I Can Be A Senator

Finally I qualify for the Senate. And the news is that Harper is planning to appoint 18 new senators.

Eligibility to Be a Canadian Senator
To be appointed to the Canadian Senate, a person must be
at least 30 years old
be a resident of the province or territory they represent own property worth at least $4000 in the province and have a personal net worth of at least $4000.

My partner and I bought a house this summer, which has been a harrowing yet exciting experience. One of the reasons I wasn't blogging regularly, and the reason this blog will be offline for the next week over Xmas. I am finally moving into my house.

We bought the house when the market went down. Our landlord decided, too late, to sell his house and it was way out of our price range. We decided that it was time to buy a house, after all a house has value, and our mortgage was just slightly more than what we pay in rent, and rent always increases.

And I discovered we were able to scrap together the 5% downpayment to get CHMC backed mortgage.

The house we bought is not on the southside, which is where I was born and preferred to live but the Old Strathcona area is way overpriced.

So we got a house in the Centre of the city by Commonwealth Stadium. So I move from one NDP riding; Edmonton Strathcona to another NDP riding; Edmonton Highlands.

We were supposed to take possession in the middle of October but due to the owners not leaving in time we got it at the begining of November. And for the past month and a half we have been renovating it.

And that is a tale in itself. But for another day.

Suffice it to say that I am over 30, and now qualify as a property owner to be a Senator. It's the Alberta dream, well the dream for some Albertans like my old nemisis Link Byfield.

If Harper appoints me to the Senate I promise to continue to fight for its abolition.

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Sex, Religion and Violence

I love that as a header. In Alberta yet. It comes from this CP wire story that ran over the weekend. And it's all about right wing homophobe Craig Chandler.

An ugly internal dispute over sex, religion and violence erupted within the Alberta Conservative party Saturday, ending up with a candidate being ousted and Premier Ed Stelmach saying the reasons for the "difficult" decision must remain confidential.

Where was the violence in all this? He was denied the right to be a candidate.Sex and Religion sure I can see but 'violence'? Where's the violence? Except in over active imaginations of reporters. This was a bloodless purge of 'fightin' Craig Chandler the pugilistc politician.


Edmonton Journal Leg reporter Graham Thompson equates poor Craig Chandler with being bashed like a poor baby seal on the weekend. Well actually he equates it with the Sopranos.

It was like a Mafia hit gone wrong.

What should have been done quickly and bloodlessly months ago ended up being done messily with a baseball bat last weekend.

Officials with the Alberta Progressive Conservatives bludgeoned to death the political career of Craig Chandler in a meeting room of a Red Deer Hotel on Saturday. It took 21/2 hours for the officials to bash away at Chandler's history and credibility before rejecting him as a candidate for Calgary-Egmont.

By the time they were done, there was so much blood on the carpet it's a wonder someone didn't think to put down a plastic sheet beforehand.

Don't any of these guys watch The Sopranos?

What's so puzzling about all this isn't that the Conservatives whacked Chandler but that they took so long to do it. And I don't mean the 21/2 hours of brass knuckles behind closed doors on Saturday.

The Tories could have saved themselves and Chandler a lot of grief if months ago they had taken him aside and warned him off. They could have simply told him that he wasn't welcome because while he might be a "conservative" they didn't think there was much "progressive" about him. Furthermore, if he managed to win the nomination, Premier Ed Stelmach wasn't going to sign his papers.

Chandler says he would have appreciated the warning.

"Someone could have taken me aside and told me," he said in an e-mail exchange on Monday.

It's not as if Chandler was a stranger to the PCs. He has a long and loud history of involvement with right-wing political movements including the federal Reform party and the Alberta Alliance. He is a social conservative, at times belligerently so.

More to the point, he has a long history of making inflammatory comments, often against homosexuality. He got in trouble with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and earlier this year posted an apology on his radio program's website agreeing to "cease and desist" from saying homosexuals are "sick, diseased or mentally ill" or that they are "wicked or dangerous."

It was brought on by his stacking and winning the nomination in Calgary Egmont, but the nail in his political coffin was this Human Rights Ruling last week.

An Alberta man who has pressed for five years to get an anti-gay letter branded as hate literature won a victory Friday with a human rights commission ruling that said it broke provincial law and may even have played a role in the beating of a gay teenager.

The letter, written by Stephen Boissoin and published in the Red Deer Advocate in 2002, carried the headline "Homosexual agenda wicked" and suggested gays were as immoral as pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps.

Darren Lund, a high school teacher in Red Deer at the time, complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission after the teenager was beaten in the city two weeks after the letter was published.

In Friday's ruling, commission panel chairwoman Lori Andreachuk said both Boissoin and the Concerned Christian Coalition to which he belonged broke provincial human rights law by likely exposing gays to hatred and contempt.

During the panel's hearing earlier this year, Boissoin testified that Craig Chandler - a former CEO of the coalition who recently won a provincial Progressive Conservative nomination in Calgary - was aware of and supported what he was doing.

Chandler posted a formal apology on the coalition's website about the letter last January after a separate complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Tory officials are scheduled to review Chandler's nomination on Saturday.

The implication in the news reporters and pundits comments was that this was the Night of the Long Knives for the Social Conservative Right Wing in the PC's. Unlikely or they would have gotten rid of Oberfuerher Ted Morton.


Some bloggers say this shows how undemocratic the internal politics of the PC political apparatus is. In fact Craig Chandler sold more memberships, and stacked the nomination meeting with his supporters. Which is far more 'undemocratic' then ousting him cause he does not meet Uncle Ed's 'progressive' standards.

The fact is he should never have been allowed to run if they were going to deny him his nomination, and that has raised the hew and cry from bloggers left and right. But what did they expect why are they surprised at this apparent anti-democratic action by a Party that has ruled this One Party State for thirty six years.

Well because Uncle Ed blundered badly. Unlike King Ralph and his advisors, who pulled folks aside in the back rooms and told them whether they could run or not, Uncle Ed made this public. He wants to send a message that the Party is for All Albertans not just the radical right. Which does not explain his making Morton a Cabinet Minister, since he too represents the radical right. And Morton has campaigned long and hard against Gay Rights, just as Chandler has.

Like I said it is being equated with a Night of the Long Knives for the radical right in the PC's. But is it?

This is all for show, Chandler is an easy target, Morton isn't. There is going to be less fall out from kicking Chandler out than there would have been if Morton hadn't been given a Cabinet position. And considering how Morton is blundering, and dependent on the next election, he may not be in cabinet next time around.

Why is everyone surprised? This is typical of political parties that dominate power in other One Party States. Just look at Putin's election victory in newly 'democratic' Russia over the weekend.


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Grizzly Death

Thanks to efforts of environmentalists and Bill Bonko the Liberal MLA, who acted on my suggestion that environmentalists buy Grizzly Hunt lottery licenses and not use them to protest the hunt, the annual Alberta sport hunt (massacre) of Grizzlies was ended. But Grizzlies are still endangered. There are now only 345-500 of them left in the province.

Unfortunately the department in charge of declaring them an endangered species is run by the Great white-hunter reactionary Ted Morton.

Alberta wants kids to get hunting

Declaration of protected spaces is not on his agenda either as he promotes sustainable resource development, which means more intrusion and encroachment into Grizzly habitat for industrial development.

Alberta suspended the annual spring grizzly hunt for three years in 2006 when initial numbers suggested the population was well below the 1,000 bears that had previously been estimated.

But grizzlies are still dying from what biologists term "human-caused mortality." They say that must be addressed soon if grizzlies are to survive.

"We've suspended the hunt, but hunting really isn't the issue," says mountain park carnivore expert Mike Gibeau.

Most grizzlies are shot in self-defence, or are mistaken for black bears. Some are killed legally by aboriginal hunters, others are shot by poachers or thrill-killers.

Some die in highway or railway accidents. Some are destroyed when they become nuisance bears and pose a threat to public safety by barging into people's yards to feast on everything from garbage and grain to apples and pet food.

The national parks aren't safe havens for grizzlies, either. More than 50 have died in Banff, Yoho, Kootenay and Jasper since 1990, mostly in highway and railway accidents or because they posed a threat.

Many Albertans believe that if Alberta loses its grizzlies, it loses the wilderness. The grizzly is seen as an icon of the wild, but more importantly, it is an umbrella species. If its space is protected, other plants and animals will have space to thrive as well.

Officially, grizzlies are considered "a species that may be at risk."

But the Alberta Endangered Species Conservation Committee recommended in 2002 that grizzlies should be designated a "threatened" species under the provincial Wildlife Act. That was based on estimates that there were only 1,000 grizzly bears left in Alberta.

The government has yet to move on that recommendation despite recent surveys that now suggest the number could be less than half that.

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development established a 15-member Grizzly Bear Recovery Team to study the issue and draft a strategy to ensure grizzlies aren't wiped out, as they have been in neighbouring Saskatchewan and jurisdictions further east.

The team presented its report and recommendations in 2005. Sustainable Resource Development Minister Ted Morton is expected to announce his department's response to the plan in the near future. Critics say implementing the plan is long overdue.

Grizzlies live in a narrow band along the province's western boundary, primarily between Highway 16 and Highway 3.

Recent DNA testing has produced estimates that there are about 180 bears in that area, outside the mountain parks, and about 160 bears inside the parks, for a total of about 340 grizzlies. Counts of bears south of Highway 3 and north of Highway 16 haven't been completed, but those areas are not expected to yield high numbers.

"We've been far too casual about the shootings and the deaths of bears," laments Jim Pissot of Defenders of Wildlife Canada. "Now that we're aware that there are far fewer than 500, the onus is on the minister to take immediate steps to protect habitat and bears."

Bear biologists say roads are the biggest factor in grizzly deaths. Most human-caused deaths occur within 500 metres of a road.

As a Republican from California I am sure Mr. Morton would appreciate the Alberta revision of the American second amendment;


























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Rural Boots

Here is why Farmer Ed our unelected Premier is falling behind in support from his rural roots.

Albertans protest approval of seismic testing in Marie Lake

He can blame his competitor for the Premier, Ted Morton, for some of this.

Sustainable Resource Development Minister Ted Morton is right about one thing. The province has to reform the way it sells oil and gas leases if it wants to avoid more battles like the one over proposed oil extraction on Marie Lake.

Currently, the energy department sells a lease with no regard for environmental issues or community concerns. In fact, the department doesn't even have to notify landowners that a lease has been sold in their area.

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Transparency Alberta Style

It has not been a good week for Alberta CEO Ed Stelmach, his regime has failed to be transparent as promised. Just another week of scandal for the tired old Tories.

NDP say Alberta Energy and Utilities Board aware of spying on power line opponents

EUB coverup shocking

Fire AEUB directors, Mason urges

And it just gets better. The party of rural Alberta screws rural Albertans. And the guy doing the screwing is non other than the California Born, Republican wannabe,and Herr professor of the Calgary School; Ted Morton. A guy who ran for the Premiers job appealing to the social conservative rural base of the Tory party.

Like Marie Lake, everything is for sale in this oil-rich province

NIMBY bites Premier Stelmach

Time to review industrial development, Tory MLA says

Alberta’s sustainable resources minister can’t guarantee seismic testing won’t hurt pristine Marie Lake and says he won’t release other seismic studies supporting the decision to allow the tests.

Still, he conceded, damage is possible. “Sure, it’s a question of risk management. But as I said this has been done on six other lakes with no evidence of adverse effects.”

Morton said the government has the legal right to reject seismic testing applications, but to shut off the exploratory process that early wouldn’t be fair to the company and wouldn’t make sense. His department noted that 34 other lakes have been tested in a similar manner in the last five years, and would not provide details of what took place in the other 28 cases.

The public has no reason to trust the government if it won’t even release the studies that support its decision, said Marie Lake resident Hal Bekolay.

“I can’t use the language I want to use to describe this,” he said. “But what it shows me is their complete lack of caring. It’s unbelievable that people we’ve elected choose to do this to us.” Now local residents want their MLA, Tory Denis Ducharme, to back up his earlier complaint about the testing by crossing the floor and sitting with another party or as an independent, said Bekolay.

Anywhere else in Canada and this would cry out for a comment from Democracy Watch. But in Alberta it's business as usual.

NDP condemns Suncor exec's gov't job

NDP question Suncor executive's appointment

Alberta defends decision to appoint Suncor executive as assistant deputy minister

EDMONTON (CP) _ The Alberta government is defending its decision to appoint a Suncor Energy executive as assistant deputy minister of its oilsands sustainable development secretariat.

Bart Johnson, a spokesman for the Treasury Board, says the government has set up safeguards against any conflict of interest.

Johnson says Heather Kennedy can‘t buy or sell any Suncor shares during her two-year appointment and must excuse herself from any decisions pertaining to Suncor.

He said Suncor will continue paying Kennedy during her two years with the government, but the province will reimburse the oilsands company.

NDP Leader Brian Mason has suggested Kennedy‘s appointment shows just how far the Progressive Conservatives have crawled into the pockets of big oil.

The oilsands secretariat reports to the Treasury Board.

And while we weep for the lack of democracy in the Banana Republic of Alberta, one of the last One Party States in the world, it just keeps getting worse....

Oil royalties going down?

Report Says Alberta Losing Oil Money

Alberta's oil royalties could drop: report

Not only do we sell off our resources at fire sale prices, Albertans could be taken to the cleaners by both Big Oil and the Federal Government while our tin pot Tory tyranny twiddles its thumbs.

In his study for Alberta Energy, Calgary-based consultant Pedro van Meurs said the proposal – which would allow companies to calculate royalty payments on a choice of either the finished synthetic crude product or the tar-sands bitumen from which it is extracted – could lead to two significantly different outcomes.

The companies being offered the new plans, Suncor and Syncrude, have until this year to decide which to opt into.

If the companies opt for royalties based on synthetic crude, Alberta’s royalty rates will be 8% higher than if it opts for a rate based on unprocessed bitumen, says Van Meurs.

If Alberta allows them to choose the latter, recent changes to federal tax laws mean the federal take will increase while Alberta’s take decreases, he indicates.

“It is very obvious that Alberta is faced with a very high level of royalty reduction, when under the Suncor and Syncrude terms companies opt for a switch to bitumen values from SCO values,” he notes.

He said the switch “will result in a drop of about 8% in the overall government take. However, that drop is only experienced by Alberta, the federal share actually goes up, since royalties are now deductible for tax purposes.

While Stelmach's blustered and fumed over the forces of Kyoto at the Premiers meeting last week, the reality is that under Klein, and now Stelmach, Alberta's oil resources are being sold off on a future promise. In reality the royalty regime in the province benefits big oil and everyone but Albertans.

There is no nasty Federal NEP that can be blamed for this, just tired old AlbertaTories, in the pockets of big oil.

It not been a good week for Stelmach who should have been basking in the glory of his victory over the discombobulated gaggle of Premiers who could not save the planet due to their limited provincial narcissism.

Stelmach is rumored to be considering a fall election, while realistically it probably won't be held in the winter but next spring.

Of course considering how badly he has botched his first six months in office an election sooner rather than later might be the only thing that will save his regime. For a short time. But like the former One Party that was in Power for 35 years, this one is bound to go. It's the law of entropy as well as history.



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Creationism Is Not Science

Creationists continue to make ludicrous claims to being science, when in fact they are simply another example 0f myth and folktale.

BIG VALLEY - Alberta will soon have a museum filled with "scientific evidence" that the flood in the Book of Genesis and other biblical events actually happened, and that people walked the Earth at the same time as dinosaurs.

Canada's first creationist museum will open June 5 in Big Valley as "a scientific and biblically based alternative to the evolutionary view of Earth history" put forward by the Royal Tyrrell Museum 60 kilometres to the south, said Harry Nibourg, founder of the Big Valley Creation Science Museum.

Creationist museum causes stir

- A Kentucky museum where Adam and Eve share exhibit space with dinosaurs is drawing criticism from groups of science educators as it nears completion.

The $27 million Creation Museum tells a biblical version of the Earth's history, asserting that the planet is just a few thousand years old and man and the giant lizards once coexisted.

These are not museums they are entertainment centres, like West Edmonton Mall. Consumer culture for Christians.

In the case of Alberta they have deliberately exploited the popularity of the Royal Tyrell Museum to pursue their religionist assault on reason.

These of course are the folks that supported Ted Morton for Premier.


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