Listening to the retailers association, the RCMP and Imperial Tobacco crying the blues over black-market tobacco is like listening to the cheating husband, his mistress and the wife lamenting over getting too much sex, not enough sex, and not wanting sex.

The first is crying wolf as they benefit from the problem, the second is crying about not getting enough when they aren’t doing anything to advance their cause, and the third is crying foul when they are possibly the source of the problem.

In every province except Quebec, there is an electronic program available to the government to not only monitor tobacco purchases on reserves, but to police off-reserve individuals and make sure they don’t get access to exemptions on tobacco that they are not legally entitled to.

You see, black-market tobacco is not the only problem.  There is also the issue of tax exempt tobacco, legally obtained for the purpose of resale on reserve, and then being sold illegally to off-reserve purchasers. This adds another $1.5 billion in fraud to the $2 billion already mentioned.
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Well, I woke up this morning, confident in the Canadian Mosaic of misinformation, misrepresentation, and general “hug thy neighbor” because they are “new” philosophies, and what happens while I’m asleep at the wheel with a half full Kokanee between my leg?

Those damn Tories went and whisked away my general feeling of political incorrectness by going and informing the teaming mass’ piling up at the gates of Heaven (you know, Custom’s and Immigration Canada) that we Canuckians aren’t perfect, we don’t always get it right, this isn’t necessarily the best place to live, and oh, by the way, we do occasionally put the Beaver hunting aside and go target practicing for terrorists when we are not consuming huge quantities of pork and beer after our little dip in the icy water.

Imagine my surprise to wake up to the newly released “Discover Canada” guide.
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As a Tory, I have to admit that I’m reveling in the woes of the Liberals, and elated at the Bloc getting a bloody nose. As a Canadian, and a voter, I’m tragically concerned with the serious imbalance within our political system today, and all Canadians should take note that a weak and indecisive Liberal party is a very bad thing for the democratic process.

That said, (I love that queue) for the first time in 25 years, I feel elation at the prospect of the erosion of the hold the Bloc has over Quebec. For the first time in such a long time, Quebecers are finally looking like they intend to get into the game federally, with more than just the token protest vote.

It’s about bloody time too. The Bloc has always been a “park vote here, no alternative” solution to most Quebecers, but it’s been done in the full awareness that the Bloc agenda has ever been set on the track of “how much can we screw the rest of the nation for”. As an Albertan, I’m painfully aware that Central Canadian politicians can be screwed for a fair bit by a blackmailing Quebec.
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Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien talks with his communications director Peter Donolo in this June 20, 1999, photo.

I’m sick of the H1N1 plague, Act of God, pandemic, curse, Rumsfeld’s gold, whatever you want to call it. It’s just too stupid for words at this point. I simply can’t believe the media coverage of a simple flu bug that causes less damage than SARS did.

So today I’ve decided to laugh my ass off at poor Peter Donolo, who I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting, is a very nice fellow, and probably just accepted the biggest butt-frigging job a communications guru could take.

It makes me laugh to see how relieved Liberals are at the very mention of Peter’s name, like he was the Messiah or something.

I’ll point out a few facts most Liberals (also known as the 20 something crowd) fail to take into consideration:

1. When Peter was brought in to work for JC, Jean Chretien had the advantage of being about as low in the opinion of Canadians as he could go. Iggy, sorry mate, but you have quite a ways to sink yet before everything that happens is all good.
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Flu virus in this line only, inoculations line closed!

Honestly, I don’t know who I feel more disgust at, the Federal Government or the Provincial Government over the way this whole situation has been handled.  Let’s see if I can get the sequence of failures correct, if not the order.

Firstly, correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ve been inoculating people in the province of Alberta for the better part of 40 years against Bubonic Plague, Polio, TB etc…, yet the powers that be managed to completely bypass all known facilities for mass inoculation by creating a whole new plan, which is patently not working well.

Secondly, we managed to allow the press to dictate the situation, creating a near panic in their ever seeking mission to create news worthy items, even when most of the news isn’t worthy of our attention.

Thirdly, we allowed other countries panic to panic our already press sensitive politicians into a panic, who thereby, facing the self-induced panic of the press, capitulate to all comers and make announcement after announcement for self-serving purposes only to actually give out so little information that the general population hasn’t a bloody clue what is fact or fiction about H1N1.

Okay, the order is backward, but it will do.
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