The State of Alberta

Well, Alberta's latest session of parliament has begun and it promises to be an interesting one considering the fact that the lefties (Liberals and NDPs) who made considerable gains in the 2004 election, will continue to pound Klein's Conservative monarchy government as hard as possible. Well, they'll try anyway...

This past Tuesday evening, Premier Ralph Klein appeared in his annual televised infomercial - a production which cost Albertans over $170,000 and which resembled enthusiastic presentations by similar masters like Ron Popeil.

While most of the public was holding its collective breath to hear details about Klein's mysterious "third way" (which is RalphSpeak for "American Way") reforms of our health care system, they were treated instead to Klein yammering on about putting funds into Alberta's Heritage trust (ie. Rainy Day) fund, a promise to fund cancer research and a push for clean coal technology (which critics swiftly attacked).

On Wednesday, Lt Governor Normie Kwong gave the Speech from the Throne - the most mind-numbingly boring and absolutely awful presentation of such a speech since, probably, the beginning of Alberta's legislature. These speeches are typically just propaganda celebrations that stand on frou-frou ceremony and tradition, but this one was so bad that it was tough for this liberal to even stay awake through the whole thing in order to effectively criticize it. Glad that's over! Hopefully, Kwong will join Toastmaster's before next year's speech so he can figure out how to keep us at least half-conscious while he speaks.

Today, the fun began in parliament. Along with the usuual questions about a lack of funding for, well, just about everything - considering Alberta is swimming in oil money - one opposition member caught my interest when he brought up the possibility that Alberta's privately run registries are mobbed up. No, I'm not kidding.

Government documents obtained by The Journal, and interviews with law enforcement and government officials, reveal that some registries have experienced chronic, serious security breaches.

- Organized criminals have exploited the lax security to gain access to false identification. Although the government ended the registries' authority to issue driver's licences in 2003, bogus licences are continuing to surface.

Ah...but everyone knows that privatization is a Good Thing(TM), right?

Just a note to my American friends: you think you have it rough under Bush? Alberta has been under Conservative rule since dinosaurs roamed free, died and became our now infamous oil reserves. We Alberta lefties are a lonely bunch. We can often be found wandering the streets, finding a convenient, hard brick wall and banging our heads against it to keep them from exploding as we watch these right-wingers with their unfettered power continue to make this place what it is: Conservative hell on earth. The best that can be said is that our government doesn't torture people - that we know of. But, living with this bunch is its own kind of torture. Send us bandages. We bleed - a lot.