and the award goes to...

With the Spring Session of the Alberta Legislature set to begin in just only weeks, the provincial scene is starting to come alive again after the post-election hangover/depression is starting to wear off (depending on which side of the Legislature your team is sitting on)...

- The Alberta Liberal Caucus was sworn-in today. The 9-member Official Opposition will include new faces Kent Hehr (Calgary-Buffalo) and Darshan Kang (Calgary-McCall). The Alberta Liberals recently announced their shadow cabinet which includes Hehr taking Justice and Attorney General, Solicitor-General and Public Security, and Kang taking Transportation and Service Alberta.

- Alberta MLAs are getting a 4.7% raise this week (their salaries are tied to an annual adjustment). We'lla ll be looking forward to seeing newly elected Tory MLA Carl Benito (Edmonton-Mill Woods) come through on his election promise to donate his salary to a scholarship program.

- After six-months on the job, Alberta Energy and Utilities Board Chairman William Tillman has resigned. Tillman took over the position following last year's AEUB spy scandal, in which it was discovered that the provincially-appointed AEUB had used public funds to hire a private investigator to spy on central Alberta landowners and their lawyers.

- And the awards goes to... Tory Premier Ed Stelmach for placing a strong second in the Fossil Fool of the Year Awards...

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has won the dubious title of Fossil Fool of the Year runner-up, beating out several of North America's top energy and automaker chief executives.

Stelmach picked up 25 per cent of more than 6,000 votes cast worldwide and will be crowned 'Canadian Fossil Fool of the Year' on Tuesday, April 1 by San Francisco-based organizer, Energy Action Coalition.

The premier was nominated in the international vote for his staunch support of oilsands development in northern Alberta with "the potential to lay waste to an area the size of the state of Florida," says the coalition.

Stelmach finished second in voting behind Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis, who has attracted the ire of environmentalists for funding various coal-power projects.

mary robinson in edmonton.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson will be speaking in Edmonton this week.

This year’s lecture, a signature event in the U of A centenary crown, is scheduled for Wednesday April 2, starting at 7:30 p.m. at the Citadel Theatre.

Tickets are on sale at the U of A International Centre or through the Citadel Theatre 780-425-1820.

no morton points scored here.

After having spent most of my day sitting in Rutherford Library pouring over a series of response articles between the Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff duo and the feisty Miriam Smith, I think my brain is very close to reaching the 'mush' point. As interesting as I find the Court Party debate, I think I'll save writing a post about it until later...

I had some good solid fun checking out the Born Ruffians show at the Velvet Undergroud this weekend. The Born Ruffians are on tour now, so I'd recommend you check them out if they're playing in a town near you... you should also check out their MySpace page for some sample songs. Here's the video for their song 'Hummingbird'...



And of course, as I seem to do at the end of month, I was at Oh Susanna at the Varscona Theater last night. If you haven't been, you should. They put on a good show and rarely disappoint. The Be Arthurs were there too and gave the audience a hilarious rendition of Bitches ain't Shit.

If you've never heard the Be Arthurs, here's a clip from one of their live shows.

it's easy to boycott beijing's summer olympics.

If you haven't read it already, make sure to check out Naheed Nenshi's op-ed in yesterday's Calgary Herald in which he articulately explains why he will be joining a growing list of Canadians in deciding to individually boycott the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Nenshi gives a shout out to bloggers who have jumped on the Boycott Beijing 2008 effort (this blog specifically. Thanks, Naheed!), but if you're looking for more information on the Boycott Beijing 2008 movement you can check out my previous post, Laura at We Move to Canada, and Reporters sans frontières.

In more recent news, French President Nicholas Sarkozy has stated that he may boycott the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games in protest of the recent situation in Tibet.

"Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, has led a chorus of European criticism over China's actions in Tibet, refusing to rule out a boycott of the Olympic Games opening ceremony.

The publicity gained by anti-China protesters abroad have generated a fiercer response to China's actions in Tibet

"I don't close the door to any option. I want dialogue to begin and I will graduate my response according to the response given by Chinese authorities," Mr Sarkozy said."

doug horner, alberta's minister of advanced education health & technology

And here I thought Raj Sherman (Edmonton-Meadowlark) was the Parliamentary Secretary to Health & Wellness Minister Ron Liepert (Calgary-West), but according to the mandate letter sent this week by Tory Premier Ed Stelmach to Advanced Education & Technology Minister Doug Horner (Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert)...

You will work with the Minister of Health and Wellness to:
• Increase access to quality health care and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health care service delivery, and
• Ensure Alberta has the health care professionals we need to meet future demand, and

Lead the following initiatives:
• Increase the number of physician graduates from 227 to 295 by 2012;
• Increase the number of Registered Nurse graduates from 1,375 to 2,000 by 2012; and
• Increase the number of Licensed Practical Nurse graduates from 559 to 1000 by 2012.

Doug Horner's mandate letter seems to have more to do with Liepert's portfolio than his own. Maybe after his tenure in Education, Stelmach wants someone to keep a close eye on Minister Liepert...

more on edmonton's downtown arena.

Continuing from yesterday's post, here's some more coverage from the blogosphere and MSM on the proposed downtown Edmonton arena.

AGRDT: The good and the bad: Edmonton's proposed new arena

Colby Cosh: If you build it, they will come. Or at least Mayor Mandel will, And another thing!

Covered in Oil: Arena Feasibility Committee releases its brochure

The Battle for Alberta: An Arena Response Letter #1, An Arena Response Letter #2, An Arena Response Letter #3.

PunjabiOil: Did Alberta Taxpayers fund the Oilers Dressing Room Renovations?

Scott Henning: Shell game hides taxpayer contribution to new arena

And make sure to check out Paula Simmons' column in today's Journal for the balanced opinions that couldn't be found in yesterday's paper...

what's a wetland anyway?

It's crunch time in academia and I'm up to my waist in paper writing.

One of the papers I'm writing is on the topic of habitat protection in the wetlands of Louisiana. When writing about wetlands in the United States, it's important to understand the many definitions of 'wetlands.' For example, until the Federal Manual for Identifying and Delineating Jurisdictional Wetlands was created in 1989, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Soil Conservation Service, and the Fish & Wildlife Service all operated under different definitions of ‘wetlands.’ This created all sorts of hijinx as each agency had the power to designate areas as ‘wetlands’ and to affect people’s behavior accordingly.

I found this exert from Edward Schiappa's article Toward a Pragmatic Approach to Definition: 'Wetlands' and the Politics of Meaning quite interesting (it was published in Environmental Pragmatism in 1996). It details the campaign promise of President George H. W. Bush to protect the wetlands of the United States (according to the EPA, the U.S. currently loses an average of 60,000 acres of wetlands each year).

"You may remember my pledge, that our national goal would be no net loss of wetlands. And together, we are going to deliver on the promise of renewal, and I plan to keep that pledge...
Wherever wetlands must give way to farming or development, they will be replaced or expanded elsewhere. It's time to stand the history of wetlands destruction on its head. From this year forward, anyone who tries to drain the swamp is going to be up to his ears in alligators"

Bush described the protection of the environment as "a moral issue. For it is wrong to pass on to future generations a world tainted by present thoughtlessness." Encouraging his audience to judge their actions in light of the verdict of future generations, Bush asked those present to imagine what might be said forty years from now:

"It could be they'll report the loss of many million acres more, the extinction of species, the disappearance of wilderness and wildlife. Or they could report something else. They could report that sometime around 1989 things began to change and that we began to hold on to our parks and refuges and that we protected our species and that in that year the seeds of a new policy about our valuable wetlands were sown, a policy summed up in three simple words: "No net loss." And I prefer the second vision of America's environmental future."

Of course, politics being politics, the discussion turned to the definition of "no net loss."