Alberta's New Premier

Alison Redford is the new premier of Alberta, after winning an upset election to determine the new leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, over Gary Mar.  I am disappointed in the result, as Redford promises to put "progressive" back in Progressive Conservative Party.  In other words, she will likely move the party leftward.  She also promises "change."

I haven't been paying very much attention to Alberta politics, but I didn't really think change was necessary in Alberta.  Given Alberta's relative success (relative to the other provinces) and conservative politics, the concept of "change" makes me uneasy.  Will a less conservative premier more heavily regulate the oil industry, thus weakening Alberta's economy?

Here's a chilling passage from the Edmonton Journal:

Jacquie Eales voted for Alison Redford on her way home from her 13-year-old daughter’s basketball game.
The 47-year-old Edmontonian, a liberal at heart, didn’t vote on the first ballot. In truth, she says, the Progressive Conservative leadership race wasn’t on her radar. 

Then, on the way into work one morning, she heard Redford on the radio.
“She talked about the importance of education and health care, and those are two things that are important to me,” Eales said Monday. 

“It’s unlikely that there will ever be a Liberal leader in Alberta, so I thought, if I want to make a difference in terms of education and health care, perhaps I need to buy a PC membership and vote for a candidate who might have a chance.” 

But she didn’t immediately buy a membership. That point came when a friend involved with the advocacy group Friends of Medicare sent her an email highlighting Redford’s support for public health care. “I thought, if I want to make a difference, I have to vote.”

Redford might as well be a Liberal.  The thought of a Liberal leading Alberta is frightening.  One of my favorite things about Alberta is its relatively conservative politics.  Here's an even more chilling passage (from the same article):

“I don’t think Mar did himself any favours musing about having a debate about privatizing health care,” Duffy said. “I don’t know which is worse, talking about it or trying to run away from it, but that’s the worst of both worlds.” 

He said Redford’s campaign ran on a classic public-services platform. 

“So here you’ve got Redford talking about education, reaching out to soccer moms, and then Mar starts talking about privatizing medicare,” he said.
“At that point, you’ve got a classic set up between an in touch, family-responsive candidate who wants to deliver public services, and an out-of-touch business guy. ... It’s a perfect contrast.

So, not only does Alberta now have a CINO (Conservative in Name Only) premier, but the favourite would have considered privatizing health care.  Think about what Alberta could have had!

Hopefully, Redford's premiership ends after the next election, which will apparently be soon.  While the Progressive Conservative Party has governed Alberta for about 40 years, that is because Alberta is a conservative place.  Fortunately, conservatives in Alberta have another option, the Wildrose Party, a formerly minor party, that has been making significant gains in polls, even winning one by a wide margin (in 2009).  To me, this party resembles the Tea Party movement.  It is a fiscally conservative, right-libertarian party with a social conservative branch.  With the Progressive Conservative Party moving leftward, the Wildrose Party's niche is expanding, and the Progressive Conservative dynasty in Alberta may hopefully end soon.  It is worth mentioning that the election Redford won had two parts.  Voters wrote two names on their ballots.  In the first part, only the first name on each ballot was counted.  If there was not a majority, the third place candidate's votes were given to the candidate whose name appeared on the ballots that originally went to the third place candidate.  After the first round, Gary Mar had a plurality of the votes, while Alison Redford gained a narrow majority after the second round.  What this means is that Redford did not win the election convincingly, which is good for the Wildrose Party, which will likely attract disgruntled Conservatives next election.  It is also worth mentioning that many people apparently joined the Progressive Conservative Party just to vote for Redford.  

Here are some Wildrose Party ideas/observations that I particularly like:

• Restore the role of elected MLAs by mandating that all votes in the Legislature and caucus be free and reported to the public
• Non-confidence votes would be held as separate and stand-alone votes, allowing MLAs to vote on proposed legislation based on the interests of their constituents
• Implement legislation allowing for citizen-initiated referenda and voter recall (support thresholds to instigate both processes must be sufficiently high to eliminate frivolous initiatives)
• Institute fixed dates for general elections, senate elections, budgets, legislative sessions, and Speeches from the Throne
• Establish an independent Cabinet and MLA pay and benefits review process that prevents the Premier, Cabinet, and MLAs from setting their own salaries
• Create transparency in finances and budgets by ensuring government debts and cash deficits are reported accurately and in a timely manner
• Post MLA expenses online
• Take an aggressive stance with the federal government in regards to the equalization program in order to ensure that billions more of Albertans’ hard-earned tax dollars remain in the province, working for the benefit of Albertans
• Exercise our provincial constitutional rights by demanding that the federal government not regulate our industry or property in the name of “environmental protection”
• We will dismantle Alberta Health Services and gradually decentralize the delivery of health care to locally managed and integrated hospitals, Primary Care Networks, family physicians, specialty centres, long-term care facilities and other health services
• We will reduce wait times for specialists and procedures by opening delivery of publicly paid services to any accredited private and non-profit provider
• In terms of policing, our province is facing significant challenges as it tries to deal with organized crime, gangs, child exploitation, identity theft, and white collar crime. Too often, the rights of the accused and convicted criminals seem to supersede the rights of victims.
• Protect the rights of victims by advocating for federal legislation that would see convicted criminals financially compensate the victims of their crimes without the need for costly civil trials
• Over the last 20 years, the Human Rights Commissions in Alberta have probably been the single worst offender of Rights: i.e. freedom of speech; politically correct activists have used them to punish religious and right-wing social commentators. Even when found not guilty, its expensive and time-consuming
• Restrain per capita infrastructure spending to a level consistent with the national average.
• Streamline and decentralize procedures to ensure more funding flows directly to individuals and families in need, and would phase out regional PDD boards in favour of a more localized approach to funding decision-making
• Encourage small and medium business investment and growth by ensuring Alberta is the lowest-taxed jurisdiction in North America
• End the current government’s failed strategy of picking winners and losers by handing out corporate welfare grants to hand-picked corporations
• CFIB say over-regulation costs Alberta $4B per year. Their 2010 report says Alberta and Manitoba are ranked the lowest among the provinces when it comes to reducing this burden
• According to a Fraser Institute report, a sweet gas well that should take 10 days and $1,000 to get regulatory approval takes almost three years and cost $100,000
• Actively review and reduce the unnecessary regulatory burdens that compromise the competitiveness of our key industries

There were some ideas I didn't like, and many more that I did, but I like the party's overall message.  

Perhaps the election of Alison Redford is a blessing in disguise, as one-party dynasties tend to engender corruption.  Hopefully, the Wildrose Party will continue to gain momentum and make Alberta politics more competitive.

Showing a Good Example

Dick Cheney received quite the reception in Vancouver last night.  Promoting his book at a $500-per-ticket event, attendees were welcomed by a perpetually angry crowd demanding Cheney be arrested for war crimes (with no evidence, of course).  In an ironic twist, these people, supposedly protesting violence, managed to knock several people attending the event over, despite a large police presence and a chain of police officers separating the protesters from the pathway the attendees used to enter the event. 

I’m convinced that these people travel around looking for things to protest.  And these protests are ugly; they’re not the typical protests where people stand still peacefully holding signs.  These people get in your face, and loudly yell very judgemental things like “do you have no moral compass?”  By now, it should be quite evident that the title of this post is sarcastic.  These people, liberals, of course, do not show a good example.  This kind of behaviour makes all liberals seem crazy, but I’m sure these people represent only a small portion of the liberal population.  So, I ask reasonable liberals to distance themselves from these lunatics and denounce their behaviour.  Demonstrating that you resort to questionable tactics to make your point is not a good way to get people on your side, in my opinion.  In fact, I would bet that average people dismiss the opinions of radicals. 

While I’m on the topic of protesting, I will address the protests over the oil pipeline that is proposed to be built between Hardisty, Alberta and Houston, Texas.  Some of the protesters in this case, as well, resorted to questionable tactics to get their point across.  Acts of defiance, with the intent of getting arrested, just to make a point, does not, in my opinion, make any point other than “I’m mentally ill.”  What sensible person would actually volunteer to be arrested for naught but symbolism?  Not one, I reckon.  There are legitimate concerns about this pipeline, including the potential (but unlikely) risk of the contamination of the Ogallala Aquifer, which was, in fact, raised by the Republican governor of Nebraska.  To me, it seems counter-productive to protest in such a way, because these people are radicals, and their actions do not reflect well on their credibility.  As I said before, average people likely do not take their views very seriously. 

Which is also a reason why I believe the Tea Party movement has gained such momentum.  Not only does the Tea Party represent a common sense approach to solving the USA’s financial problems, but Tea Party protests are also civil (despite their depiction in the increasingly irrelevant mainstream media).  So, the Tea Party movement, unlike certain liberal protesters, are showing a good example.  

Steam, Baby, Steam

Here is a fascinating article (h/t Instapundit) on the scientific process involved in mining oil from sand that occurs in Alberta's oil sands.  And, here is a very salient point (from that article):

Modern capitalism and the technology it engenders has lifted a significant proportion of humanity out of our natural state of abject poverty for the first time in history. 

Indeed, Alberta's oil sands stimulated the economy and caused an economic boom there.  Alberta has, by far, the highest per capita GDP of all provinces.  Its median income, as recorded by the 2006 census, was $70,986 CAD (approx. $63,900 USD in 2006, or $71,631 USD now).  According to Canadian free market think tank the Fraser Institute, Alberta trailed only Delaware and Texas in economic freedom among US States and Canadian Provinces.  

Also, the oil sands tick off environmentalists, which is always a bonus.

A subsequent article, by the same author (Ronald Bailey), describes the benefits the US would amass by importing Canadian oil:

TransCanada’s Robert Jones, who is in charge of getting the Keystone XL pipeline approved and completed, pointed out the energy security benefits to the United States of importing oil from Canada. He asked, why would the U.S. want to depend on “conflict oil” imported from countries run by unsavory regimes like those of Venezuela, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia? And whose oil is dirtier? After all, producing oil sands crude in Canada already includes the costs of reclaiming the land and a whole panoply of other environmental regulations.

 The assembled Canadian oil moguls cited studies [PDF] that project the creation of as many as 600,000 jobs and a $775 billion boost to the U.S. gross national product by 2035 as a result of importing Canadian oil. 

To environmentalists concerned about disturbing boreal forest, the percentage of Canada’s total area covered by boreal forest that is disturbed for oil development is about 0.019%.  That article also describes another method of extracting oil from sand that is used for oil 350 feet below the surface, steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and its environmental impact:

Interestingly, anti-oil sands activists who eagerly highlight photos of the vast oils sands mining pits, don’t tend to show photos of SAGD facilities. Likely this is because such pictures would not do much to scare target audiences—the footprint of SAGD operations typically occupies only 5 percent of the land from which oil is being recovered, leaving most of the forests undisturbed. 

Back to "Dirty Oil Sands," to which I linked earlier in this post, they present a number of beautiful images on their website.  Personally, I have always been awestruck by massive industrial structures and works.  

Canada's Paradise

The Vancouver Pride Festival is coming up soon (in case anyone was wondering why I am writing about Gay Pride now).  A much different event, the Calgary Stampede, ended almost two weeks ago.  Aside from the festive nature of both events, the contrast could not be more different.  The Calgary Stampede, the world's largest rodeo, is a celebration of Calgary's western heritage.  The Calgary Stampede started in 1886 as the Calgary and District Agricultural Society Exhibition.  The Stampede is closely tied with Calgary's identity.

Alberta is sometimes referred to "The Texas of Canada" (at least by me), and, indeed, Alberta is well known in Canada for its conservative politics.  Alberta gave the Conservatives the highest percentage of its popular vote (67%) in 2011.  The Conservative Party has won very seat in Alberta outside of Edmonton for the past four federal elections (every election since the foundation of the Conservative Party), as well as every seat in Edmonton in one of those.  Rural Alberta ridings gave anywhere between 84 and 75 percent of their votes to the Conservative Party in 2011.  Alberta's Progressive Conservative Association (definitely not progressive) has formed the provincial government since 1971.  Alberta is also Canada's wealthiest province, due to its oil sands (which I will defend to the death, metaphorically).  In addition, Calgary, Alberta's largest city, is arguably one of North America's most conservative cities (which I consider to be metropolitan areas with over one million people).

During the Stampede, western wear is visible around the city.  So tied to Calgary's identity is the Stampede and its western heritage, a cowboy hat appears on the city's flag (see below).

Originally, this post was going to be about something else entirely.  However, as I was writing it, it turned into a post about Alberta politics.  The introduction, which I decided not to change (for a sense of contemporary relevance), is indicative of such.  I could go on and on about how much I love Alberta and I can't wait to move there (I was raised and currently live in British Columbia); incidentally, I am really starting to embrace my inner redneck.  At the same time, Calgary is sadly evolving (or devolving, if you ask me) into a PC hell, seemingly just like every other place in the Western world, which I guess is inevitable for a rapidly growing major city.  Fortunately, this process seems to be quite slow.  The Calgary Stampede (an event that showcases toughness and masculinity, and one that p*sses off animal rights groups) and the pride in which Calgary's residents show during said event, leave me optimistic.

What is Wrong With Norway?

I will admit that prior to the terrorist attack in Norway last Friday, I did not know very much about Norway.  When I think of Scandinavians, I think of people who are unemotional, logical, and efficient.  I realize that that is just a stereotype, and stereotypes cannot be accurately applied to everyone belonging to a certain group (in fact, I should know that better than most people).  However, stereotypes usually have some degree of accuracy, as they must come from somewhere (having said that, I have never met a Canadian who has the stereotypical Canadian accent, pronounces "about" like "aboot," or frequently says "eh"; perhaps that is an Eastern Canadian thing).  And, the more I learn about Norway, the more I realize how inaccurate that stereotype is.  In fact, Norwegians, in general, seem to harbour an irrational hatred toward both Israel and the United States, as well as an irrational compassion toward Muslims and terrorist groups such as Hamas.  I must say that I am disappointed in some of the information I am learning, as I have always been quite fond of Scandinavia, the homeland of some of my ancestors (and, a side note: I am also dismayed at the notoriously liberal Netherlands, also the homeland of some of my ancestors).

Here is some background on Norway:

Norway uses a "Nordic Model," which Wikipedia describes as:

This particular adaptation of the mixed market economy is characterised by more generous welfare states (relative to other developed countries), which are aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy, ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights and stabilizing the economy. It is distinguished from other welfare states with similar goals by its emphasis on maximising labour force participation, promoting gender equality, egalitarian and extensive benefit levels, large magnitude of redistribution, and liberal use of expansionary fiscal policy.

I will say that this seems to work well for them.  Of course, that doesn't mean that it would work well in other societies.

Norway is an extremely wealthy, oil rich nation.  It has one of the world's highest standards of living, and has had the world's highest Human Development Index (HDI) ranking for 8 of the past 10 years.  According to the American think-tank Fund for Peace's Failed States Index, Norway is the world's most well functioning and stable nation.

Aside from the efficacy of Norway's economic policies and the weath Norway's oil provides to its small population, Norwegian society appears to be highly flawed (at least from my biased perspective).  Please read this excellent post by Bruce Bawer at Pajamas Media (h/t Diogenes Borealis).  Here are some excerpts from that post:

This lack of security was certainly not unusual for Norway, where the police don’t carry guns, and where the very idea of police carrying guns is widely looked upon as some holdover from an earlier stage of human evolution. But — hello — in front of the main office buildings of a Western European government? After 9/11? It seemed sheer madness.
...
When I first heard the news of the explosions at those buildings, my first thought, of course, was that it was a jihadist attack. But it wasn’t: it was a right-wing lunatic. It wasn’t jihad. It was a meaningless killing spree by a madman, like the ones at Columbine and Virginia Tech. A headline in one Norwegian newspaper today noted that the death toll in Oslo and at Utøya yesterday was higher than at Columbine and Virginia Tech combined. The Norwegian media have always reported on mass murders by lone gunmen in the U.S. as if they were things that could never happen in Norway: rather, they were symptoms of a sick society that Norwegians could never possibly understand. In Norway, they use the term “amerikanske tilstander” — American conditions. It never means anything good. Yesterday’s nightmare, from a Norwegian perspective, was the most American of American conditions.
Those of us who thought, in the first hours after the blasts in downtown Oslo, that we were witnessing yet another act of jihad can be forgiven. In a way, it made sense. 9/11, London, Madrid, Beslan, Bali, Mumbai — why not Oslo? Then again…Norway, although a member of NATO with troops in Afghanistan and Libya, was not exactly in the forefront of the struggle to defeat jihad. On the contrary.  Norway calls itself “the peace country.” For years, the Norwegian government and cultural establishment have striven to communicate to even the most extreme elements of international Islam that they want to be friends.  They've shown their good faith in a number of ways: 

...

• They’ve dropped displays of Islamic totalitarianism down the memory hole.  Two years ago, on two separate nights, a small army of Norwegian Muslim youths rioted in the heart of Oslo, turning a usually placid quarter into something reminiscent of Sarajevo or Beirut at their worst.  The alleged motive for this explosion of violence was displeasure over the situation in Gaza; the real intention was to mount a display of power — to intimidate, and to communicate to Norway that their time had come, and that they had better be listened to with respect, or else.  And in February of last year, another small army of Muslims, this time not rioting boys but sullen-looking men in long coats and full beards, gathered in downtown Oslo, in the same square where Vidkun Quisling once held his Nazi rallies, and listened with apparent pleasure while a young speaker named Mohyeldeen Mohammed threatened Norway with its own 9/11.  Both of these events came and went, and the people who make decisions about this sort of thing plainly decided that it would be best to pretend that they had never happened.

• They’ve openly supported terrorist groups.  In the last few days, one of the major stories out of Norway has been the declaration by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of his country’s support for the effort by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state.  This stance scarcely came as a surprise, given the Norwegian government’s longstanding effort to “build bridges” to Hamas.  It was Støre, after all, who — when a couple of dozen Western diplomats walked out on a rabid anti-Israeli speech by Mahmoud Ahmedinejad at the 2009 UN conference on racism — was the only Westerner who chose to stay and hear him out.

...

During those hours when we all thought this was a jihadist attack, one thought that crossed my mind was that this would change the political map of Norway. For years, the Progress Party, which is the second largest of Norway’s seven or eight major parties, has led the way in calling for more responsible policies on the immigration and integration of people from Muslim countries — and has been demonized as a bunch of right-wing extremist xenophobes who hate Muslims. I assumed that after this attack, Norwegians would vote in a Progress Party-led government in the next elections. Now it appears that the man who committed all these murders is a former member of the Progress Party and is, indeed, a right-wing extremist xenophobe who harbors (according to Dagbladet) a “violent hatred for Muslims” and multiculturalism, and who targeted the Labor Party youth camp because he blames the ruling Labor Party for the Islamization of Norway. Norway’s political future looks very different now, in short, than it did 24 hours ago.

I will say that I thought many of those same things.  He said it better than I ever could.  More:

...it is deeply depressing to see this evil, twisted creature become the face of Islam criticism in Norway. Norwegian television journalists who in the first hours of the crisis were palpably uncomfortable about the prospect of having to talk about Islamic terrorism are now eagerly discussing the dangers of “Islamophobia” and “conservative ideology” and are drawing connections between the madness and fanaticism of Breivik and the platform of the Progress Party. Yesterday’s events, then, represent a double tragedy for Norway. Not only has it lost almost one hundred people, including dozens of young people, in a senseless rampage of violence. But I fear that legitimate criticism of Islam, which remains a very real threat to freedom in Norway and the West, has been profoundly discredited, in the eyes of many Norwegians, by association with this murderous lunatic.

It is evident that Norway is anti-Israel and pro-Palestine.  I am not capable of comprehending this, given Norway's claim of being "the peace country."

These points are important to consider, and I hope, for their own sake, Norwegians get some common sense.   Conservatives are not responsible for this man's horrible act of terrorism, and any rational person should be able to see that acts of violence on the part of those opposed to jihad are not only hypocritical, but also counter-productive (not to mention horrible).  It saddens me that "Islamophobes" are labelled as "extreme far-right."  "Islamophobia" is not racism.  Any rational person should be able to distinguish between the two.  The reason I put that in quotation marks is that it is a label with an (unjustifiably) negative connotation.

I will reiterate something I said in a previous post: I do not hate Muslims in general.  I hate jihadists, Muslim extremists, and Sharia law.  I hate Islam's treatment of women and homosexuals.  I hate some Muslims' and Islamic nations' views of Jews and Israel.  I hate the hatred these Muslims spout and act upon.  I hate the hatred Islam engenders.  I am making a distinction between Muslims and Islam here.  Islam is a hateful and oppressive religion.  Not all Muslims are hateful or oppressive.  The vast majority of Muslims are not violent.  For the record, I also hate extreme Christianity.  I hate extremism.  I hate violence.  And I hate unjustified hatred.  I believe my hatred is justified.  I realize that I failed to effectively communicate my views in that previous post, and I apologize for that.  Hopefully I managed to clarify my views in this post.

Furthermore, I hate the bleeding-hearts who hatefully accuse conservatives of unjustified hatred.  Yes, some conservatives do posses unjustified hatred.  But, the majority of conservatives are much less hateful than most bleeding-hearts realize.  Any rational person should be able to distinguish between uncompassionate, frank discourse and hatred.  Over 60,000 people have died as a result of Islamic terrorism.  Islam is a threat.  Although most Mulsims are not a threat, it is difficult to distinguish between the ones that are and the ones that aren't.  Western nations are slowly transforming into Islamic nations.

UPDATE: See also, this.  Norway is repulsively soft on criminals.  

The Anger of the Green Party is Proportional to my Happiness

The government of Canada is cutting funding to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency by 43.1%, shortly after a 6.9% cut.  Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, is outraged:

Harper’s Throne Speech in June committed to improving the environmental assessment process, and instead he is driving a stake into its heart, it makes absolutely no sense to be giving $1.4 billion a year in subsidies to the oil and gas industry while allotting a measly $17 million to CEAA. In what way is that protecting our environment? 

I disagree with subsidies to oil companies, but this is good news to me.  Anything that infuriates Elizabeth May makes me happy (in general). 

The priorities of the Harper government are obviously not in line with those of Canadians.

Really?

A poll released this week found 45 per cent of surveyed Canadians said the federal government should make health care — a topic the government and federal politicians are often shy to talk about — a priority in next week's budget.  That's compared to 35 per cent who chose the economy, and 15 per cent who picked the environment.

Emphasis added.
In a throne speech, Harper stated:

“Our Government is committed to developing Canada's extraordinary resource wealth in a way that protects the environment. It will support major new clean energy projects of national or regional significance, such as the planned Lower Churchill hydroelectricity project in Atlantic Canada. It will engage the provinces, territories and industry on ways to improve the regulatory and environmental assessment process for resource projects, while ensuring meaningful consultation with affected communities, including Aboriginal communities.”

Perhaps eliminating excess spending on this environmental agency is what Harper meant when he said the government will “improve the regulatory and environmental assessment process for resource projects.”

I direct you to Bjørn Lomborg, whose views are similar to mine:

Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may very well have little impact on the world's temperature for hundreds of years. Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, Lomborg argues that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply-which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime. He asks why the debate over climate change has stifled rational dialogue and killed meaningful dissent.

 I don't agree with him about spending money on fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and water, but with everything else I agree.

The radical environmental movement is largely based upon emotion and fear rather than rational analysis.  Protecting the environment should be a priority, but it should be done within reasonability.  The Earth belongs to humans, and it is ours to exploit for our own personal gain.  But we have to keep in mind that protecting the environment is also in our best interest.  We just can’t let emotion dictate how we approach environmental protection.

Industrial activity does not equal environmental destruction.  Industrial sites can be reclaimed. In addition, the environmental friendliness of industrial practices has drastically improved in recent decades.  The role environmental regulations has played in that should not be ignored, but, in my opinion, the reach of environmental regulations is overkill.  It just doesn’t make sense to impede business with regulations, especially regulations that have questionable efficacy.  In some cases, environmentally friendly business practices are good for business.  For example, environmentally friendly products are ubiquitous and the efficient use of energy saves money.  

This brings me back to the original topic of this post, the federal government’s cut on the funding for the CEAA.  In addition to the obvious advantage (decrease in government is (generally) always good), I applaud this move for the reasons above.  That Elizabeth May and the Green Party are angry is always a bonus.