the West last week insisting it was not his intent to punish any one region for his environmental fantasies. But on Thursday, on an online news site for northwestern Ontario, Liberal MP Ken Boshcoff admitted that Green Shift was not an environmental proposal, but rather “the most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years,” designed to “transfer wealth from the oil patch to the rest of the country.”

With this kind of incentive, I would not be surprised when Ontario flexes its envious electoral muscle and votes overwhelmingly Liberal again.

Green Idiots and Stupid reporters seem suddenly worried that there is a food crisis. They seem   surprised that their favorite “green” policies are causing a “global food crisis.”

Good Lord! How blind do you have to be? When you feed corn to your Hummer so that you can go buy a latte at Starbucks, people whose diet consist of corn are going to go hungry every where.     It’s called fundamental economics.

Parties in Parliament, the government included, are suddenly no longer in favor of foodstuffs being burnt by combustion engines.

Of interest.

New projections of growing investment in Alberta’s oil sands do not take into consideration premier Stelmach’s latest announcement that the environment trumps the economy and that oil companies are enemies of Alberta’s progress.

Investment in Alberta’s oilsands will skyrocket to nearly $20 billion in 2008, topping spending for all manufacturing across Canada for the first time, says a report issued Wednesday that reignited debate about whether Alberta’s oilsands development is hurtling out of control.

Philip Cross, Statistics Canada economist and manager of current analysis, said the $19.7 billion in expected oilsands spending reflects “a fundamental change in the Canadian economy.

The new figures released by the CD Howe Institute could soon become the way it could have been if Stelmach’s animosity toward the economic sector that drives the provincial economy continue and if his intentions to give in to environmental lobbyists comes true.

You might have to check the latest poll on whatever issue in Alberta politics if you want to figure out where Ed Stelmach stands. And even then, you might still not know. The flip-flopping is getting harder and harder to peg to any specific issue as a cause.

The premier who said that he was not about to touch the brakes on development in the oil sands is now quoted as saying that the “environment takes precedence over the economy.” That sounds like a reversal of the position to me. Stelmach went on to say that it does not mean that the province is about to take control of the economy.

So that leaves out the one extreme of a full Soviet-style command economy. That’s cold comfort to investors and workers in the oil patch, their suppliers and everyone down stream. What exactly does the premier mean when he bills the catch-all environment ahead of the economy? No one really knows for sure.

There is always the option that the premier is being calculating and deliberately ambiguous to disorient opponents and draw support from both sides of the issue. Stelmach may also be be trying to stem the threat of losing votes on the left flank of the political spectrum, but he leaves himself exposed on the right. Whatever the statement may mean, not explaining or fleshing out the idea will only contribute to the greater uncertainty of the resource market in the province.

I can already see the Wildrose Alliance’s ads running on TV this coming weekend. More worrisome still, is flip-flopping on the issue on which rides the lion’s share of the province’s prosperity and development. If it is calculated ambiguity, Stelmach is gambling for his political gain with most of our jobs.

Whether Stelmach gathers more liberal votes because of such statement, we’ll still get a Tory government, but Stelmach’s will now be identified as a government that will do just about anything to be liked, anything not to lose a seat or a point in public opinion, including putting the province’s economy in jeopardy. Take stock when you cast your vote next Monday.

The Globe and Mail’s envy of Alberta’s wealth on behalf of (Lake-polluting) Ontario does not seem to stop. For all the great things that Alberta has, they are unable to stop themselves from referring to us as “oil-rich.” We’re also reach in beautiful rolling hills, mountains and wonderful parks; we’re rich in people, flora and fauna; we’re rich in great schools and teachers, we’re rich in collective autonomy and individual self-reliance, and the list goes on.

That Ontarians are able to see us almost exclusively through the lens of oil and dollars does say infinitely more about them than it can ever say about who we really are.

The Alberta labour Federation is going out of its way to encourage members to vote for two of the opposing parties, the Liberals and NDP. Given their ideology, I would not expect them to mention the Wildrose Alliance but the introduction on their website does not mention the Green Party.

 The Alberta Federation of Labour has developed this website so you can get answers to the questions that matter the most to working families.  We've laid out our ideas for a better future for Alberta - along with summaries of the Conservative track record and explanations of the alternatives being offered by the Liberals and the NDP.

So take a look around this website and learn about the options and alternatives. Together we can turn the heat up on our politicians : and get better government and a better future in return!

The portion of the site dedicated to environment never mentions the Green Party either. It’s all Red and Orange. Big labour being out of touch with political realities is not just a central Canadian affliction. Alberta has shown to have the highest per capita support for the Green Party in the country.

We’ve known for a while that it is an apocalyptic cult. It has unquestionable dogma and infallible priests. It wants to establish a means to expiate sin by making others pay. Now, Canada’s chief priest has made an open call for a new inquisition.

David (Torquemada) Suzuki has called for political leaders to be thrown in jail for ignoring the science behind climate change.

The burning of books by heretical scholars will commence next month.

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!

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.

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.

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.

“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.