Author: Dave Cournoyer

(okay, maybe the picture is a little exagerated for Alberta…)

From the Globe and Mail…

Alberta eases child-hiring rules

By TERRY WEBER
Friday, June 24, 2005 Updated at 1:06 PM EDT
Globe and Mail Update

“Restaurant owners in Alberta are now able to hire children as young as 12 without first getting provincial approval as a result of what government officials call a “procedural change” in employment practices.

But labour groups have charged that the switch leaves vulnerable children at the mercy of an industry already difficult to police and say it amounts to a little more than concession a sector desperate for cheap labour.

“We’re horribly opposed to this,” Jason Foster, director of policy for the Alberta Labour Federation, said.

“We think this is bad public policy, bad for children, bad for customers and bad for Alberta’s reputation.””

Google hits to this site from yesterday:

– “fort mcmurray” “sweetheart”
– the firetruck stalks its prey (4 times!)
– a solitary killer the fire truck
– “a solitary killer the firetruck”

And yes, Daveberta is the 1# google hit for the fire truck stalks its prey.

Seeing how every blogger in blogdom is going to be either salivating or foaming at the mouth over this one, I’m not going to write a huge post.

I’ll refer you to Scott Tribe for a good post on the suprise final budget vote.

“Little Bunny Foo Foo,
Hopping through the forest
Scooping up the field mice
And boppin’ ’em on the head”

(Photo care of the CBC)

Yesterday, I linked to this article from the Globe and Mail, which reported on a prediction by Cambridge Energy Research Associates which suggested that the world is on the verge of an ‘oil glut.’

This post generated some interesting dicussion.

Mark from Section 15 pointed me to two interesting websites which discuss oil issues. Check them out here and here.

Tim from Ahab’s Whale has also joined in with some interesting comments on where the price of oil may be heading.

Aaron from Grandinite linked to an interesting article in the comment section.

Aaron also posted an interesting quote from the article:

“There has been a growing realization on the part of major oil producers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia that oil is not priced in dollars but rather dollars are priced in oil. The reality underpinning this epiphany is the fact that oil has “value”, or “money’s worth” – in exchange for commodities, goods and services – whereas the financial object we are accustomed to think of as the “dollar” is merely a “claim over value”, or IOU issued by the US Federal Reserve Bank.

If we look at the current structure of the global energy market, we are conditioned to think that the “big bad wolf” is a “cartel” of OPEC members. However, the fact of the matter is that while there has indeed been a cartel extracting extraordinary profits from energy markets in recent years, this has consisted of intermediary investment banks and energy traders, who control the global market platform on which oil is traded and benchmark prices are set. In other words, the derivative tail has been wagging the oil market dog.”

“One of the men I know who’s a good philanthropist says money is like fertilizer. If you pile it up, it starts to smell. But if you spread it around, you can grow some beautiful things.”

– Seymour Schulich

Yesterday, Mr. Schulich donated $25 Million to the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Engineering. The Faculty has been renamed the ‘Schulich School of Engineering.’

I liked the quote.

More at the CBC

This afternoon, Advanced Education Minister Dave Hancock appointed defeated Tory MLA Mary O’Neill to the Board of Govenors of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT).

In 1997, O’Neill was first elected in the St. Albert riding by only 16 votes over Liberal MLA Len Bracko (who served as MLA from 1993 to 1997). O’Neill defeated Bracko in a 2001 re-match, but was knocked-out of office by Liberal Jack Flaherty in 2004 by 410 votes.

O’Neill will join former Dunvegan Tory MLA Glen Clegg (MLA 1986-2001) as a political appointee on NAIT’s BOG.

I love how Tories foam at the mouth when this stuff happens in Ottawa, but do the same stuff at home. Typical.

First of all, the first time I read this article, I thought it said “ungulating plateau,” rather than “undulating plateau.” Imagine my confusion…two very different meanings. Anyway…

In the article from today’s Globe and Mail, Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Boston is predicting that the world is on the verge of an oil glut. Yes, that’s right. We have more oil than we know what to do with.

They also suggest “oil will remain higher than $55 for the rest of the decade.”

Instead, it projected an “undulating plateau,” extending for several decades.”

You can read the article here.

Any thoughts?

According to the Honourable Member for Medicine Hat, there’s a new blog in the blogosphere. This blog belongs to none other than Mr. Rick Mercer from Monday Report fame. Cool.

Check it out and what he did with the domain name of one of our FAVORITE Members of Parliament.

David Wilkins, was sworn in as US Ambassador to Canada today in Washington D.C.

Apparently, Mr. Wilkins turned down the ambassadorship to Chile in favour of Canada.

Interesting.

The second (ever) blog of the week is Ahab’s Whale. Ahab’s Whale is an entertaining and insightful blog written by three Canadians, Mister’s Tim Cooper, James MacDuff, and Mike McNair (of “The Inhabitant of London” fame).

According to their blog, they’re all working or studying in London, UK.

Check it out for some good posts!

The good people of daveberta rest their heads in remembrance of the greatness and proletarian grandeur that once was. It has been diagnosed that the parliamentary disease known as “hansardius extremius” has spread to the great nation once known as Holtopia.

The daveberta Ministry of Slightly Ridiculous Health Conditions will be sending remedial debate specialists to the ravaged 1 1/2 world nation.

(props to WK for the link)

As a political science student, this is one of the questions that had dogged and bothered me for the past number of years. How did politics get this bad? At what point did the debates in the House of Commons and the Provincial Legislatures degenerate into beer-hall level cheap personal insults and nasty heckling? When did the average person decide to tune out of politics? When did the House of Commons become a place for “politicians” rather than our “representatives?” When did elections become irrelevant to the average Canadian?

How can politics again become relevant to the average Canadian? Was it ever? Will it ever?

I can name off a number of reasons for why I believe people tune out of politics, and I will…

Part 1.

It’s no secret that our Provincial and Federal Assemblies are largely unreflective of the ballots cast.

In 2004, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives received 46.8% of the popular vote. Through the wonders of the first-part-the-post system, 46.8% translated into 74.7% of the seats in the Legislature (62 out of 83). Whereas the opposition Liberals received 29.4% of the popular vote, but only 19.3% of the seats (16 out of 83).

With the voter turnout at its lowest in Alberta history, 44.7% of Albertans exercised their democratic right to vote. That’s 894,591 out of 2,001,287 registered voters. Voter turnout was as low as 26.4% in Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo and 29.6% in Calgary Montrose. The highest turnout was 62.9% in Edmonton Riverview.

When translated from voter turnout, the results translate into 20.9% support for the PC’s and 13.1% for the Liberals. So, only 20.9% of eligible voters cast a vote for Ralph Klein’s PC’s. This is hardly a mandate in my mind.

The same imbalance can be seen in the Alberta results in the 2004 Federal election, where the Conservatives garnered 61.64% of the popular vote and 93% of the seats (26 out of 28). The Federal Liberals received 21.98% of the vote, but only 7% of the seats (2 out of 28). The NDP garnered 9% of the Alberta vote, which did not translate into any seats.

So, how do we solve this imbalance? I say overhaul the system completely. Do I know what the solution is? No. But it’s time we start looking at solutions.

(Dr. Harold Jansen from the University of Lethbridge has some interesting ideas).

It’s time to think out of the box and look past the partisan picture.

Let’s re-evaluate our expectations of our elected officials. Hold them accountable, hold them to higher standards, and call them on their political biases and bluffs.

(props to c-lo for the quiz)