Big Brother Ed

Well it seems that the suspicions of the landowners against a new high-voltage power line were true. The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board was spying on them. For those of you who live outside Alberta, the AEUB is the provincial government body responsible for rubber stamping energy industry (oil or otherwise) development approvals. This board, while holding hearings on a proposed power line, has done everything it can to avoid hearing the voice of the landowners affected by the development. It shut them out of the room, surrounded them with "security", and now we find out that they used taxpayer dollars to spy on taxpayers opposed to the development.

One wonders how many other people or groups that have been critical of government policy the Tory government has spied on. Since one of their hand picked boards had no compunction about spying on what amounts to political opponents, what other parts of the government are doing the same thing? I suspect that this is simply the first time the government has been caught using taxpayer dollars to spy on political opponents. It would seem that we are slowly becoming a police state where spies in the employ of the government look out for people who are "politically unreliable". Just more bullying from a government that has for at least the past 15 years bullied anyone that has disagreed with them. A sad time for Albertans is on its way.

Of course this is nothing new. The American heroes of much of the crop of Alberta Tories have beens spying on their own citizens for years. It takes no stretch of the imagination that the Alberta (and federal) Tories wouldn't take this page from the Bush and Co. playbook. This leave open the possibility that many political opponents of both the provincial and federal Conservatives who are being watched right now, either by municipal or RCM police, CSIS or private investigators in the employ of the government. These are not the actions of political parties invested in the democratic process. It also makes any talk of electoral reform from these parties ring hollow, since they can't even play within the current democratic framework without resorting to bully tactics to size and hold onto power.

So watch your backs out there Alberta, Big Brother Ed might be watching you!