Edmonton • election
Culture of Entitlement
The controversy over the Conservative nomination process in Edmonton-Sherwood Park is certainly complicated, but it’s illustrative of a culture of entitlement here in Alberta.
Jacquie Fenske declared her candidacy early, and apparently she should have been informed that she had competition for the Tory nomination. Tim Uppal won the Tory nod unexpectedly.
“By the time it was known he was running, it was too late to do anything about it,” retiring MP Ken Epp, of the Unborn Victims of Crime Bill fame, told the Edmonton Journal.
Maybe Fenske just made a silly mistake, and maybe Uppal should have declared earlier, but it is pretty arrogant on the part of her former supporter James Ford to get upset about having competition at the riding level. He’s now running in the riding as an independent with a conservative platform.
And if Uppal hadn’t challenged the nomination it’s very possible Fenske could have cake walked all the way to Ottawa.

Canada • economy
It’s the united states, stupid
Reassurances from economists that Canada can weather the slumping United States economy aren’t that convincing, even here in oil-rich Alberta.
As any cattle-farmer knows, the 49th parallel is practically invisible when it comes to trade. If Americans stop buying our beef, wood, etc., we are going to feel it. Sticking our collective level-heads in the sand and chanting: “We don’t have any subprime mortgages!” isn’t going to help.
The rest of Canada should be even more skeptical. Ontario, certainly, is already feeling the pinch in its manufacturing sector.
And as the economists from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives comment on the blog Relentlessly Progressive Economics: “Canada’s productivity record during the Harper years is not just negative but the worst of any Canadian Prime Minister since the dawn of modern statistical record-keeping.”
Alberta may be buffered by oil prices, but with a large British investment firm advising against putting money in unconventional oil extraction, we shouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Canada • police
One slick salesperson
Tasers are never far from the headlines these days, and the news just keeps getting worse for law-enforcement agencies.
A new report from John Kiedrowski, a criminologist at the University of Ottawa, says the RCMP failed to sufficiently investigate the manufacturers claims about the supposedly non-lethal weapons.
Several recent incidents have cast doubt on the safety of the weapon — most notably the recorded death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski. Closer to home, Craig Williamson, a man with cerebral palsy, was tasered while being evicted from his Edmonton apartment. He has since died, but the disciplinary hearing for the officers involved is coming up soon.
Our society relies too much on information from businesses on all manner of public interest issues from environmental monitoring to what’s in packaged foods. The trend is even more disturbing when the people we trust to carry guns don’t properly investigate corporate claims, and instead test them on citizens.