daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

Though many had predicted that the four-term MLA would make the run, Edmonton-Centre MLA and Opposition Finance Critic/House Leader Laurie Blakeman announced today that she will not be seeking the leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party.

An actor and theater manager by trade, Blakeman was first elected in the downtown Edmonton constituency in 1997, and since then has been the bane of the largely male rural PC caucus who occupy a large portion of Ed Stelmach‘s front-bench.

Though I’m disappointed that Blakeman won’t be running, as she would have been a serious, outspoken, urban candidate who could have made an otherwise dull race interesting, I can fully understand why she isn’t joining the race. Currently in financial dire straights, the Alberta Liberals need a leader who can fundraise some serious cash over the next three years, something Blakeman honestly admits is not her strength.

Read Blakeman’s media release and statement announcing her intentions.

Declared candidates in the race to replace Kevin Taft include former Edmonton-McClung MLA Mo Elsalhy and current Calgary-Currie MLA Dave Taylor.

As Edmonton’s 27th Annual International Fringe Festival rages on through the next week of scorching hot summer weather, questions will inevitably be raised over 1) where to find show reviews, and 2) which ones to trust? Well, you’re going to have to figure out #2 on your own, but I can help you with #1. Here are a couple links to some review sites:

Official Fringe Website 30-second reviews
CBC Edmonton – Gilbert Bouchard’s Fringe Buffet
Edmonton Journal Reviews
Edmonton Sun Reviews
The Gateway: Cellmates: The Musical!, Hamlet (Solo)
Vue Weekly Reviews

I’ve only seen a couple of shows so far (including JEM ROLLS and CELLMATES: THE MUSICAL, but am planning to check out BUSTY RHYMES and HAMLET (SOLO) tomorrow). I’m also pleased to report that the 2008 Fringe Beer Gardens have met the gold star levels of the 2007 Fringe Beer Gardens.

UPDATE: SEE Magazine has amazingly reviewed every single Fringe show.

A new report (pdf) written and released by Amory Lovins and Imran Sheikh argues that the nuclear option as a dangerous, complicated, and not particularly reliable alternative to fossil fuels. The report also warns of the creation of millennial-lasting pollution and that the money and resources used developing the nuclear option could be more productively spent on renewable energy.

(h/t DeSmogBlog)

With temperatures rising above 30C in what are now the deepest days of August, the appropriately named 27th annual Edmonton International Fringe Festival – The Big Kahuna embraced the summer heat as it began this week.

Being the first Friday of Fringing, I decided to take it easy, enjoy the sun, the busking entertainment (including the always entertaining Be Arthurs), and of course… the food. As is the case for all of Edmonton’s summer festivals, Green Onion Cakes (with hot pepper sauce) are a staple (and they remain tasty). But, if it is cream of the iced variety that you crave, look beyond the Fringe grounds for your fix. I discovered through a quick investigation of most of the Fringe vendors that the average price of a regular cone sits around $4.00. But if you wander a block south of the Fringe grounds, you will discover an iced cream stand on the south side of Whyte Avenue sitting between Hudson’s and the Commie where you can purchase a two-scooped sugar cone for the great price of $3.75 (later this weekend, I will post a review of the beer selection at the always popular Fringe Beer Gardens).

In completing my Friday night, I joined a sold out crowd at B-Scene Studios to absorb JEM ROLLS‘ epic 8500 word monologue of a poem to the most wonderful and vacuous of all 20th century creations — the shopping mall. Rolls’ show was an incredibly fulfilling way to complete the first day of my 2008 Fringe experience and I would strongly recommend that everyone try and check it out.

Over the next week, I plan to see a number of shows — including 1UP, 25 Plays About… Love, Albertine Five Times, Cellmates: The Musical!, Cinderella, Killing Kevin Spacey, Sad Victoria’s Pelican Day, The Tool Tall Princess, and Rocket Sugar Factory. I’ll be posting some short reviews and updates of my 2008 Fringe adventures as the week progresses.

If you have any suggestions on shows feel free to post them below or send me an email.

How many Chinese do you suppose will be deported from Canada during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games?

BEIJING — Seven Canadians have been deported from China following a rash of pro-Tibetan protests in Beijing in recent days that has prompted Chinese authorities to tighten security further.

Steve Andersen, 28, from Edmonton, and Maude Cote, 28, from Montreal, along with a Tibetan-German woman were arrested by plainclothes police officers after they reportedly unfurled a Tibetan flag just after 3 p.m. Sunday in Beijing, just outside the southern entrance of Tiananmen Square.

A short time after those arrests, Mike Hudema, a prominent spokesman for Greenpeace in Alberta, was detained along with four other people from Edmonton and Vancouver in a Beijing hotel, their luggage thoroughly searched before being questioned individually in the basement.

The five Canadians who were detained at a Beijing hotel before subsequently being deported were identified as Mr. Hudema, 31, Jasmine Freed, 27, Paul Christopher Baker, 29, Denise Ogonoski, 26, and William Nelson, 26.

LINK

… the water company giving out free water filters.

This past week, EPCOR stopped by my house to test the neighbourhood water (Queen Alexandra is an older neighbourhood and apparently still has a few lead pipes), which was fine, but I was a little amused/concerned when I saw that the EPCOR water sample collector had left a complementary water filter for our use.

I’m generally a big supporter of tap water (as opposed to the scam which is bottled water), but I’m wondering if there’s something we should know that EPCOR isn’t telling us…

After passing a municipal law in June 2008 requiring all newly built or renovated buildings to install solar panels, an epic debate over this renewable energy law is now taking place in the City of Marburg.

Germany is aiming to slash their national greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

Times Online:

Joey Cheek, an American Olympic gold medallist who has been leading a campaign to stop China from trading arms with the Sudan, has been refused entry to the Beijing Games.

Cheek, who won gold in the men’s 500 metre speed skating event at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, has recruited nearly 400 Olympians and former Olympians worldwide to his cause, called Team Darfur, and was refused a visa at the Chinese embassy in Washington yesterday.

“Despite the fact that I’ve always spoken positively of the Olympic ideal, and never called for a boycott or asked an athlete to break an IOC rule, my visa was revoked less than 24 hours before my scheduled departure,” Cheek said. “The denial of my visa is a part of a systemic effort by the Chinese government to coerce and threaten athletes who are speaking out on behalf of the innocent people of Darfur.”

As Canadian athletes prepare themselves for competition (in which I wish them good luck), I am continuing my personal boycott of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. Following the most recent embarrassing statement from International Olympic Committee Chair Jacques Rogge regarding previous statements on freedom of the press in the People’s Republic of China, I was pleased to see Canadian IOC delegate Dick Pound raise some overdue criticism of China and the distant international committee. But Pound’s criticisms only touched the surface of a larger issue which the IOC has chosen to ignore — the dire state of human rights and political freedoms in China.

In 1999, as recently quoted by Ken Silverstein, Condoleezza Rice stated that: “Economic liberalization in China is ultimately going to lead to political liberalization. That’s an iron law.” Nine years later, the “iron law” of economic liberalization seems to have come along with iron shackles, rather than the political liberalization Rice may have had in mind.

A March 2008 report from the U.S. Department of State describes the People’s Republic of China as “an authoritarian state” with a poor human rights record which has seen“tightening restrictions on freedom of speech and the press” including “increased efforts to control and censor the Internet.” The report also accuses Chinese authorities of other human rights abuses including “extrajudicial killings, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, and the use of forced labor, including prison labor. The government continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison journalists, writers, activists, and defense lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under law.”

The Chinese Government has also been unwavered in its military and diplomatic support of the brutal regimes in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Burma, and North Korea.

So, I’m left with a couple of questions: Why did the IOC believe that it was appropriate to reward an authoritarian regime such as China’s with the international prestige of the Olympic Games? And will the international attention for the games force China into the “political liberalization” that Rice predicted?

For more information, both Amnesty International and Reporters Sans Frontières are good sources.

…

Klein: “Jean, welcome to The House.”

Chretien: “I’m happy to be in your house Ralph, but happy to be out of the other House (of Commons). There is a good life after politics.”

Klein: “Yeah, I’m doing a lot less and making a lot more money.”

Chretien: “Same for me Ralph, but when we were in politics we weren’t in it for the money, but for the fun of it.” It would be hard to imagine the personality-challenged antagonists of today — specifically Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion, Alberta’s Ed Stelmach or Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty — engaging in respectful chummy talk now or even a few years after they leave office.

Campaign expenses from Alberta’s March 3, 2008 Provincial Election were released a couple of weeks ago, here’s a look at expenses by constituency from Alberta’s two main political parties, and some lists of the expenses by the numbers (and the ridiculous amount of money that was spent in an election that produced a record low voter turnout):

Biggest Spenders
1) Sherwood Park – Iris Evans (PC) – $146,664.14
2) Edmonton-Mill Creek – Gene Zwozdesky (PC) – $140.283.18
3) Edmonton-Whitemud – Dave Hancock (PC) – $133,040.37
4) Calgary-McCall – Darshan Kang (Lib) – $117,137.44
5) Calgary-Glenmore – Ron Stevens (PC) – $110,979.96
6) Edmonton-Manning – Peter Sandhu (PC) – $90,853.23
7) Calgary-Elbow – Alison Redford (PC) – $87,846.02
8) Edmonton-Mill Woods – Carl Benito (PC) – $85,950.53
9) Calgary-McCall – Shiraz Shariff (PC) – $75,166.79
10) Lac La Biche-St. Paul – Ray Danyluk (PC) – $74,158.21

Biggest Liberal Spenders
1) Calgary-McCall – Darshan Kang – $117,137.44
2) Edmonton-Mill Creek – Aman Gill – $62,638.66
3) Calgary-Buffalo – Kent Hehr – $61,984.13
4) Edmonton-Ellerslie – Bharat Agnihotri – $57,496.63
5) Calgary-Elbow – Craig Cheffins – $56,109.10
6) Edmonton-Whitemud – Nancy Cavanaugh – $45,055.83
7) Sherwood Park – Louise Rogers – $44,461.28
8) Calgary-Bow – Greg Flanagan – $42,144.24
9) Calgary-Mountain View – David Swann – $40,522.36
10) Calgary-Currie – Dave Taylor – $36,891.07

Biggest bang for their buck (elected MLAs & cost per vote)
1) Battle River-Wainwright – Doug Griffiths (PC) – $2.65 per vote
2) Drumheller-Stettler – Jack Hayden (PC) – $2.43 per vote
3) Rocky Mountain House – Ty Lund (PC) – $3.07 per vote
4) Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills – Richard Marz (PC) – $3.16 per vote
5) Little Bow – Barry McFarland (PC) – $3.31 per vote
6) Strathmore-Brooks – Arno Doerksen (PC) – $3.48 per vote
7) Calgary-Hays – Art Johnston (PC) – $3.54 per vote
8) Lacombe-Ponoka – Ray Prins (PC) – $3.60 per vote
9) Edmonton-Riverview – Kevin Taft (Lib) – $3.88 per vote
10) Drayton Valley-Calmar – Diana McQueen (PC) – $3.99 per vote

Biggest Spender per vote
1) Calgary-McCall – Darshan Kang (Lib) – $27.48 per vote
2) Edmonton-Manning – Peter Sandhu (PC) – $22.11 per vote
3) Drayton Valley-Calmar – Norma Block (Lib) – $21.59 per vote
4) Lesser Slave Lake – Pearl Calahasen (PC) – $20.87 per vote
5) Edmonton-Mill Creek – Gene Zwozdesky (PC) – $20.44 per vote
6) Calgary-Buffalo – Sean Chu (PC) $19.58 per vote
7) Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview – Dawit Isaac (Lib) – $18.40 per vote
8) Edmonton-Mill Woods – Carl Benito (PC) – $18.09 per vote
9) Calgary-McCall – Shiraz Shariff (PC) – $18.05 per vote
10) Calgary-Glenmore – Ron Stevens (PC) – $17.23 per vote

PC v. Liberal – Biggest Spending Margin
1) Sherwood Park – Iris Evans (PC) +$102,203
2) Calgary-Glenmore – Ron Stevens (PC) +$88,029
3) Edmonton-Whitemud – Dave Hancock (PC) +$87,985
4) Edmonton-Mill Creek – Gene Zwozdesky (PC) +$77,645
5) Lac La Biche-St. Paul – Ray Danyluk (PC) +$66,245
6) Foothills-Rockyview – Ted Morton (PC) +$60,835
7) Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville – Ed Stelmach (PC) +$59,636
8) Edmonton-Mill Woods – Carl Benito (PC) +$59,381
9) Dunvegan-Central Peace – Hector Goudreau (PC) +$55,720
10) Airdrie-Chestermere – Rob Anderson (PC) +$55,276