CIVITATENSIS

Last night, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach addressed the province in an 18-minute pre-recorded, televised video. It was entitled “The Way Forward.”

One has to wonder about the timing of the address, two days before the Wildrose Alliance pick their new leader (to be announced this coming  Saturday), and a few weeks before he faces a leadership-review vote in his own party.  The key component in the mix is that he is rapidly sliding down in popularity among voters.

So, he wanted to give an economic update, which to me sounded more like a Speech from the Throne, filled with general platitudes. If that were all he was trying to achieve, and he didn’t do badly at that,  he would have given that speech in the Legislature and not on prime time.

The choice of prime time TV seems clear.  On this score, the video was a failure if its aim was to make him look better to the voters.  To be fair to the premier, image-wise he was not terrible and he had the courage to come out in public, so to speak. Those who already like Stelmach and continue to like him are not going to find much cause to dislike him after watching the video.  So, at least he’s keeping the audience he possesses. But there was not much there that would endear him to those who already dislike him or are seriously questioning his abilities –a number that seems to be fast increasing.

Yeah, he wants to do all he can to make sure the economy is on track. But the gorilla in the room was the question in the minds of most Albertans: How come Saskatchewan in doing so well? There is no way he was going to touch on that. But Albertans know.

Insofar as the address did little to stop the loss of popularity (I’m sure that the polls will attest to this in the next couple of days), it should be considered a failure. He’s still going to get thru the leadership review fairly well. But his own party is per se not the worry these days. It’s his shrinking  right flank.

The way forward does not seem that bright for the premier. It will seem worse when Danielle Smith wins the leadership of the Wildrose Alliance.  What would Stelmach look like next to Smith in front of cameras when all on his own he looked so wooden in well-rehearsed, pre-recorded footage that took three days to shoot?  Oh, I have to turn away from that image.  The way forward looks pretty tough for Eddy.

They said they’d split the vote and get a Liberal elected. That was the line that the Alberta ruling Tories circulated among the muses in the media, who immediately got to work repeating it. It excited the typical left-wing media that a “rural and right-wing” party was going to be responsible for sending another Liberal to Edmonton, but not just another Liberal: a Liberal from Calgary! Both right parties loose.

It seemed more than wishful thinking than reality, considering that polls in the riding revealed quite a different reality. They progressively showed the erosion of the Stelmach Tory vote while the Liberal second place in the last general election was not getting much traction.

On by-Election night, the results were clear: Wildrose more than quadrupled its vote from the previous contest in the general election of  March 2008.  The government’s numbers plummeted to half of what they were before, and the Liberals–those whose crowning had been announced so many times earlier– in fact lost votes and dropped one percentage point.  In less than 18 months, Ed Stelmach has gotten himself into serious trouble.

Considering that the NDP showed poorly and that there was no Green Party in the running, the Liberal loss of votes is a bit disastrous. It serves to underscore the magnitude of Wildrose’s victory. Hinman was after all supposed to be the country-bumpkin who could not possibly stand even in the shadow of two “solid” urbane candidates.

By-elections are about discontent, so it stood to reason that the Tories would loose. All things being equal, one would have expected the Tory vote, all 25% that disappeared from supporting the Tory candidate, to spread somewhat unevenly across other parties. Most assumed that the lion’s share would go to the Liberal candidate.  Those don’t seem like reasonable assumptions to us now, but they were not totally unreasonable then.

Why then, is the crucial question, the Tory vote did not spread? It is not that they all stayed home, for the participation rate shows a much different picture. People came out to vote and 25% voted Tory. Some of their missing half  may have stayed home, but the majority of them came out and voted for the Wildrose Alliance.

To their credit, Hinman’s team ran an excellent campaign. Even my NDP friends think that their slogan and organisation were fantastic. The “Send Ed a Message” motto was brilliant. But as persuasive as they were, it is difficult to account for the large swing just based on the brilliant campaigning.

Something else may be afoot. We may have seen in Calgary-Glenmore the initial ripples of an upcoming wave. The numbers in Calgary-Glenmore show a tale of change, an appetite for change now traveling in one direction. It is not enough to have a mood for change when it is diffused and all over the electoral map.  But once that mood finds a vehicle to express it, change becomes immanent.

If what we saw in Calgary-Glenmore on Monday night is indeed a first set of electoral ripples of discontent, we’ll see more  in the soon-coming leadership selection of the Wildrose-Alliance next month. We have been waiting for the wave, to steal a well known expression from the title of a book.  It may be coming.

As the Wildrose leadership race goes on, conservative Albertans begin to take notice.

With the Calgary-Glenmore by-election right on the horizon for Monday, many are keeping their predictions to themselves. Except for most Liberals in Alberta, who are predicting a victory right doen the middle between the Tories and the Wildrose. Grant Mitchel is even claiming “realistic” gains for Ignitieff’s Liberals in Alberta at an election not-yet called.

But the heat is truly on the Conservatives. Not just because it’s the incumbent party and the party in government, but because they have spent tons of money and resources making sure that this by-election is not the embarrasment that their defeat at Calgary-Elbow was for them, losing Ralph Klein’s former seat.

The challenge will be for the Tories not just to win but to win decisively. One would expect it to be so after all they have invested in the riding to make sure that Glenmore does not slap Stelmach in the face.  Given that, a victory for the Tories short of demolishing the Liberals and the Wildrose will be a sign that the Tories continue to be in trouble.  Anything short of a crushing victory will be a warning for Ed Stelmach that Albertans –Calgarians, especially–are not impressed with the his fiscal and energy policies.

A single seat does not matter to Stelmach’s Conservatives, and by-elections are notorious for turning against governments. The Liberals could win, indeed. But another Liberal in the Calgary area will endear Stelmach to Calgarians even less, making them see Wildrose as a better and better alternative down the line.

Ed Stelmach will not admit in public that the royalty review and changes he brought about were a mistake, but he is surely trying to deal with some of the consequences.

Alberta, Canada’s top energy-producing province, offered its battered industry up to C$1.5 billion ($1.2 billion) in royalty breaks and credits on Tuesday to boost drilling and protect jobs as oil and gas prices sag.

Alberta Energy Minister Mel Knight, who championed a hike in royalty rates before prices collapsed, said the moves did not mean a softening of his stance, but rather a short-term response to the global economic crisis.

Offering to help with $1.5 billion in royalty credits is partially reversing his new royalty scheme. Of course, the reversal is motivated by the economic crisis, the government will say. And that’s partly true.

But in the meantime, Saskatchewan has become the immediate beneficiary, just as it was foretold. This is from a CNN report.

“It’s a great time to come to Saskatchewan,” said [Premier Brad] Wall, who even called the Toronto Star newspaper to tout his province’s economic success and let Ontarians know there were jobs for the taking.

“For those who are losing their jobs, we need them to know we have thousands of jobs open right now in both the private and public sector,” Wall said. “We have a powerful story to tell, a story of success and that’s something we want to share with those who are struggling.”

Wall’s province is one of the exceptions to the unemployment increases battering provinces across Canada. Saskatchewan’s unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent in January from 4.2 percent in December, making it the only province recording a decline. In Ontario and the city of Toronto, unemployment rates rose to 7.2 percent and 8.5 percent respectively. To the west, British Columbia shed 68,000 full-time jobs in January.

More Saskatchewan jobs should be on the way. To stave off any possible recession, Wall announced a $500 million infrastructure “booster shot” to help keep the economy strong.

Just like Alberta, Saskatchewan exists in the same world in which there is an economic crisis. The difference is that Ed Stelmach is not running it and not running businesses out of it.

If Stelmach thinks that businesses are going to trust him now, he is mistaken. The money that fled is not suddenly going to come back and expose itself to the less than honourable changes Stelmach introduced, often in contravention of existing contracts.

Ralph Klein used to apologise when he made mistakes, and then was quick to try to remedy the mistakes. Stelmach is too late to bringing remedy and does not have the strength of character to say that he was wrong. But he was!

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.

I was raking the leafs in the backyard today as my eight-year old boy pranced around in military fatigues, his toy AK-47 in hand (he also has a toy M-16) and also sporting a balaclava. When I suggested that he looked like a terrorist, he shrugged me off.

After he finished helping me pick up some of the debris on the ground, I said: “Thank you, al-Qaeda boy.” “I am not al-Qaeda,” he said. “I’m from Alberta.” Thinking that he didn’t understand the reference, I pointed out that al-Qaeda sympathizers have been known to live in Canada. “I know,” he said, with an annoyed tone. “That’s exactly why I said I’m from Alberta.”

That shut me up!

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?

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.

 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.

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.

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.

Not entirely a surprise, but not immediately expected…? Kevin Taft quits. Recently stumped by Ed Stelmach in a general election, in the big scheme of things, Taft had little choice but to say goodbye.

Frankly, I expected a resignation the night of the election, but doing some thinking before making decisions is not a bad thing. Some of us take longer to decide what to others may seem obvious.

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.

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.

It’s election day. Get out to vote.

This reprise of the Mason-Taft squabble in the leaders debate caught my eye this morning.

Taft predicts a Liberal government, but his party’s real yardstick is their record 32 seats against the Tory dynasty, achieved in the Klein-Laurence Decore showdown of 1993.

Mason boldly declared the Conservatives will win a majority government and urged supporters to vote for the party that would make the best opposition. Mason said Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft is “deluding himself” if he believes the Liberals are going to win.

Taft fired back with a final shot of his own.

“Brian has always played for third place,” Taft said. “We’re in this for the gold medal. So my message then to ND voters is that if they want change, vote Liberal because Brian Mason has already conceded last place.”

Nice come back. Taft has had all that time to think about how Mason bloodied his nose at the debate.

There is more than one race in this election, at least in Edmonton. While Taft tries as hard as he can to climb the wall into government, there is a little Chihuahua nipping at his heels.

Where do you vote?

Colby Cosh has decided to vote PC in the Alberta election because they have done much economic good, and they like the province they are running.

I could not possibly exercise my democratic rights with less pleasure. It’s becoming clear that Premier Ed Stelmach, chosen by a divided PC party as a middle option between the technocratic Jim Dinning and the right-wing insurgent Ted Morton, was a poorer choice than either front-runner would have been. English is a second language that Stelmach speaks more like a fourth or fifth. He has cracked down on smoking, hurting businesses on a health care-savings pretext that is contradicted by all the relevant evidence. His flinging of $2-billion at the country’s highest-paid teachers to fund voluntarily accepted pension liabilities in advance of the election was an act of monstrous cynicism. He is clueless about civil liberties, and has managed his caucus like an inept substitute teacher.

But the Alberta Liberals are no better, and indeed would be much worse on many of these points. What distinguishes Stelmach’s Conservatives from the opposition is a belief in the power of compounding economic growth. The Tories have made Alberta a place that attracts talent and capital from across Canada and around the world. Kevin Taft’s Liberals look at the province’s booming economy and see only problems.

Cosh’s is a pragmatic choice based on what the province is, not on what it could be.

But it could be better, not on account of the Liberal prophets of doom that Cosh condemns. It could be better on account of more sound management and in some cases less state management.  But Cosh does not say whether he even has the alternative to vote Wildrose in Redmonton.

When then Alberta Infrastructure Minister Lyle Oberg travelled to Calgary from Edmonton on March 8, 2007, he chartered an aircraft rather than take one of the government’s four planes or a commercial flight.

He and his executive assistant flew to Calgary on a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 twin-engine plane in the late afternoon. They stayed overnight and flew back the next morning. The plane’s pilots also stayed overnight in a Calgary hotel at government expense, at a cost to taxpayers of $3,030.

Had Oberg and his assistant flown last-minute on a commercial airline, it would have cost taxpayers no more than $1,000. The official reason for the charter flight? “Attend conference or event.” There was no further explanation.

Lyle Oberg has had it rough. Once touted as the conservative candidate who would defeat Jim Dinning’s Liberals, Oberg then crashed his own leadership hopes by behaving in the way that he does better, erratically and excessively dramatic. But he delivered his supporters to Ed Stelmach, thinking perhaps that he would be more powerful next to the quiet and understated Stelmach that he would be alongside the more decisive Ted Morton.

But that didn’t work out well for him. Oberg found that Stelmach is no pushover and that someone among Stelmach’s staff appears to have read Machiavelli’s Prince: they gave Oberg an emasculated Treasury and didn’t bow to Oberg’s every whim. He complained about the castration of the office, did some energetic shouting within mostly closed doors, and quietly resolved to leave sometime ago, much earlier than he announced his departure.

He felt shakled in a job with nowhere nearly as much power as he believes himself to be worthy of. So, the poor guy rented a plane and a crew and flew to Calgary with an aide for some overnight distraction, perhaps. Give him a break. He’s had it rough. For all we know, the trip could have been a medical emergency. Lyle Oberg might continue to have delusions and see skeletons in different places and yet remain equally incapable of identifying the spots where he has supposedly seen them. His vocal chords are clearly affected by the delusions he suffers from.

Oberg might be a victim: he might not have had a choice at all. Someone with so little power could not have avoided such behavior. All he might have had left to make himself feel better was an overnight shopping trip! Check his government credit card expenses for that day.

Stelmach promised honest and conscientious government. Nice. But he doesn’t understand culture. If thirty-seven years don’t make government ministers like Oberg entitled to their entitlements, I don’t know what would.

Those who expect an answer about the high-life trip from Oberg, we’ll get none.

I have been meaning to draw the attention of my readers to the Alberta Property Rights Initiative.

Founded in 2006, the Alberta Property Rights Initiative is a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy group headquartered in Calgary, AB. Its aims are to provide a common central organization for various concerned property groups who wish to promote entrenchment in law, the full protection of property rights for the benefit of all Albertans. The Initiative will actively build political support to pass a property rights clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in order to guarantee that if private property is taken for public use, the owner will receive full, fair and timely market compensation. The Initiative will actively promote an Alberta Property Rights Preservation Bill to protect property owners through provincial legislation.

This is an excellent endeavor spear-headed by the very dynamic Neil Wilson. To any and all interested in property rights, check them out and join.

I have almost always voted Conservative, except for the time when I lived in Quebec and voted for Bourassa’s Liberals rather than to give my vote to the Parti Quebecois.  This time I am not voting Conservative: I will cast my vote for the Wildrose Alliance.

A vote for the Liberals is a vote for Jim Dinning (or at least a chance for him to make a come back (read - be drafted by desperate party bosses- if seat numbers decline sufficiently). Smart Tories know this.

So says Alberta’s former political grand wizard Rod Love.

Indeed, smart Tories know it (and would not want it). I have no intention of voting Liberal, though Kevin Taft is a nice man and he has nice teeth. In addition, I am not genetically predisposed to vote NDP.

I am voting for Wildrose Alliance, and my vote for Wildrose does not leave political room for  the return of Jim Dinning. Jim’s political death has been registered and he should stay where ever he is, right along his pal Paul Martin Jr.. Dinning’s political resurrection is not welcomed among Albertans who know what is good for them and for the province.

My vote for the Wildrose Alliance is a vote for their policies of sound fiscal management and a resized government that does not get into people’s face with “solutions” for everything. My vote for Wildrose is a vote in favour of principle. It’s a vote to correct the mismanagement of the last few Klein years and its even worse extension under Eddie Stelmach. Ed Stelmach has been a disappointment as a premier precisely because Stelmach, much a la Jim Dinning, has shown little principle and no backbone.

The invitation to vote Liberal in that sense is less appealing than it normally would have been. Jim Dinning is Stelmach light! Why should any Blue conservative Albertan push to have even more diluted conservatism in office?

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

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.

It is very likely that the Stelmachistas are preparing the ground for a possible debacle in Calgary. The rumours of conspiracy flying around seem to point in that direction.

The scenario: Calgary’s Conservative power-brokers aren’t really Conservatives, but are Dinning-ites.

Their allegiance lies not with the party, but with the fortunes of former Conservative leadership candidate Jim Dinning.

When their man was beat by the Ukrainian farmer from Northern Alberta, they unleashed Plan B - to subtly (or not so subtly) discredit Ed Stelmach.

It’s in their interests - not the party’s - to see Stelmach emerge from this election with a greatly reduced Conservative majority, thus forcing a party leadership review. Then their man Dinning (or another anointed Calgary candidate) could return from exile to assume Calgary’s God-given right to rule the Conservative Party and hence the government of Alberta.

In other words, the Tories may do as badly as some people expect them to do in Calgary on election night this coming Monday because there is a vast left-wing conspiracy against Stelmach. It is headed by Paul Martin light, one Jim Dinning and his followers. Just when Hillary Clinton seems somewhat saner by virtue of the expectations placed on her in the primaries, the leader in Edmonton is going in the opposite direction in his own campaign, gripped by conspiratorial scenarios.

In this previous post, Stelmach decried how aggressive some Calgarians have become toward him –OMG, they are even using foul language. They are the big bad oil people who’d like to believe that the provincial resources are theirs and not owned by Albertans. That may be code for Dinning supporters since it was clear for all to see that Dinning was the status-quo candidate for corporate Calgary and big oil during the Tory leadership race.

On Monday night Stelmach is likely to win, if we follow what the pollsters are saying. But if he loses significantly in Calgary as many expect, he’ll be able to blame it on pseudo conservatives from Calgary: He’ll blame it on “Money and the Dinning vote.”

Premier Ed Stelmach has suggested that opposition to his botched royalty scheme is in fact anti-Albertan.

Stelmach said he’s butted heads with some executives over the claims, and noted “Albertans don’t appreciate” the aggressive line from energy companies when the public owns the resources.

“When I sit down with a number of companies and we have a good discussion, there’s a lot said in that room, some adjectives that I can’t use,” he said.

Stelmach is also suggesting that Alberta companies which oppose him or voice opposition to him are trying to usurp Alberta’s resources; that is to say, they are enemies of Albertan.

People in the energy sector in Alberta, whose agreed-upon contracts Stelmach broke, should not be granted the dignity of protesting Stelmach’s lack of honour.

The reign of King Eddie has begun.

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.

I am wondering about something of a trend. Surfing around blogs yesterday, I found a few “live blogging” entries for the Alberta leaders debate the night before. Joel Krom, Daveberta (the intrepid young cybersquatter who took on the premier) and Calgarygrit, who is not even in the same time zone as the debate, are examples.

The debate was televised on three different networks, it was broadcasted on radio and on the internet. In short, if you had access to a computer, you could listen or watch the debate anywhere in the world. So what is the point of “live blogging” for something that everyone can see or hear at the exact same time?

Is providing one’s seat-of-the-pants, immediate impressions from a screen (not impressions from being present at an event where others can’t be) just plain hubris to have them out there? This debate was even more peculiar because there was no substance to analyse, just quotes and banal remarks that were obvious to anyone. Are we assuming that (their) blog readers are that dumb here? Or is it a lust for spin masked as cute editorialising?

6:45 PM: Kim Trynacity asked a question to Taft about health care. Taft gives a decent answer. Hinman responds, talking about incentives for hospitals? C’est quoi? Innovative ideas… sure. Ed Stelmach is talking about a health care high school…

Why would one want to read the instant, raw and undigested first impressions of someone else, however genius they might be(!), when they have no better vantage point than one does in one’s own living room —and miss the event itself in the process?

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.

“Ghost of Trudeau haunts Alberta’s Stelmach in election debate”

How is that for an overly-dramatic headline reporting on the Alberta leaders debate?

I guess the Canadian Press somehow has to figure out a way flog and sell the story of a very boring debate. If one can make Albertans appear to live in the past at the same time, that’s a bonus.

It’s not a ghost that haunts us. Puhlease! I am not sure people get out of hell that easily to begin with. But Albertans have memory: memories of lost jobs, houses, businesses and opportunity. Clear memory may well seem like obsession to our historically amnesiac friends at CP.

Rod Love offers his commentary after the Alberta Leaders Debate last night. It was posted more than two hours after the debate ended.

After reading the entry I am hoping that there is no huge sums of money changing hands between Rod and the Herald. But if there were, I am sure the whole arrangement was verbal.

6:32 Opening statements: Mason, NDP boilerplate. Stelmach, solid Tory stuff. (Needs a smaller knot in his tie. That’s bigger than my dog!). Hinman, bit of a shot at the Preem. Taft, over-coached, but not bad.

6:35 Questions: A question to one person followed by the main answer and three timed rebuttals is ok, but once the free-for-all starts, it doesn’t work. This is the TV stations phony attempt to encourage ‘interaction’. All it really encourages is yelling-at-the-guy-next to-you.

Advertisement break. First ad is about mental illness. Having just watched the first round of question/answers, I have no comment.

6:45 Health Care: Kevin Taft’s mother-in-law spent seven days in a closet in a hospital? He’s still married?

Mason wants more drugs. Amen to that. The Preem has clearly been told not to look at his opponents.

Mason and Taft spar. I sense friction there!

Stelmach: “young babies being treated here” As opposed to old babies?

Hinman has clearly been paid to say “Lethbridge”.

Election insider for sure. Rod was inside the Cabernet bottle.

Read the whole thing in order truly to appreciate political genius at work.