daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

This past wednesday, we visited the Alberta Legislature and watch some Question Perioding. Here’s a quick recap of our observations from the visitors gallery… (though they’re definately not as exciting as some of our previous Legislature experiences)

(OPENING SCENE: Beautiful +14C day in the City of Edmonton)

1:00 pm – Leave work at the University, catch the train to Grandin station.

1:10 pm – Get off the train at Grandin station.

1:15 pm – Meet up with our friend Ms. Jane on the front steps of the Leg.

1:19 pm – Bump into Rick Miller in the elevator. We have a quick chat.

1:23 pm – Stand in line to get our QP pass… there are about 5000 school kids in the rotunda. crazy. Donna Martyn and Mr. Sharma are in line ahead of us. Dan McLennan is also in line.

1:30 pm – QP starts. Mr. Sharma crosses party lines and sits beside a Liberal (us). Way to go, Anand! 😉

1:40ish pm – Laurie Blakeman introduces us. Very nice.

1:41 pm – Premier Klein is on his cross-Canada “Torpedo Stephen Harper” Tour, so Finance Minister Shirley McClellan is running the show… man does she have a boring voice…

1:42 pm – Liberal leader Kevin Taft asks the first question.

1:43 pm – Alliance MLA Paul Hinman is here. Sitting all by himself. The ND’s are there too. Brian Mason is quieter than his usual “QP bull dog” self. But he does make some good heckles.

1:45 pm – It looks like Ted Morton is playing paddy cake… wha? either that, or he has a Juba song stuck in his head…. crazy right-winger…

1:47 pm – We notice that Dave Hancock is still in his “grey hair period” (as opposed to his
previous brown and black periods).

1:49 pm – Aboriginal Affairs Minister Pearl Calahasen is reading the Hill Times.

1:50 pm – Education Minister Gene Zwozdesky scoffs at an opposition question about hot lunch programs in schools. St. Albert Liberal MLA Jack Flaherty yells at Zwoz and looks like he’s going to get up and deck him. For a 74-year old, Flaherty sure has alot of energy.

2:00 pm – Banff-Cochrane Tory MLA Janis Tarchuk is signing Christmas cards. Lucky for her, her seatmate Rob Lougheed is MIA. So she uses his chair to pile her cards.

2:05 pm – QP continues. The opposition asks decent questions, but the Tories give boring answers. They know the media isn’t paying attention to QP while Klein is on tour. We’re bored. Time to bounce. Adios.

2:10 pm – On our way out, we bump into Agriculture Minister Doug Horner. Have a nice chat with him in the rotunda.

(END SCENE)

Can someone explain to us a couple things about Buy Nothing Day?

1. Why does it fall on a Friday?
2. Does beer count? Because… it’s Friday… and it’s been a long long week.

We’re sitting in SUB finishing off a book review and 5 guys dressed in drag just walked by…

Also, this weekend, we will have the full report of our exciting adventure to the Alberta Legislature this week…

Highlights include…
… MLA’s signing Christmas cards.
… an update on Dave Hancock‘s hair colour.
… a certain leadership candidate playing paddy-cake.
… and much much more.

A friend email this cool election projector to us. It’s fun for political nerds!

Finally! Our suspicions have been confirmed… and we can’t help but think it’s kind of cool…

“Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada are building a Death Star. Hidden behind the moon and almost complete, the Conservative Death Star will allow us to finally achieve our fondest desires.“

After a quick MSN chat with a friend of official importance, we were reminded that this blog (the one you’re reading now), has been nominated for some fairly hefty non-monetary awards. Those being that of the Canadian Blog Awards.

As much as we’d like to mock them as the “Canadian Nerd Awards” or the “Get a Life Awards,” it would be unfair to judge everyone based on a couple of blogs.

We’ve been nominated in the Best Blog and Best Personal Blog categories.

Here are the voting instructions as posted by Robert at MyBlahg.

“Tentative Timetable
Thursday November 24th – Wednesday November 30th: Round One voting.
Friday December 2nd, 12pm EST: Round One results will be announced.
Saturday December 3rd – Friday December 9th: Round Two voting.
Sunday December 11th, 9pm EST: Round Two results will be announced.

Voting Instructions
You may vote once per day. To vote, click on a category header to open it and then make your selection. Repeat with each category until you’ve made all your selections and then submit your vote.

Note: It’s not required that you vote in each category, but you must make all your selections before you submit your vote.”

So, as you can see, voting begins tomorrow, so if you likey what you see, *go here* and vote early and often.

(We shall post our endorsements later this week)

Doesn’t it look like Warren K has a tiny crush on our good friend CG?

“November 21, 2005 – The Calgary Grit is one of the best bloggers in Canada, and not simply because we usually agree with each other. He’s one of the best because he’s smart, he’s funny, and he’s a terrific writer. And when you meet him – as I did, at the March 2005 Ottawa Liberal convention I attended as a delegate, no less – you will be depressed by how young he is. He made me feel 100 years old, in fact.”

“November 23, 2005 – Once again, I cannot improve upon what is being written by Calgary Grit – a young guy who, I hasten to point out, is doing better research/commentary, for free, than what we see out of a lot of the MSM based in Ottawa these days. Amazing.”

That’s cute. 🙂

Slightly dated, but entertaining none the less…

Reform Party Rag…

“If you were Indian before, you’re not like that anymore…”

Politicans Halloween Party…

“…Chretien and Mulroney did the tango with each other, and Joe Clark was a flirting with someone elses mother.”

The Best Summer Job I Ever Had…

“…the best summer job I ever had was as the Yukon PC leader!”

It’s been a really really busy week here in the life of daveberta….

With all the talk of a federal election in the midst, we’re not sure from which magic hat we’ll pull out the time to get involved… though we’ve made it no secret that we’re less than pleased with the current Liberal government (or Prime Minister Martin for that matter), we do hope to help out in some fashion (how ever limited) with some local campaigns (namely those of Anne McLellan in Edmonton Centre, and Nicole Martel in Edmonton East).

But truthfully, we’ve become quite tired of entire ‘partisan’ politics thing. Perhaps it’s the lopsided incest of Alberta‘s political environment/34 year-old Tory government that we find ourselves smothered by. It really doesn’t matter what party is in power, if they’ve been in power for 34 years, they’re going to be as incestuous as the current Alberta bunch.

Anyway, enough politics for now, here’s a quick recap of the last week…

Last Thursday, on the eve of finishing a kickass research paper on the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the BHP Diamond Mine EA process, we had the unfortunate unluck of knocking ourselves fairly hard on the head. HUGE gash, lots of blood everywhere, etc.

we spent 5 hours waiting in the waiting room at the ER at the U of A Hospital. All sorts of exciting ailments over there… This one lady had a broken bone poking out of her skin! It was crazy/cool. After the said 5 hours of quality time with 50 or so other Edmontonians, they finally cleaned us up and glued our head shut (though the bleeding had stopped by that point).

Friday evening, after taking the afternoon off of work to sleep… we joined 8 of our terrific friends in seeing the movie, Walk the Line. If you haven’t seen it yet, we recommend you head directly to your nearest film house and purchase a ticked without haste!

Johnny Cash rocks.

Saturday… after a very enjoyable evening, we met up with former-US Ambassador to Canada, Mr. Paul Cellucci, who was in town talking about his new book. Paul (or Paulie, as he’s known on the streets of south Boston) was good for 3 or 6 pints of Guinness and some chat. Though we tend to disagree with him on most issues, we were definitely able to get some insight into his perspective, which was interesting.

Sunday…. papers….

Monday…. papers….

Today…. papers….

Tomorrow…. question period at the Alberta Legislature! (expect a full report later this week (including an update on TED MORTON WATCH).

(Intro Song- Don Henley‘s Dirty Laundy)

From what we can tell from this anonymous blog, all is not well in the mighty Tory EDA of Edmonton Mill Woods-Beaumont.

So unhappy was this local Tory that he (or she) has set up a blog and begun seriously criticizing Tory organizers in Edmonton, including Mr. Will McBeath and Mr. Vitor Marciano, regarding some aspects of Tory candidate Mike Lake‘s campaign and the nomination race which chose him.

We’re not sure what this guys deal is, or if any of the allegations are true, but he sure sounds like a bit of a nutter… an entertaining one though.

(Edmonton Mill Woods-Beaumont is currently represented by Liberal-turned-Independent MP, David Kilgour, who was narrowly re-elected as a Liberal in 2004. Mr. Kilgour, who has represented this area of Edmonton since 1979 as a Progressive Conservative (1979-90), Liberal (1991-2005), and Independent (1990-91, 2005-), is not expected to seek re-election in the next election.)

…they cut off their testicles.

We wonder what firewall Ted has to say about this.

Cardston-Taber-Warner MLA Paul Hinman was elected leader of the Alberta Alliance Party this weekend at their convention in Red Deer.

Hinman, the only AA MLA in the Alberta Legislature, was easily knocked off fellow right-wing crazies Marilyn Burns, David Crutcher, and Ed Klop (Klop was endorsed by former leader Randy Thorsteinson – with endorsements like he’s an “incredibly nice guy” and he “grew up on a dairy farm,” we’re stunned Klop didn’t win with a landslide…) .

Here are the results…

1st Ballot
Paul Hinman – 485
Marilyn Burns – 244
David Crutcher – 211
Ed Klop – 188

2nd Ballot
Paul Hinman – 584
Marilyn Burns – 312
David Crutcher – 236

3rd Ballot
Paul Hinman – 626
Marilyn Burns – 387

It seems that Red Deer was a hot spot for right-wing fringe politicians this weekend as the Alberta Social Credit Party also held it’s convention this weekend…

Saturday night… too tired to do any-thing…

with 2 out of 142 polls reporting, Jim Green is leading Sam Sullivan 947 to 358 in Vancouver’s Mayoral Election.

You can see live results here.

UPDATE! RESULTS!

Sam Sullivan – 61,543
Jim Green – 57,796
James Green – 4,253

We call *shenanigans* on the part of James Green.

uhg. It has been a traumatic and busy couple of days.

Thursday: 5 hour wait in the Emergency Room. Lots of blood included.
Friday: Walk the Line! “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash“
Saturday: Former US Ambassador Paul Cellucci

When we get the energy, we’ll write up a post.

It’s very interesting how many hits we’ve been getting under the search word “Peter Kruselnicki.”

Is this what the Tories meant back in the 199o’s when they would always use New Zealand as a model of how Alberta should operate? 😉

See here, here, here, here, and here to see what we’re talking about.