It would seem that Imperial Oil's all upset that the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans have rescinded a water permit for its $8 billion Kearl tar sands mine near Ft. McMurray. The DFO cited the recent court judgment that ruled that both the federal and provincial governments hadn't explained fully why GHG emissions weren't significant. So the question I have is does Harper and his cabinet know about this? It seems like something they'd have stopped if they knew about it, given the cozy relationship between Conservatives and the oil industry in Alberta.

My recent vacation allowed me to catch up on my leisure reading. This means that I've finally finished reading Gwynne Dyer's Future Tense. Now a bit about the book before I begin, written in 2004 prior to G.W. Bush "winning" his second term Dyer uses the book to postulate about the Iraq war in terms of both the Islamicist and neo-conservative agendas. Now I have to admit that I enjoy Dyer's writing style and try to read his columns as regularly as I can on his web site (since he sometimes has not nice things to say about neo-cons, he doesn't get any play in the Southam news chain). Now Dyer puts some things forward in his book that we all take at face value now, given the fact the Bush administration has finally came clean that they lied through their teeth about Iraq, but at the time the book was published, was not common knowledge to people who get their information from the main stream media. Even so the book is a good read and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in international affairs. The part I'm going to focus on is his theory of why neo-cons do what they do, especially the Bush brand of neo-cons, specifically why the Iraq invasion.

There has been some buzz in the blogosphere about the federal Tories and their on line keep-on-message database. So one night while I was on vacation and having problems sleeping I went exploring on the Tory web site. The messaging database is actually very simple and similar to message box type messages given out by other parties to their candidates to help them put forward their party's message. Nothing really special there other than these message boxes aren't to help candidates stay on topic, but to help Conservative supporters stay on message. Again, if the Tories want to come across as micromanaging control freaks, I say let them. Going through the various topics that you can get the True Word on, there's nothing there that we don't already get from the little media contact Tory MP's have. All the database lets you do is type in your postal code to get a list of local call-in shows to spew off the talking points at.

It's been a nice vacation and I hate to see it end. Both Mrs. Evil and I have enjoyed our stay in Montreal, though we both have had colds for most of the trip. We spent the first copule of days resting, though we did take in a Habs game on the Saturday (Mrs. Evil is a Montreal fan). I spent Sunday and Monday in bed, partly due to my cold, and partly do to my being burnt out from the previous couple of months. Mrs. Evil went shopping on these days at the shops along St. Laurent and St. Denis.

My recent post-election slowdown in blogging has been to things being busy at work combined with post-election burn out on my part. However spring break is upon us and Mrs. Evil and myself are off on vacation starting tomorrow. We'll be flying to Montreal to further explore this great country of ours, not to mention a stop at Schwartz's for some fine smoked meat.

Much ink has been used in the analysis of the recent Alberta provincial general election, so I won't say much about that other than to register my disappointment with the results. What I am going to comment on is a comparison of Alberta with other one party states that exist or have existed. This is notable in that when the next "election" is called, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives will have been in power longer than the Communist party was in power in East Germany (and most of Eastern Europe for that matter).

It would seem that the Tories just cant stop using public institutions to run their campaign. In this instance, a member of the Chinook Health Region board ran an advertisement for the local Tory, as a board member. Now at first blush this isn't surprising since the regional health boards in Alberta are appointed by the government and are Alberta's version of the senate, a place to reward party hacks. However, the regional health boards are public institutions, payed for by the taxpayer and as such have no place campaigning for any particular party.

Back here I mentioned that half the candidates in Calgary-Egmont, myself included, were not mentioned in a riding profile piece on the CBC. Now, given that the taxpayer funded public broadcaster had just given three candidates free publicity without mentioning the rest of us other than a throwaway at the end of the report, this struck me as being a little unbalanced. So I wrote a letter, email really, to the Calgary Eyeopener and cc'd the CBC ombudsman. That email elicited this response which I will now dissect.

I've been off busy on the campaign trail and so haven't had a lot of time to blog. With a few moments available, I can now put out some observations that I've been meaning to commit to electrons for a bit now.

My first observation is a simple one about the leaders' debate. One has to wonder about Ed Stelmach's performance if commentators in the media are calling the debate a win for Stelmach because expectations for him were so low. That's a bit like saying a hockey team that lost 1-5 won the game because it was a bantam team playing an NHL team. Yes we didn't expect them to do well, but a loss is a loss. If you're leader is so weak that you have to call a lackluster performance a win, you're getting desperate.

All I can think of when I read this about a shortage of poll workers is this: What, did the Conservatives run out of members able to work the polling stations?