Mark Holland is a friend of Alberta oil patch.

There is an interesting little article from the Canadian Press that ran in The Winnipeg Free Press today under the headline " Brash MP risks wrath of Albertans " The story concerns Liberal natural resources critic Mark Holland and his upcoming visit to the province of Alberta in early March which will include a tour of the oil sands. The entire premise of the article is that Mark better watch out because he might get tarred and feathered by Albertans upset that he plans on nationalising the oil sands or shutting them down should the Liberals come to power. Premier Ed Stelmach and Ralph Klein have both warned Holland to stay out of Alberta's business. Many fear a " hidden agenda to take control " I wish. The Alberta Oil sands are an environmental nightmare destroying the land, exhausting Alberta's water supply, burning massive amounts of natural gas in order to create a product that when burned does even more damage to the environment. American oil companies run the place and take an ever increasing amount for America's glutinous need. They care not for the future of Alberta or for Canada and take our natural resource for a relative pittance. The oil industry should of course be nationalized immediately. This unfortunately has never been what Mr Holland has said. Holland like his boss Mr Dion pitch a policy of sustainable development. He is going to Alberta in an effort to work with the industry to clean up the carbon emissions. This doesn't have to cost the industry. On the contrary the idea is to get ahead of the curve and profit from new clean technologies that can be marketed to the world. The Liberals seem to think that this is where the future lies. The oil sector would be wise to embrace this future rather then a business as usual approach that denotes a future where more and more people ( Including in Alberta ) are talking about making some changes. In other words Holland seems to be saying work with us to clean up your act and maybe we can even profit from it or Canadians will force you to clean up your act.

Dion shows leadership

Stephane Dion is refusing to back down from his decision to let two provisions of the Anti-terrorism act die next week. He does this despite massive and hysterical opposition from the Conservatives, many in his own party and even the senate. The absolute panic shown by the powers that be is a little bit concerning. Clearly the security establishment was caught off guard when Dion decided to let these draconian powers sunset and have gone on an absolute offensive in the media and in the house to have the Liberals change course. Dion to his complete credit has steadfastly refused to bow to this pressure. The fact that there seems to be so many who think that we need to keep these provisions and that they are so able to dominate and influence the debate is the scary part. Why are they so concerned? Are they afraid of looking soft to America? Do they see this as a setback to achieving their integrated security state? Regardless of these fascists both within and without of the Liberal party, (those within should be purged.) Dion stands tall. That's leadership. Harpers attempts at tying this in with the Air-India Inquiry are laughable and it smells like the RCMP is in bed with the Conservatives again trying to make the Libs look bad. Suddenly they needed to use this provision? The Supreme court didn't rule last week. The've known for awhile they could use these provisions and haven't felt the need. This is BS and it will come back to harm Harper among Indo-Canadians whom he seems to think are completely gullible.

Swing voters let down Canada.

I've long been an admirer of Canada's middle. The long suffering moderates patiently sitting through long winded rants from partisans of all sides and trying in most cases to reach some sort of middle ground. Now I'm not talking about the "what are you gonna do for me voters". Those who care little for politics and simply vote for whomever will give them the biggest tax cut or handout. Every democracy is burdened with such folks. I'm talking about the genuine fence sitter. The voter who says "tell me your platform and if I think it has merit and it's good for Canada and it's better than the other guy's platform, I'll vote for you. I don't care about labels, I don't care about left or right ." These people are sincere and generally very well informed. In most cases they are very adept at sniffing out ideologues. Although I admire these people I cannot be one of them. I am what I am and feel very strongly that without Conservatives in the world we would all be holding hands and singing and basically enjoying our Utopia. I don't even want to hear the other side. I am an Ideologue. Just like Stephen Harper. If I were Prime Minister I would immediately pull all the troops out of Afghanistan because I would need them in Alberta where I would be totally nationalising the oil patch. I would stack the courts and the senate and the committees that select the judges with people who thought exactly like me. And I would end free trade. In other words the stock market would crash and the US would invade almost immediately. That is why swing voters tend to stay away from guys like me and historically from guys like Mr. Harper. And make no mistake Harper is an ideologue. From his reckless trashing of the wheat board because he doesn't like monopolies, never mind if it's what farmers want, to his cancelling of Liberal Environment programs because he didn't believe in the science only to renew many of them later when he saw the light or maybe the polls. Stephen Harper is way out there. Don't forget he doesn't even have a majority. His Idealism is perhaps most obvious when it comes to law and order issues. His disdain for the courts and those he considers activist judges is well documented. And now he is stuffing the courts full of conservative activist judges. Mostly they believe that everyone should go to jail forever. Especially poor people. Also he is stuffing the committees that recommend judges full of, you guessed it, conservative party hacks and cops! Yeah cops picking judges, great idea. Mr Harper isn't stopping there though he's also stuffing the parole board with Tories including the wife of Vic Toews' Buddy. Listen I understand why you guys may have voted for Harper at first. You wanted to punish the Liberals and with the grand old moderate PC party gone you didn't have much choice. Besides Harper was acting all "look at me I've gone to the middle". I think now it's obvious he hasn't. Canada's swing voters have a job to do. Don't let him buy you with a tax cut. You're better than that. Canada is great because you don't let me run it and because you don't usually let guy's like Stephen Harper run it either.

Minority Governments put everybody in bed

Politicians of every stripe these days seem to be bending over backwards to tell us they don't want an election at the same time they are clearly preparing for one. The common wisdom it seems is that Canadians don't want another election and will punish whichever party causes one. I am one Canadian who cant wait to get to another election. Under the current political climate in Canada and with the polling numbers sitting close to where they were at the time of the last election it doesn't seem like much is poised to change.I would suggest that many significant things could happen. The first and worst of all scenarios of course would be for Stephen Harper to cobble together an unholy alliance of western rednecks and Quebec nationalists, convince enough soccer moms that crime is out of control and gain his much coveted majority. Goodbye Canada, Turn off the lights on your way out, pass the poison Kool-aid. Nobody wants to think of that nightmare for long so lets move on. A second possibility of course would be a Liberal Majority. If swing voters were to recognise just how weak Harper is on the environment, if the 401 area held and farmers turned against Harper to save the wheat board then the liberals could squeak out a majority. This would give Stephane Dion a chance to prove he really does have a vision for a progressive new Canada and it's not all sloganeering. A third possibility and my personal favorite is a Liberal minority with the NDP holding the balance of power. Or perhaps even an official coalition majority Government. Dion could make Layton Environment minister.The numbers were very close for this scenario during the Martin minority and I have held out hope ever since. The NDP would pull the liberals in the right direction on Afghanistan, child care and health care but the liberals would protect the charter and make sure the NDP wouldn't take the golden goose to the guillotine. A fourth case of course would be another Tory minority. If that happens we simply try again.

Dion gets it right.Pulls Liberals left

Liberal leader Stephane Dion surprised many in Ottawa Friday when the liberals announced they would not support Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's motion to extend two controversial provisions of Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act. The provisions allowed police to hold terrorism suspects without warrants and to force people they believe to have knowledge of terrorist plots to spill the beans behind closed doors. Neither provision has ever been used and both were subject to a five year sunset clause. The five years are up and those two provisions are gone unless the house votes to extend them. The NDP, The Bloc and now the Liberals have said they will vote against the motion. This is great news for many reasons. Firstly it was bad policy. Holding people without arrest warrants and forcing them to testify in secret trials is not how you operate in a free country. Secondly it shows that Stephane Dion is moving the liberals in the right direction. They passed the Draconian Anti-Terrorism Act in the first place and as recently as last October were still behind the aforementioned provisions. Now they will let them die. Thirdly this bodes well for opponents of security certificates. These certificates allow immigrants to be held indefinitely without trial and have been used several times. Some of these men have turned to hunger strikes to bring attention to their lot and its brought attention alright. From Amnesty international. This law is shameful and so is the Anti-Terrorism Act. Perhaps Mr Dion if elected will take more steps to correct them.

Conservatives clueless on environment

Watching clips of new environment minister John Baird appearing before a Commons committee studying the clean air act and smugly telling us that the Tories were not even going to try to meet Kyoto targets through emissions-trading or any way else. I was astonished at how much these guys just don't get it. Polls are showing that the environment, it turns out is much more important to Canadians then conservatives thought and as a result they have pretended to have seen the light and gone green.Yet they still come out saying essentially the same thing they said before about Kyoto. It cant be done and the sky is falling. "Canadians do not want empty promises on a plan that we cannot achieve and they do not want our country to face economic collapse," Huffed Baird to the committee. If conservatives believe that the only way to reach Kyoto targets is to send the country into economic collapse then they are clearly not qualified to be running the country. Baird is just Rona Ambrose with a bad attitude and a junior high come-back.