This post belongs in the ridiculous category.
It appears that Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner Frank Work has decided to reward Government Services Minister Ty Lund for his "commitment to the province's freedom of information and privacy legislation." Lund, who was first elected in the Rocky Mountain House riding in 1989, was known as "Forest Stump" during his days as Forestry Minister (a name coined by former Liberal leader and Senator, Nick Taylor).
Funny, this year the Canadian Association of Journalists awarded the government of Alberta with the “Code of Silence Award” for its poor handling of the media and opposition’s request for access to government flight logs.
This is the same government which used FOIP to stall opposition access to government flight logs, important Enron documents, West Edmonton Mall’s ATB financing records, and Stockwell Day’s legal fees (the Opposition Liberals had to pay $59,571 in FOIP fees to find out that the PC Government paid $792,000 of Stockwell Day's legal fees).
Now, I'm not accusing Mr. Work of political hackery or anything. His CV and experience is pretty impressive.
But, according to his website "[t]he Commissioner is an Officer of the Legislature." Okay... he's an officer of a Legislature in which the Tories have held a majority for the past 34 years...
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Nick Taylor was so awesome. I wish there were more bad-ass Liberals like him in Alberta.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Nick was great.
ReplyDeleteI was going through Hansard one cold winter night (what can I say? I'm a political dork), and he once said that he intended to stay in the legislature well into his 90s. I wish he made good on that promise. He was such a riot.
ReplyDeleteHere are some of my favorite quotes:
-After a series of evasive responses from Klein, Taylor shot: "For a man of his girth, he sure can dance."
-"I can hear the honourable member shaking his head."
-"In a battle of wits, those people are totally unarmed."
-"Actually, we'd be all for game farms if it was the New Dems that we could hunt Saturday nights."
-"Are you going to say something intelligent now?"
-"I hear a rattle, Mr. Speaker, I think the minister just had an idea."