Imagine you threw a party and no one showed up. That’s how members of the environazi movement must feel after Monday’s anti-oil sands protest at the Parliament grounds in Ottawa.

Billed as ‘the biggest environmental demonstration in Canadian history’ with thousands of protestors expected to attend, what actually resulted were a few hundred people showing up.

In theatrical terms, the show was a flop.

The media, instead of filling the papers and televisions with reports of a massive protest, is instead dissecting the failed event with numerous theories as to what happened. Gang Green must also be wondering.

Someone forget to tweet? Not enough unemployed people with time to kill?

Perhaps the reason for the low turnout is credibility. Everyday Canadians have heard the message from these protesters. Some agree, some don’t, but we all get what they are trying to say.

But what exactly were they speaking out against? The proposed Keystone pipeline? The oil sands? Oil in general?

The fact is Canadians have grown tired of the cheap publicity stunts enacted by groups such as Greenpeace. Their message has been lost, overshadowed by the circus-like antics of the tree-hugging crowd.

We have realized that many of the claims made by the green movement are just plain false. They claim that the Keystone pipeline has had major oil leaks and has already become a hazard. This is amazing, since the Keystone hasn’t been built yet. (They confuse two pipelines.)

They claim their current cause célèbre, the Keystone, will cost Canadians jobs when the truth is it will create a large number of jobs on both sides of the border.

We hear claims that the term ‘ethical oil’ is a myth. Would they rather Canada gets its oil from Saudi Arabia, where women are treated like chattel? Every barrel of oil from Alberta’s oil sands that is sold to the U.S. takes one barrel of Saudi blood-oil out of the marketplace. That’s a pretty big victory for human rights.

Environmentally speaking, Canada has top-drawer regulations. The Saudi’s don’t, yet the greens attack Canadian oil as being ‘dirty’.

We have learned that much of the money that funds these enviro-groups comes from foreign sources, often from large scale corporations who are in competition with Canada’s energy sector. It makes one wonder if these protesters are nothing but useful idiots for foreign interests.

Most Canadians now look at the environmental movement with growing indifference and with an allegation of hypocrisy. How many protesters walked or biked to the rally? How many environuts, who repeatedly demand the rest of us live as they tell us to, follow their own advice at home?

How many air miles and frequent flyer points has David Suzuki accumulated? How big is Al Gore’s carbon footprint now?

Look, practically everyone loves the environment. How can we not when we live in such a beautiful and blessed nation as Canada? But people are also practical.

The logic of the environmentalists resembles a block of Swiss cheese. They want the world to move away from ‘big oil’ and towards a ‘clean’ energy source. Great idea. So where is this new, abundant source of energy that the world can switch to?

There isn’t one. So much for their Technicolor dream.

Canadian’s view of environmentalist has become one of growing distain. No matter what their stated cause, we have come to the realization that these protesters are not speaking out against oil in one rally, human rights the next.

Their target is corporate globalization, plain and simple. Yet they offer no alternatives.

They have based their conclusions and formed their opinions on faulty and misleading information. Their argument just doesn’t hold water.

Science is proving that global warming ...er, climate change may just be a naturally occurring phenomenon and the man has had little or no tangible impact. We don’t have all the information yet – we, none of us, really knows for sure.

Given this, we can’t see the need to join a protest anchored in highly questionable theories and claims.

So when we hear of an impending environmental rally-to-end-all-rallies, Canadians greet the news with a collective yawn.

The environazi’s will try to blame the government, the media, or any other convenient target for their dwindling numbers, when the truth is the finger should be pointed at themselves.

Protest movements born out of emotion in place of concrete facts have a short shelf life. When that same movement suffers from credibility issues, people turn away in droves.

The main stream media hasn’t exactly been known to be ahead of the curve. It’s interesting to watch our major broadcast outlets all abuzz over discovering a ‘revelation’ about Alberta’s political scene.

They’re antics have created an interesting image, kind of a cross between the ape-men of 2001 encountering the Monolith and Edison shouting Eureka!

The great discovery is the sweeping apathy towards provincial politics. Scratch that – the apathy is almost totally directed at the governing Progressive Conservatives.

Of course, this is something Albertans have known for years. Decades of one-party rule tends to cause restlessness in the people. When that party elects a substandard leader and the inevitable blunders and bad policy follows, people begin to turn words into action.

But without a perceived realistic option, apathy and grudging acceptance temper frustration.

Perhaps the seeds of disillusionment were planted when Albertans witnessed the P.C.’s force Ralph Klein to unceremoniously walk the plant. The double-dealing and backstabbing was seen by all.

When Ed Stelmach unexpectedly won the race to replace Klein, not only did the general public lack the confidence in the mostly unknown MLA, but the fact that the party turned its back on the obvious and most qualified candidate, Jim Dinning, it caused many traditional P.C. voters to have questions.

Albertans knew Dinning as the man who turned our once-freefalling economy around to become the envy of the rest of Canada. Voters knew that while it was Ralph in front of the cameras, stepping out to explain and defend the tough cuts needed, it was Dinning who had the plan and steered the car.

If Albertans knew this, then certainly the party must have recognized this.

Apparently the media didn’t.

Not long after the last provincial election, we saw the unexpected rise of the outsider Wildrose Alliance. A groundswell of memberships followed the party through their own leadership race, and continues today – not exactly signs of an apathetic public. While the media wrote off the new party’s ballooning numbers, attributing them to ‘a handful of former P.C.s’, they failed to recognize how big that handful was.

Only now is the media realizing what most of us have known for a few years: the long-standing coalition that was Alberta’s Progressive Conservative party has been effectively dissolved. What remains of the old group is now shown in its leadership race: two leftwing liberals and an old boy’s club centrist with a questionable history.

The remaining party membership is ideological centre-left progressives.

What the media has yet to figure out is the Wildrose. In general terms, the party features a large segment of former conservative members of the P.C.’s. But what has come to light is the fact that at its core the party is what the P.C.’s once almost were and should have been.

After years of watching the ruling party growing old, tired, and corrupt, and without a viable political alternative to choose, the apathy felt by Alberta voters is not surprising.

But that apathy is only found in one place. With opposition parties enjoying varying levels of revitalization with their own leadership races, and the Wildrose and Alberta parties attracting growing attention, the media-labeled ‘apathy’ seems, by the evidence of the lack of ballots cast and the general malaise in the person on the street, solely in the P.C. camp.

Albertans have decided to care again.

I wonder how long it will take the media to notice.

A commercial by the non-profit organization Ethicaloil.org which calls out Saudi Arabia for their human rights and woman's rights record has drawn the ire of the Arab kingdom. 

The ad makes the point that it is more 'ethical' to get oil from a source located in a free, open and democratic society like the Alberta oil sands than it is to fund oppressive Arab states to the tune of billions.

With a stunning encroachment on Canada's sovereignty and an attempt of foreign censorship, the nation that was home to the majority of 9/11 hijackers and the birthplace of Usama bin Laden has threatened Canadian broadcasters with massive lawsuits unless they refrain from airing the factual ad.

The national taxpayer-funded (to the tune of 1.1 billion per year) CBC capitulated in near-record speed.  The private CTV network has also decided to bend over for their new Sharia-driven masters, and with the exception of a small discussion segment on the issue - where the airheaded host actually questioned if Canada was 'that much more' ethical that Saudi Arabia! - has also not shown the commercial.

Only the young Sun News Network has stood tall against the threat of a massively expensive lawsuit (read: blackmail) and has broadcast the ad without hesitation. 

Perhaps the only thing more troubling than the idea of a barbaric, backwards country like Saudi Arabia having the audacity to tell Canadians what we can and can't see on our television screens is being witness to Canadian media outlets falling into submission like so many dominoes.

While the CBC, CTV and other dhimmi networks skin their knees working in their new prayer rugs, there are other ways to circumvent this intrusive attempt at censorship.  Like, say, the internet...



The fact is the free world has to use oil.  There just is no practical, universal, Gore-approved substitute as yet developed. 

So until we make that miraculous dilithium crystal discovery on an asteroid, the decision we must make is this: do we want to get our oil from oppressive, terror-sponsoring regimes or from the safe, secure, ethical oil sands of Canada?

Video link (email to others - fight censorship): http://youtu.be/1SjZlqbDudI

I've just completed an informal, unscientific poll of 250 Albertans who intend to vote in the next provincial election.  To represent a cross-section of Albertans, respondents were from Edmonton, Calgary, Sherwood Park, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, and Red Deer.

Of the current provincial party leaders plus the remaining three contenders for leader of the Progressive Conservatives, I asked who citizens believed would be the best choice for the top job.

Question: Who is the best choice for Premier of Alberta?

Danielle Smith (Wildrose) - 127 (50.8%)
Alison Redford (PC) - 42 (16.8%)
Gary Mar (PC) - 39 (15.6%)
Brian Mason (ND) - 19 (7.6%)
Raj Sherman (Lib) - 16 (6.4%)
Doug Horner (PC) - 7 (2.8%)

Poll taken from September 17th - September 21, 2011

And then there were three.

Three liberals, to be accurate.

The last three candidates standing after the first vote for leader of Alberta's Progressive Conservatives are all, in varying degrees, ideological leftists. 

It is more irrefutable evidence that the party that has held the reigns of power in the province for more than four decades has bled away any conservatism, leaving what is essentially nothing more than a progressive political party.

Oversized, bloated, stale and old, all that is left of the once-great Progressive Conservatives is an impressive history.  The party has become a shell of it's former self.  The leadership race has proven that.

When one of Canada's most respected conservatives in Preston Manning points this out, you know it is an issue.  When a former P.C. MLA and past leadership hopeful with the credentials like Jim Dinning points this out, it signals that the problems with the P.C. party is more than just an 'issue': it is a full-blown catastrophe.

The early post-vote buzz has been the expected chat about which of the three remaining hopefuls will pick up the failed candidates votes.  The low turnout has also been the focus of attention, with the P.C. hierarchy scrambling to spin damage control over the fact than turnout was about half of the 2006 leadership vote numbers.

Common sense tells you that the reason for the low numbers is a combination of apathy, lack of confidence in any of the candidates in the race, lack of confidence in the P.C. government no matter the eventual leadership winner, and the glaring reality that many of the long-time conservatives have long since left for the bluer pastures of the Wildrose party.

We could be witnessing the last meaningful leadership race for a dying political dynasty.

I remember the first two provincial campaigns I ever worked on.  In both the 1989 and 1993 campaigns, the ruling P.C.s faced legitimate threats to their hold on power.  In 1989, the party had to overcome the hindrance of having Don Getty as leader.  In 1993 - the last real 'renewal' of the P.C. machine under Ralph Klein - it was Lawrence Decore and the Liberals who came close to ending the P.C. dance.

Both times, even with how close the Progressive Conservative's came to losing power, there was a sense within the campaign that we just couldn't lose.  Albertans would do the 'right thing' and vote us back into power.

Of course, being that both campaigns were for Jim Dinning, there was a comfortable confidence which proved correct.

Fast forward to 2011 and that comfortable confidence is gone, replaced by a sense of entitlement within the P.C. ranks.  The party is virtually nothing like it was back then; nothing like it was when Ralph was king.  Gone is the vision.  Gone is the forward thinking.  Gone are any qualities resembling conservatism.

It was a difficult decision a few years back when I switched my political membership from the P.C.s to the Wildrose.  I had never held a membership with any other political party, nor had I ever voted for any other party.  But any remorse or second thoughts did not last long.

The reasons I had at that time have just been confirmed; my assumptions have been proven right.  I did not leave the Progressive Conservative party, the Progressive Conservative party left me. 

And so the Alberta political landscape has morphed.  We live in a traditionally small 'c' province in which only one provincial party prescribes to that ideology.  We have the Liberals, the New Democrats, the fledgling Alberta party, and now the Progressive Conservatives to the left of centre, and the Wildrose party the only occupants of the political right.

For conservative Albertans, there is only one real choice.

One final thought: the media has been all over the rumour of a 'unite the right' movement in the province.  While I can't see that ever happening, it is an indication of how desperate the P.C.s are.  They know they're done and have resorted to grasping at straws.  In reality, conservative Albertans are already united.  It's called the Wildrose party.

The history of Alberta’s Wildrose party is not long, but it is marked with moments of significance that, by masterful decisions, impressive strategic planning, and sheer good fortune - most likely a combination of the three – has resulted in an unexpected and previously thought improbably creation and rise of a legitimate threat to the Progressive Conservative stranglehold on power.

No one really paid attention during the blending process of the Wildrose and Alberta Alliance parties, but that first step has come to be seen as the imperative initial action that set the wheels in motion. It was the important first domino.

Timing has tended to be friendly to the Wildrose. At a time when Albertan’s were growing increasingly disillusioned with Ed Stelmach’s P.C. government for an array of reasons ranging from the economy to the Royalty rate blunder to rumours of internal bickering to the health care debacle, the new party was selling memberships and building its internal structure.

The Wildrose leadership race brought a surprising number of people and an unexpected amount of media attention.

It also brought something the party had become used to: ‘mark-my-words’ statements from ‘experts’ who predicted the whole thing was much ado about nothing. The Wildrose Alliance was a flash in the pan. It is too divided between the Danielle Smith crowd and the Mark Dyrholm side. It was too libertarian, too socially conservative, too fascist, too…..

Of course, the Wildrose party came away from the convention with a dynamic new leader in Danielle Smith, a ballooning membership, and a strong sense of unity and the feeling that what they were doing was not only right, but important.

The Wildrose has benefitted from the eventual floor-crossing of several former P.C. MLAs who lost faith in their former clan and agreed with the true Albertan policies found with the new conservative group.

This benefit hasn’t been limited to the wealth of knowledge and experience gained by the new party MLAs.

This has also resulted in a visible ideological fracture in the Progressive Conservatives. The soon to be finished P.C. leadership race has further exposed this reality. It could be argued that out of the six candidates, only one, Ted Morton, could legitimately be called ‘conservative’. Maybe.

The fact is, the traditional Alberta-style conservatives have left the P.C. regime and bought Wildrose memberships. What is left, and has been for some time, is a Progressive Conservative party that is so top-heavy on the progressive side that not even Morton can save them.

Just ask Preston Manning.

With never-ending bad-news issues dogging the current regime plus the general public’s apathy and distrust of the Stelmach government, Christmas has once again come early for the Wildrose party as the rise in poll numbers the P.C.s enjoyed after the announcement of Stelmach’s impending departure is long gone.

The inability to sell the public on the idea that putting lipstick (a new leader) on a pig (the tired, old, bloated P.C. government) would work has led to polls showing the majority of voters prefer ‘none of the above’ over any of the candidates running.

Come the next election, ‘none of the above’ could become synonymous with the Wildrose party.

Merry Christmas.

Any political party that has enjoyed an unbroken 40 year reign is bound to become a bit stale.  Alberta's Progressive Conservatives are no exception.

So it has become entertaining to watch each of the current party leadership hopefuls deploy their own strategies in the hopes of finishing on top.  The conundrum for most of the candidates?  How to make Albertans forget or ignore their track records while espousing the ideals of 'change'.

Simply put, Stelmach-era candidates have had to somehow explain away their recent record in the Legislature while giving the impression that they would do things differently as Premier.

Listen or read an interview with Alison Redford, Ted Morton, Doug Griffiths, or Doug Horner, and the message comes through.  They repeatedly slam the previous incarnation of the P.C. government, blaming all the problems and flubs on Ed Stelmach while promising to 'renew' the party and take the government in 'a different direction.'

While this may fly with the ever-shrinking number of P.C. loyalists and habitual voters, the public at large just doesn't buy it.  Alberta voters just aren't that naive. 

What is missing is credibility.  If the path followed by the Stelmach government was so horrible in the eyes of these candidates, why did they remain silent for all of those years?  Where were their voices then?

After all, these Stelmach MLA's are the same lackey's who voted themselves a raise, voted in favour of, and in some cases helped to create, controversial Bills 36 and 50.  These are the same MLA's responsible for voting against the opposition motion to have a public inquiry over scandalous claims in the provincial health care system - the same inquiry Alison Redford is now promising if she wins.

Sensing that the public wasn't falling for this tactic, some of the candidates for leadership have begun to blame some secret cabal of Stelmach insiders, alleging that regular cabinet MLA's were powerless and ignored by this powerful inner circle.

Ed Stelmach may be a lot of things - like an unbelievably bad premier, for example - but it is difficult to believe he could be the mastermind of a super-secret group inside the government.  For if this is in fact the truth, Redford, Morton, et al must have known about it.  Again, why would they choose to keep this from the public?

With decision day almost upon us, what we are left with is a leadership race full of hopefuls just as guilty and responsible for the current mess as Ed Stelmach himself, and a couple yesterday's men in Rick Orman and Gary 'King of Untendered Contracts' Mar added into the mix.

The P.C. leadership race has lacked style, buzz, and substance. It has made one thing abundantly clear, however.  There is no one left within the Progressive Conservative ranks who has any credibility. 

It isn't just a change in the premier's office that Alberta needs.  It's a change in governing party.

I watched an interview on the news this morning of a local university political science professor.  Regarding the perceived 'backlash' and 'hatred' shown towards Muslims in our post-9/11 society, he went to great lengths to explain how a 'small group of small-minded individuals' are responsible for the alleged feelings of hatred and prejudice.

His message was that an imagined wave of anti-Muslim sentiment has washed over the free world, caused by the ignorance of a handful of over-reacting, uneducated fools.

The professor is a perfect example of the whitewash we've endured since September 12, 2001.  Ever since a group of radical Islamists hijacked some airplanes, purposefully used them as weapons, and flew them into some buildings, we have been told not to mention - or believe - the truth.

From the mass media to our government to our schools, we have repeatedly heard the droning mantra that we must be 'respectful' and 'tolerant'; that not all Muslims follow Islam; that not all who follow Islam want to kill us.

Like those who are responsible for the anti-Muslim backlash are few in numbers, we are told, so the terrorists are but a minuscule section of Islam. 

They read the Q'aran wrong.  They've misinterpreted it.  They are little more than an annoyance, and it would be wrong to paint all of Islam with the same brush.

Tell that to the 2977 murder victims of 9/11.

Ten years after that horrific day has shown the results of the program of tolerance.  We hear of schools in Canada and the U.S. that have instituted a special prayer time for Muslims while banning any and all references to Christmas.  We see our local state and provincial governments floating Sharia law trial balloons.  We witness our courts, led by leftwing judges, ignore their duty to interpret the law and instead instill their own Sharia-inspired judgments.  We see the Canadian equivalent of kangaroo courts - the so-called Human Rights Commissions - used as a tool and flooded with complaints by Muslims who feel 'offended'.

As we continue to be smothered by the call to be 'tolerant' and 'accepting', we see the very people we are supposed to be tolerant of expressing their own style of tolerance:



If you need an example of a city all but lost to the effects of multiculturalism, look no further than London.

The 'tolerance' in kind shown by Muslims stands at 17727 - that's the number of terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists since 9/11.

The decade after the 9/11 attacks has proven that the policy of pretending the bad guys aren't the bad guys has failed.  The time for tolerance is over.  It is past time we learned the lessons of 9/11, shed the bonds of political correctness and multiculturalism, and recognized the reality for what it is.

Our governments must instill policies designed to secure our nations from the very real threat.  During the Second World War, Canada had internment camps for our Japanese citizens.  While I do not call for this to be repeated for our Muslim population, the fact remains there are several Islamic terror cells operating in the country and it is the responsibility of our government to do all it can to locate and eliminate these threats, even if it means stepping on the toes of the 'tolerant'.

This is the third of three (unrelated) videos that remind me of the emotions and surreal feel of September 11, 2001.

We will never forget.

This is the second of three (unrelated) videos that remind me of the emotions and surreal feel of September 11, 2001.

While the Whitewash Cabal (main stream media, leftist groups, pro-Islamists, the current U.S. administration) works to deflect, reverse, and rewrite history using every tool at their disposal from political correctness to manufactured conspiracy theories, we should remind ourselves of the people responsible for the mass murder on 9/11.

We must never forget who the enemy is.


Video 2 - FITNA (Geert Wilders)


LiveLeak.com - Fitna the Movie (New Version 4-4-2008)

On September 11, 2001, we would never have believed 10 years later…


… the U.S. government would refuse to call the enemy by name.

… the president would be a far-left socialist, pro-Islamic Black man named Barack Hussein Obama.

… the people of the Western world would be divided about making the bad guys pay.

… some high-ranking politicians would question the ‘official story’ of the 9/11 attacks.

… Christianity would be banned in our public schools while special allowances were made for Islamic students.

… the president of the United States would ‘apologize’ to the enemy for being the target of their terror attack.

… the ripples of the attack would cause such widespread disillusionment and polarization with both American political behemoths that a grassroots, back-to-the Constitution movement would be launched in the Tea Party.

… the American people would allow the president to contradict and/or ignore the Constitution at will.

… Canada would replace the U.S. as Israel’s most vocal ally and supporter on the international scene.

… the Canadian Prime Minister would be a Conservative while the U.S. president would be a socialist Democrat,

… the Canadian Prime Minister would have bigger balls than the American President.

… our courts and all levels of government would consider implementing Sharia law.

… it would have become a sin of enormous magnitude to lay blame at the feet of those actually responsible for the terrorist attacks, yet socially acceptable – expected, even – to condemn Christians and Jews to a point beyond religious persecution.

... the ‘official’ 9/11 ceremony would exclude First Responders, creating the need for a separate gathering of remembrance thanks to authentic American patriots like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.