daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

We hope you all enjoyed yesterday’s Gomery Day festivities. We sure did.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programing.

Cut to set of Channel 17 Broadcast News

News Anchor: “Good Morning and thank you for joining us.”

“In today’s bizarre news feature, the Alberta Legislature will be meeting this fall to pass what is commonly known in other provincial juristictions as ‘legislation,’ and participate in a even more bizarre ritual known as ‘Question Period.'”

“Our investigative reporters were not able to determine what shape or form this ‘legislation’ will take, but local officials are warning parents to bring their children in before dark and keep their animals in the safety of their back yards. If you see this elusive legislation, please contact your local police deparment immediately.”

“It is also being reported by an anonymous source within the Legislature that the fall session, which begins on November 15 and will run for two or three weeks, is starting just in time for the rural Tory MLA’s to bring their wives into the city for some Christmas shopping on the taxpayers tab.”

“We will keep you updated as this story unfolds.”

(FADE TO BLACK)

(End Scene)

We’re sitting here watching the Chretien press conference. And we’ve learned a number of things…

1. Jean and Aline Chretien like music. So does Michel Béliveau.

2. He really doesn’t like Paul Martin. Or Jean LaPierre. Or Stephen LeDrew. Or Stephen Harper. Or the NDP. He just about slagged everyone.

3. He’s either really really smart, or insane. The press conference was so random. Balls? Invading the United States? Wha?

4. Jean Chretien is WAAAAY more entertaining than Paul Martin.

arg. We should have been spending the morning writing papers, but instead we found ourselves sitting in front of the television watching CBC Newsworld’s coverage of the Gomery Report.

Watching QP right now.

As for the press conferences…

Jack Layton’s press conference was interesting. He now needs to be fairly careful in what he decides to do. He called the Liberals corrupt, so can he now save face if the NDP continues to prop up Mr. Martin’s minority government or will the NDP move to topple the Liberals.

Stephen Harper didn’t do a bad job. His press conference went well in our opinion. He was calm and not overly angry, which looked good.

The Prime Minister’s press conference wasn’t bad. He mentioned the Liberal Party as little as possible. He also had a good game for the most part, but we could tell he was getting tired come the end. He was starting to bumble by the end. We doubt Mr. Martin got very much sleep last night. He did fairly well in not answering questions about Jean Chretien, referring them to the Gomery Report. Gagliano=BANNED. $1.14 Million refunded…

Former Prime Minsiter Jean Chretien’s press conference is going to be held at 5pm eastern time (3pm Alberta time). That one should be interesting…

and… can someone explain to us why is Jean LaPierre in Cabinet, again?

BANNED.

Last night, on Halloween, we joined around 100-200 University of Alberta students on the annual Trick or Eat event, collecting donations for the campus foodbank in the neighbourhoods around campus (Belgravia, Windsor Park, Garneau). It was alot of fun and felt like being a little kid again! Our group alone collected about 3 bins of food! Also… lots of candy!

We thought about dressing up as our favorite Whitehouse character, Scooter, but we didn’t think anyone would get it. So, we dressed up as a business student instead. 😉

Also…. our advanced copy never showed and Johnny G. wasn’t answering his cell, so….

gomery gomery bo bomery banana fana fo fomery. fee fie fo fomery… GOMERY!

We’re sitting here waiting for our advanced copy of the Gomery Report to arrive via Fedex… it hasn’t arrived yet. We’re only waiting 1 more hour before we call Johnny G. to see where our copy is.

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can.“

Sydney Smith
1771-1845, Writer and Clergyman

Though we deplore AIDS and Cancer jokes, we are less than partial to the odd tsunami joke…

(Props to Nastyboy for the quiz linkage)

We went to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra last Friday (with our noses tilted slightly higher).

It was nice. Bill Eddins, the conductor, rocks. He was all over the place. It was entertaining to just watch him.

(Also, Canada Post has earned a spot in our naughty book this past week. No Christmas card for them this year.)

Happy Halloween.

The Green Party of Canada is holding a logo design contest… we couldn’t help but join the fun!

Here’s what we came up with…

The Turino Winter Olympics are going to be held February 10-26, 2006.

We’re looking forward to it.

…we posted the leaked Alberta rebate cheques designs.

Being the political nerds we are, we thought we’d look back at some of the results from last November’s Provincial Election.

Today, we look at the results from two of Alberta’s well-known Rocky Mountain towns: Banff and Jasper. Though this post shouldn’t be mistaken for a “cognative analysis” of any kind, we hope you enjoy the charts we made. 😉

We didn’t find it very surprising that Banff voters supported a more right-wing party, but we were a little surprised at the political plurialism found in the beautiful mountain town of Jasper… we knew there was a reason why we like Jasper more than Banff…

A quick look at the electoral history of Jasper, in the West Yellowhead riding, will show that it has elected opposition MLA’s in the past. New Democrat Jerry Doyle (1989-93) and Liberal Duco VanBinsbergen (1993-97). In 1997, VanBinsbergen was edged out by Tory Ivan Strang. In 2001, Strang cruised to re-election and was also re-elected in 2004. So, West Yellowhead has a tradition of sometime electing opposition MLA’s…

Banff, in the Banff-Cochrane riding, voted fairly solidly Tory, though we were very surprised at the strength of the Alberta Green vote in Banff, edging out the Liberals for second place.

Not that was wanted to prove anything critical with this post. We just like making charts.

AA = Alberta Alliance
AG = Alberta Greens
LIB = Alberta Liberals
ND = Alberta NDP
PC = Progressive Conservative

Nice to see that 10 years after the boom began, they’re finally thinking about coordinating development in the Oil Sands…

…in a press release from Alberta’s Public Affairs Bureau and Alberta Energy released the other day titled “Province Developing a plan to Coordinate Oil Sands Development.”

Also…

“The environment is our Mother ship, and it is important that we focus on sustainable development that preserves the natural resources and beauty of our province.”
– Alberta Environment Minister Guy Boutillier

Welcome to the Mother Ship…